Alien: Romulus has cemented a place of infamy in the franchise, thanks to the climatic reveal of “The Offspring,” a xenomorph/human/Engineer hybrid creature, born from the infected womb of poor Kay (Isabela Merced). The design of The Offspring caused major waves within the Alien fandom – but for all the memes mocking it, it seems that the creature has haunted quite a few viewers, and is still a major topic of interest.
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Since Alien: Romulus has been released we’ve seen a few alternate designs for The Offspring released online – and today is no different. Artist Dane Hallett has shared one of his alternate designs for Alien: Romulus’s Offspring creature – and it is interesting, if not freaky.
Hallett’s version of The Offspring shows a lot more homage to the Xenomorph queen from films like Aliens and Alien Resurrection. The creature has the queen’s body and a bulbous spiked tail, with an Engineer’s translucent skin and a humanoid face at the end of the helmet-style head, instead of a xenomorph’s faceless features and second mouth. This version of The Offspring also has wings and tendrils extending from its back in some versions of the design; other versions swap out the wings and tendrils for a spiked back, or shorter wings, etc. Some sketches change the body dynamics to make The Offspring look more spidery or frog-like in design and pose – and those are truly unsettling.
When creating The Offspring, Alien: Romulus director Fede Álvarez embraced the expanded lore of Alien franchise creator Ridley Scott, and his prequel films Prometheus and Alien: Covenant. Scott’s reveals about the xenomorphs’ origins and the Engineer race introduced a mutagen substance that both eradicates life and creates wild hybrid mutations within an infected populace. Alien: Romulus took that baton and ran with it, revealing the twist that Weyland-Yutani scientists have developed their own “Prometheus strain” of the original Engineer mutagen, in an attempt to enhance human DNA.
We’ve already seen how that Prometheus strain mutates a human embryo into a rapidly growing monster – if Álvarez comes back to do an Alien: Romulus sequel, it would be interesting to see if he continues playing with the kind of nightmare forms xenomorph DNA can take.
At the time of writing this, Alien: Romulus has made $331.5 million on a budget of $80, marking the second-biggest box office success for the franchise
