Twentieth Century Fox made the unusual decision to drop the first trailer for Ridley Scott‘s Alien: Covenant on Christmas Eve. Not only is it a Saturday night, but it’s also a weekend and a holiday. Who the hell is on the internet (besides me, writing this story)? While I’m sure there are statistical reasons we aren’t aware of, there’s another that I find immensely interesting.

Scott’s 1979 Alien was simple; a ship is sent to investigate an SOS distress call and encounters an alien that begins to kill the crew members one by one. The backstory? It’s implied that an alien giant (known by fans as the “Space Jockey”) crashed on the planet after being infected by the species of Xenomorphs.

Scott returned to the franchise with the 2012 Prometheus, a prequel to Alien that was rumored to build a bridge between the two films. When filming commenced, insiders on the set told Bloody Disgusting that the film would end with a Space Jockey crashing on the planet. This did happen at the end of Prometheus, but it was changed as Damon Lindelof reworked the script to set up a trilogy. Instead of it being the same planet and Jockey that we see at the beginning of Alien, it was changed to be a different planet and Jockey. Those paying attention would notice the strange similarity, but wrote it off when Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) blasted off to the Engineer home world with the help of David’s (Michael Fassbender) head.

The stage was set earlier in the film, however, as Shaw learns that this Engineer was on a mission: it was on its way to Earth to release a DNA toxin that would wipe the planet clean of the Engineers’ creation…mankind. But why?! Shaw can’t wrap her head around why our creators, our Gods, would want to destroy us; so she sets off to get the answers.

But the answers were right in front of her the entire time…right in front of us. While Scott promises to get to the bottom of the questions left by Prometheus in Alien: Covenant, the answers are already there, at least in theory. Shit, I wrote about this way back in 2012…

What we learn in Prometheus is that the Engineers ordered the destruction of their creation after we turned on one of them. What does this mean exactly? You now that Jesus Christ guy? He was an Engineer. We killed him. Thus, we weren’t worthy of their gift of life and sent one of their own to destroy us. Only, before it could complete its mission, it was attacked by one of its other creations, the Xenomorph, which is presumed to be the chosen form of destruction of the planet Earth (much scarier than Stay Puft). Is there evidence of this in Prometheus? There’s quite a bit actually, with there being a mention of the crash happening a couple thousands years ago (you know, around the time that Christ was crucified!), and the biggest subtext being that Prometheus takes place during Christmas!

Even Scott has acknowledge in an interview with Movies.com that this was in fact the subtext to Prometheus, although he admits it ended up being “a little too on the nose”:

“We definitely did, and then we thought it was a little too on the nose,” explained Scott back in 2012. “But if you look at it as an ‘our children are misbehaving down there’ scenario, there are moments where it looks like we’ve gone out of control, running around with armor and skirts, which of course would be the Roman Empire. And they were given a long run. A thousand years before their disintegration actually started to happen. And you can say, ‘Let’s send down one more of our emissaries to see if he can stop it.’ Guess what? They crucified him.”

What is he referring to? How about this: The original Jon Spaihts script for Prometheus is online and carries this bomb from Holloway on page 57.

“But I guess we know why they never came back to us. Something killed them
off – back around the time of Christ. Maybe He was one of them! A great
teacher, sent from Heaven? Jesus. The last Engineer.”

So, yes, technically the entirety of events in all of the Alien movies appears to have happened because of super alien, Jesus Christ.

What you also may find interesting is that Shaw is juxtaposing Mary and the birth of Jesus. Say what? The Immaculate Conception. Shaw delivers a virgin birth (note that she has a C-section and not an abortion) to an alien being, which ends up sacrificing itself to save its mother. It becomes the new, all powerful God as the credits hit…

It’s pretty cool that there’s actually meaning behind the Alien: Covenant trailer being release on Christmas. It’s quite brilliant, actually, setting the stage for some massive revelations when the film takes off for paradise on May 19, 2017.