'Alien: Covenant' Plot: Michael Fassbender Will Face Off Against Himself In 'Prometheus' Sequel

Remember when David does all that stuff in Prometheus for no discernible reason? How he infects a fellow crewmembers with alien goo so he’ll go and impregnate another crew member with a different alien goo baby? And how he learned the Engineer language because they have identical DNA to us even though they don’t look like us? Or something?

So far everything we’ve learned about Alien: Covenant is promising. It certainly seems like Ridley Scott is trying to paper over the disastrous Prometheus with a proper Alien movie. The xenomorphs are back (redubbed neomorphs). Alien Jesus is still dead, along with the boring-ass crew of Prometheus. And now it looks like an actor of Fassbender’s caliber won’t be wasted on an inscrutable, motivationless character like the android David.

Instead, Fassbender will play two androids: David and Walter. Speaking with The Irish Times (and disseminated by Alien-Covenant), Fassbender said:

“I am allowed to say I am playing two robots — Walter and David. I think what’s great about it is that Ridley has gone back to the DNA of Alien , the horror element of that. But it also has the scope and the scale of Prometheus.”

It seems likely Fassbender will play both a David-model robot (named Walter) aboard the starship Covenant AND the original David, presumably with his decapitated head grafted onto an Engineer or xenomorph body.

The two robots will kill each other when Alien: Covenant arrives on Aug. 4, 2017.