Early into production on Alien: Covenant, last June to be exact, it was reported that Katherine Waterston‘s Daniels had a secret connection to Ridley Scott‘s 1979 Alien. According to an insider, Daniels was to be the mother to Sigourney Weaver‘s Ellen Ripley.

As it turns out, the timeline worked:

“Alien: Covenant takes place in 2103, 10 years after Prometheus (2093) and 19 years before Alien (2122),” Jon Squires explained. “Ellen Ripley was born in 2092, which would make her 11 years old at the time of the Alien: Covenant events.”

Even though Scott debunked the rumor, he did acknowledge that it was discussed internally: “No. That was probably way back when. ‘Should she be the daughter of Ripley?’ I said ‘no.’ She’s herself,” Scott said in an interview this past March.

This leads us to today, where an international blogger shared a short interview with Scott, who is now openly teasing the reveal of Ripley’s mother:

“Well we’re heading towards the back end of the first Alien, so that may be feasible, but… Ripley’s going to be somebody’s daughter, obviously, because you’re coming in from the back end, right? And you know, the time constraints between this film where we leave David going off tending for that colony. I think you’re probably two films out from even considering her, he’s going to go ‘oh no.'”

Let me decipher. Scott is saying that the tentatively titled Alien: Awakening, the follow-up to Alien: Covenant that could begin filming in early 2018, continues David’s story. At the end of Covenant, he heads off to a colonizing planet with a ship filled with human (hosts) and a pair of baby facehuggers. Scott is basically telling this reporter that the next film will focus on David and this colony which won’t be connected to Ripley or her mother. With that said, the following film could eventually bridge Alien and Ripley, potentially introducing her mother into the fold. Unless Ripley has always been a clone, the timeline suggests that she’s already been born and could be a teenager by the time Scott gets around to introducing her. It’s possible that someone already introduced could be her mother. And so begins years of speculating…

Fun fact: Alien: Isolation‘s protagonist was Amanda Ripley, who is none other than Ellen Ripley’s daughter (she was pictured as an old woman, played by Elizabeth Inglis, in the extended version of James Cameron’s Aliens). It will be fun to see universe continue to expand, especially if you’re a fan of Prometheus and Covenant as Squires and I are.