Just in case there was any doubt that Ridley Scott intends for Alien: Covenant to reference a covenant with a god (the previous title, Alien: Paradise Lost makes the new title look subtle) the first photo from the upcoming Prometheus sequel should dispel it. Our first look at Alien: Covenant reveals the arm patch for the Covenant colony ship’s mission to the decimated home world of the Engineers.
Featured prominently on the patch is a prop from Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark:
Yep, that’s the Ark of the Covenant alright. According to legend, the gold-plated acacia wood chest destroyed cities, decimated armies and made rivers dry up in advance of the Israelite army.
So what does the Ark of the Covenant have to do with Alien: Covenant or the future sci-fi plot of Prometheus?
The original Prometheus introduced us to the Engineers (though a dead Engineer first appeared in Alien ), a race genetically identical to humans (who look nothing like us), who created humans and later decided to destroy humans. Why? An early draft of the script said it was because Jesus was one of them and, whoops, we killed that dude. Perhaps sensing the mounting absurdities larding the plot of their sci-fi action blockbuster, the Prometheus that made it to theaters replaced the silly explanation with… no explanation at all.
The official description for Alien: Covenant sheds a little more light:
“Ridley Scott returns to the universe he created in Alien with Alien: Covenant, the second chapter in a prequel trilogy that began with Prometheus — and connects directly to Scott’s 1979 seminal work of science fiction. Bound for a remote planet on the far side of the galaxy, the crew of the colony ship Covenant discovers what they think is an uncharted paradise, but is actually a dark, dangerous world — whose sole inhabitant is the “synthetic” David (Michael Fassbender), survivor of the doomed Prometheus expedition.”
Scott later confirmed that the “uncharted paradise” is actually the homeworld of the Engineers. “It’s going to be its own separate thing because they are going to the planet of the Engineers and they are going to see what happened there. It was a disaster,” Scott said to Awards Campaign.
It seems the Engineers made a covenant with the dark death god, Science. Science provided them great power and lots of black goo, which they used to seed life around the galaxy, including on Earth. Unfortunately, while this covenant brought them power, it also lead to their doom after they created the perfect killing machine: the alien xenomorph. As near as I can figure, that’s the Covenant of Alien: Covenant. The Covenant human ship will be in search of a new world, where humanity can build a new paradise away from our own environmental disasters on Earth. Will the new planet turn out to be a false idol? Well, it is overrun with deadly xenomorphs…
