It turns out that Ellen Ripley was in Alien: Romulus all along according to director Fede Álvarez, but it sounds like overcomplicated nonsense

Warning: Spoilers for Alien: Romulus may lie ahead.

With Alien: Romulus set to receive a sequel after convincing most critics and fans, co-writer and director Fede Álvarez has been spending a lot of time recently chatting with the press and fans. Now, he might’ve confirmed that original Alien heroine Ellen Ripley was in the movie… sort of.

His words will surely send much of the Alien fandom into chaos once again, as most people were celebrating how Romulus managed to stay away from the centerpiece of the original saga despite its direct ties to that storyline and the many many homages. Personally, I prefer it when he just yaps about his Alien vs. Predator ideas.

Romulus starts with a killer opening prologue that shows a Weyland-Yutani shuttle picking up the cocooned xenomorph that was floating adrift amidst the Nostromo’s pieces after Ripley destroyed the massive hauler ship and ejected the alien from her shuttle, the Narcissus. Given the expensive AI aboard the Nostromo as well as Ash’s mission, it makes sense the company would know where to look for the xeno if the hauler went dark. That said, most fans guessed that Ripley’s shuttle got away and stayed lost for decades. Álvarez apparently thought that wasn’t enough and went into detail about his intent after a special screening of the movie with Collider: “I was like, ‘At some point, the Narcissus has to be inside the Renaissance station somewhere.’ Not only that, I wanted to give an explanation of why Ripley got lost 40 years between [Alien and Aliens].”

Yes, Ripley spent more than 50 years lost in deep space, but everyone always assumed she was just in cryosleep. After all, she only brings up the first encounter with the hostile lifeform aboard the Nostromo when she’s asked to give an extensive explanation of what went down at the start of Aliens. Álvarez, however, wanted her to have one extra adventure that we just didn’t witness: “So, in my mind, there’s a whole movie that happens in parallel to this one where the Narcissus is on board, and Ripley gets out of the station, does her whole f**king movie inside the thing, calls him Xenomorph. I think a lot of the s**t that happens, some of the mayhem that happens in the movie, might have been Ripley getting ahead before the kids… So there’s plenty of room for Ripley to be around doing her thing, and then when she realized the whole thing was going to blow up, she had to get back to the Narcissus and get the f**k out of there.”

This isn’t just a fan theory coming from the writer-director. The Narcissus (or at least another WY shuttle that looks exactly like it) shows up in the movie around 67 minutes in and towards the very end. “Then, of course, she cannot die, so in the big explosion at the end when the station is crashing on the rings, you have to show the Narcissus leaving. I asked these guys, ‘Can you give me a Narcissus there?’ And they were like, ‘We’re on it!’ And they were all excited about it. So you can tell me that story from your side, but the shot is in the movie. As the Corbelan is escaping, you can see the Narcissus with Ripley inside just flying out of there,” the filmmaker added.

So, long story short: The fact is a Narcissus-like WY shuttle is seen in Romulus twice, and there’s good reason to believe the company would find and pick up Ripley as well. Now, the director himself is saying that was indeed Ripley’s ship and that she actually went out of cryosleep and had another horror ride before getting the hell out of there and going back to sleep. Honestly, it just sounds like needlessly complicated f**king with the established history and characters, and it creates a number of irregularities with Aliens’ early scenes, but sure, whatever.