Creature designer reveals Noomi Rapace’s original role in Alien: Covenant

Last Updated on July 30, 2021

Ridley Scott returned to the ALIEN franchise in 2012 with PROMETHEUS, and although I certainly had my issues with the film, I did quite enjoy it and was looking forward to discovering just where Scott would be taking the sci-fi epic next. PROMETHEUS concluded with Dr. Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) and David (Michael Fassbender) taking off from the planet LV-223 with the intention of reaching the homeworld of the Engineers, a technologically advanced species who may have created humanity. By the time ALIEN: COVENANT rolled around in 2017, that storyline seems to have been abandoned in favour of bringing the Xenomorph back into action, and although David was featured prominently, Shaw's role was extremely small.

While speaking with HN Entertainment, creature designer Carlos Huante spoke about what he knew of the original intention for the character of Elizabeth Shaw. "Prior to the black goo genocide, I know that in the script I had, the early script, there was the story between Shaw and David, and how and why David got reassembled. That story happens at the beginning of the film but they kind of bypassed all of that which makes it a little more horrific in a way," Huante said. "So in the first version of Covenant called Paradise, she was hiding in the catacombs from David under the city and the story was that on her trip to the homeworld she got lonely and she had David hanging outside the ship, she didn’t want anything to do with him. But she still had to talk to him. Eventually, she ends up bringing his body in and reattaching him as they become friends during this trip. He ends up having affection for her in a friendship way." As we know, it was revealed in ALIEN: COVENANT that Shaw was actually dead, having been used by David in his experiments, but in the first version of the script, Huante said that Shaw was still alive when the Covenant crew came calling.

In the first version of what was called Paradise/Prometheus 2, Shaw was alive. They find her and she’s been hiding from David the whole time and she helps them escape. I told Ridley my wife and mother-in-law, who are strong characters themselves, they loved the Shaw character and the actress (Noomi Rapace) more than any other characters in the film and they’re not science fiction people, but they liked the film because of Noomi. I think it was a studio call as to why she didn’t return. What a shame.

Although the original intention for ALIEN: COVENANT seems to have been more of a direct sequel to PROMETHEUS, Carlos Huante claims that the Xenomorph would still have made an appearance. "The first version of the xenomorph did show up at the end and the Neomorphs and the Xenomorph have a fight. There was supposed to be a monster fight at the end of the film as they are chasing the crew to get to the ship," Huante said. "So as they’re running to another ship they’re being chased by the Neomorphs and then this Xenomorph shows up and it’s fighting and killing these other creatures because it hates them, it hates everything." Ridley Scott has frequently spoken of his desire to make another film in the series, one which reportedly would have seen the Engineers coming after David, but as ALIEN: COVENANT under-performed and Disney is set to acquire Fox, the future of the ALIEN franchise seems to be up in the air.