Where does Alien: Romulus fit in the Alien timeline?

It looks like Alien: Romulus is taking the franchise back to its roots. Given the fact director Fede Álvarez revamped Evil Dead in a literal shower of gore a decade ago, we're excited to see what he has done with the marauding xenomorph.

But it's fair to say that the idea of a new Alien movie isn't as simple for franchise fans as it sounds. This series has become multi-stranded across a complex timeline since Ridley Scott first told us how "in space no one can hear you scream" way back in 1978.

Romulus follows a group of scavenging colonists as they scope out an abandoned space station, only to find that one particular creature hasn't abandoned it. You can probably guess which one. Cailee Spaeny leads the cast as Rain Carradine, with David Jonsson's Andy serving as Rain's surrogate sibling and also the franchise's latest synthetic. Whose side is this particular android on?

But while we wait for all of that to play out, let's have a look back through the annals of Alien history to find out where the new journey into outer space horror fits into the timeline. Watch out for facehuggers, though. Those things could be anywhere.

Where does Romulus fit into the Alien timeline?

Thankfully, it doesn't take too much detective work to find out where Romulus fits into the story. We've got it straight from the mouth of Cailee Spaeny. She told Variety in November 2023 that "it’s supposed to slot in between the first movie and the second movie".

So that puts Alien: Romulus right into the 57-year period between the events of Alien and its sequel Aliens. During that time, Ripley is safely in hypersleep on the Nostromo's escape shuttle, having blasted the xenomorph into space. But it's also during this period that the shady company Weyland-Yutani starts a terraforming colony on LV-426, as is subsequently seen in Aliens.

This is the best of both worlds, providing a close link to the original pair of sci-fi classics while also ending any possible demand for Sigourney Weaver to appear in cameo form. She's too busy sleeping to show up and fight xenomorphs somewhere else.

The decision also wisely avoids the need to continue Ridley Scott's philosophy-heavy prequel story, as established in Prometheus and Alien: Covenant. That's very much a mess that Álvarez is happy to leave for Scott, if he ever gets around to making another one of those movies.

This choice of time period also allows Romulus to keep clear of the monster beat-up of the Alien vs. Predator duology, which is set in the present day. While it's entirely possible that another Predator collaboration will happen in the future, both franchises are better off apart at the moment with Romulus and standalone films like Dan Trachtenberg's fantastic Prey.

Read more: Cailee Spaeny studied Sigourney Weaver to prepare for Alien: Romulus role (BANG Showbiz)

We've seen the Romulus approach used now by a number of different "legacy sequels", choosing to serve as a sequel to only the first movie in the original franchise. David Gordon Green's trilogy of Halloween legacyquels chose only to acknowledge the 1978 original, while Terminator: Dark Fate decided to follow up the first two entries in James Cameron's franchise while ignoring the others.

It's a great way to erase the mistakes of previous sequels in a franchise, especially when timelines and entries have become tangled by multiple reboots and sidequels. Alien is certainly a prime example of a series where the decision to wipe the slate close to clean makes it much easier to tell a satisfying story without too many strings attached.

We have our fingers crossed that Alien: Romulus proves a worthy successor to the shocks and scares of what Ridley Scott did more than 45 years ago. With a genre maestro like Álvarez behind the camera and a trailer teasing grotesque body horror, we have very high hopes indeed.

Alien: Romulus arrives in UK cinemas on Friday 16 August.