Warning: This article contains spoilers for Alien: Romulus.

How come there are so many Facehuggers and Xenomorphs on board the Renaissance Research Station in Alien: Romulusand yet there are no eggs? With success with critics and at the box office Alien: Romulus has the Foreigner franchise a much-needed comeback after a series of disappointing sequels, prequels and spin-offs. It was hailed as the best Foreigner Film since Foreigner And Alienswhich is appropriate since it is essentially a cross between those two films. It is a scary, atmospheric horror film like Foreignerbut it is also a fast-paced action blockbuster like Aliens – it’s the best of both worlds.

While the usual Foreigner The film formula follows a group of unsuspecting astronauts who inadvertently come into contact with a Xenomorph (or Xenomorphs), Alien: Romulus Instead, the characters are exploring the aftermath of a Xenomorph rampage. They head to the Renaissance Research Station because they need some cryosleep chambers to reach their destination. However, when they board the station, they are horrified to find that it has not been abandoned, but has been torn to pieces by Xenomorphs. However, since there are no eggs to be seen on the station, the question arises as to where all these Xenomorphs came from.

Rook explained the origin of facehuggers in the Renaissance in Alien: Romulus

The Renaissance crew recreated the Xenomorph’s DNA and 3D printed the facehuggers.

After their first encounter with the facehuggers, the characters of Alien: Romulus pocket what’s left of the android Rook – played by Ian Holm, who resembles an uncanny spitting image – to ask him what happened. The film’s opening scene already revealed that the crew had recovered “Big Chap” – the Xenomorph from the original. Foreigner film – who survived when Ellen Ripley shot him into space. After Big Chap got entangled, he was brought aboard the Renaissance so Weyland-Yutani could continue their research. According to Rook They extracted Big Chap’s DNA and used it to 3D print the facehuggers.

Rook also explains where the Renaissance crew got the mysterious black slime. They extracted the slime specifically from this stage of the Xenomorph’s life cycle, the stage where the facehuggers incorporate alien DNA into their offspring. This was a great way to explain where the Engineers got the slime while still maintaining the mystery surrounding the aliens. It also avoided back continuity with the canonical hive life cycle, as both processes can coexist. Since they were experimenting on Big Chap and reverse engineering the Xenomorph’s DNA, the Renaissance crew didn’t need eggs to create facehuggers and Xenomorphs.

The Renaissance Crew was used to create more Xenomorphs

Weyland-Yutani likes to let its employees die

The Renaissance Station didn’t just recreate the Xenomorph’s life cycle, create a few facehuggers, and that was it. When the research got out of control, the Xenomorphs used the Renaissance crew to expand their hive. When Rain and co. first arrive at the station, they are horrified to see the ravaged corpses of the previous crew lying around. It is likely that these crew members fell victim to the manufactured facehuggers and they had their own Xenomorphs implanted into them. That would explain why there are a lot of fully grown Xenomorphs on board the station.

But that’s not all. When Rain, Tyler, and Andy go into the hive to rescue the cocooned Kay, they find a bunch of other poor humans cocooned. This suggests that the facehugger-caused deaths of some of the crew led to a swarm of Xenomorphs that wiped out the rest. Suffice it to say, being part of the original crew of Renaissance Station would not have been very enviable.

The greatness of the Renaissance in Alien: Romulus allowed the large number of threats

The huge station allowed Alien: Romulus to combine the claustrophobia of Alien with the action of Aliens.

Director Fede Álvarez managed to make the best of both worlds, with the xenomorph threats of Alien: Romulus. The film’s action, set aboard an isolated space station, was reminiscent of the haunting claustrophobia of Ridley Scott’s original film.but moving it to such a huge, sprawling network allowed it to indulge in the blockbuster spectacle and fast-paced xenomorph-killing action of James Cameron. Aliens. The massive size of Renaissance Station paved the way for a wide range of threats, from swarms of facehuggers to teeming xenomorph hives.

The whole explanation about the Renaissance crew’s experiments with xenomorph DNA and the black slime was also worth it. Especially when Alien: Romulus seems to be coming to an end, but Álvarez surprises the audience with an unexpected fourth act in which Kay gives birth to a truly terrifying human-Xenomorph hybrid – dubbed “The Offspring” – who wreaks havoc among the survivors. Rook’s exposition of Xenomorph Goo research may have seemed a bit wordy and unnecessary at first, but the power of the eventual denouement is undeniable.