Is Katherine Waterston’s Alien: Covenant Role as Obvious as It Seems?

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We’ve been getting drips and drabs of information about Ridley Scott’s Alien: Covenant (like the first image of Katherine Waterston’s Daniels) but a new report claims to have clear information about the lead character. Could it be that easy?

Spoiler-y stuff ahead but if true, I can’t imagine them wanting to keep this a secret.

The Playlist reported what sources have told them about Waterston’s role:

Sources close to film and actress tell the Playlist that Waterston will be playing Ellen Ripley’s mother in “Alien: Covenant,” which is an amazing twist and true to Scott’s promise that the post-“Prometheus” prequels will eventually lead right up to the first ‘Alien‘ movie. But it should be noted that Waterston isn’t the lead of the movie, and it’s an ensemble piece like “Prometheus.”

Amazing twist? Not sure I’d go that far. Predictable yet good is more like it.

We previously learned about Ripley’s daughter thanks to the excellent video game Alien: Isolation but could Scott really be going this literal with Alien: Covenant and so soon? My thoughts are – yes, probably. Scott has said he wants to connect Prometheus to 1979’s Alien and he plans to do it much quicker than he previously told everyone (perhaps because of Neill Blomkamp’s Alien project with Sigourney Weaver). The official synopsis for the film is as follows:

Ridley Scott returns to the universe he created in ALIEN with ALIEN: COVENANT, the second chapter in a prequel trilogy that began with PROMETHEUS — and connects directly to Scott’s 1979 seminal work of science fiction. Bound for a remote planet on the far side of the galaxy, the crew of the colony ship Covenant discovers what they think is an uncharted paradise, but is actually a dark, dangerous world — whose sole inhabitant is the “synthetic” David (Michael Fassbender), survivor of the doomed Prometheus expedition.

We’ll see Waterston first in the Harry Potter spinoff/prequel, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, where she’s playing Porpentina “Tina” Goldstein. What are your thoughts on her playing Ripley’s mom?

5 Responses to “Is Katherine Waterston’s Alien: Covenant Role as Obvious as It Seems?”

  1. VindicaSean says:

    So, we’ll have Ripley’s mom, Ripley, and with Isolation, Ripley’s daughter, all encountering the xeno and putting up with varying degrees of megacorp fuckery (most foul).

    I would really much rather they just make the main characters of any new Alien movies unrelated to the Ripley family, because it makes these stories feel so much smaller.

    ETA: the protagonists should definitely always be women, though, because that’s kind of the point of these movies.

  2. Adrian says:

    The general plot sounds interesting, but then “Waterston will be playing Ellen Ripley’s mother” and I’m like:

    http://i.imgur.com/xZeJtIW.gifv

    Playing as Ripley’s daughter in Isolation was kinda neat since they’re actually mention of her in Aliens director’s cut, but now we’ve got Ripley’s mom, too? We’re getting a little too ‘chosen one’ for my tastes with this lineage stuff.