Prometheus’ Forgotten Sequel Totally Changes ALIENS’ Ending

The original ending to the film Aliens is one of hopeful triumph in the face of a seemingly unbeatable cosmic threat, but, all of that changed the moment Prometheus’ forgotten sequel revealed that Ripley and, in fact, humanity didn’t win at the end of the movie–the Xenomorphs did.

In Aliens (the second film in the franchise), Ripley is brought back to LV-426–the world where she and her original crew first encountered the Xenomorph species. This film takes place decades after the original, and within that time in-between (while Ripley was in cryosleep), a human colony had been established on LV-426 called Hadley’s Hope. Unfortunately, the reason Ripley is being sent back to this world is that Hadley’s Hope had become overrun with Xenomorphs, and Ripley is the only person who has ever survived an encounter with one. So, Ripley accompanied a team of Colonial Marines to Hadley’s Hope, and by the end of the movie, the Xenomorphs were completely eradicated–at least, that’s what fans thought.

Related: Predators Secretly Explain How Xenomorphs Spread Across The Universe

A Spaceship Full of Xenomorphs Secretly Made It Off LV-426

In Prometheus: Fire and Stone #1 by Paul Tobin and Juan Ferreyra, a team of space explorers decided to travel to LV-223 in search of anything that may have remained from the Prometheus mission so many years before. In Prometheus, Peter Weyland and his team of scientists and explorers went to this world in search of an alien species–known as the Engineers–that he believed created life on Earth. Upon finding a living Engineer, Weyland is killed, and the mission was a complete bust–and no one ever found out what happened. That is why this team has decided to set out to the same world and search for clues as to what the crew of the Prometheus might have found, and what happened to them. Since it takes a long time to travel through interstellar space, this crew was in cryosleep during the events of Aliens while making their way to LV-223–leaving them woefully unprepared for what they were in for upon their arrival.

Upon landing on the surface of LV-223, the explorers wander around this world until they come across a derelict vessel with the name ‘Hadley’s Hope’ written on the side of it. Since they were all asleep during that moment in history, they had no idea what the significance of Hadely’s Hope was. When the crew opened the ship, a horde of Xenomorphs spilled out and slaughtered them before taking off and spreading their hive across LV-223. What seemed to have happened was a ship must have taken off from Hadley’s Hope at the start of the Xenomorph outbreak with either an infected person on board or a few Xenomorphs who had hitched a ride. The result was a dead crew and a ship full of Xenomorphs that landed on LV-426’s neighboring world, LV-223.

This revelation makes the ending of Aliens so unbelievably heartbreaking, as all the effort and sacrifices made by Ripley and the Colonial Marines was for nothing. While it is true that Alien 3 robbed Aliens of its happy ending first, that film at least allowed Ripley one more chance to eradicate the Xenomorph species from the galaxy–something she succeeded in doing with her dying breath. However, with Prometheus’ forgotten sequel, it is revealed that Ripley was totally insignificant to curbing the spread of Xenomorph life in the cosmos, thereby changing Aliens’ ending completely.

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