Nicknamed “The Dragon”, the titular threat of Alien 3 is by far the most lethal Xenomorph in the entire franchise - and there’s an important reason for that. Released in 1979, helmer Ridley Scott’s classic sci-fi horror Alien was a tense, terrifying tale of a spaceship besieged by an alien stowaway that emerged from the chest of one of their number, and began picking off crew one by one. Starring Yaphet Kotto, John Hurt, and Sigourney Weaver, the original was a small-scale, brutally effective slice of claustrophobic horror.
Alien made sure every one of its gruesome kills counted, while the action-heavy sequel, 1986's Aliens, drastically upped both the number of Xenomorphs and the victims they racked up in a face-off between well-armed marines and an entire hive of the toothy beasts. The third entry Alien 3 struggled to settle on a tone, with the movie being put through countless revisions and rewrites during its production. Some screenwriters wanted a return to the first film’s sparse brutality, while others wanted a more immersive and ambitious vision in line with Cameron’s Aliens.
Eventually, the final Alien 3's featured a compromise in the form of the movie’s main villain, a lone Xenomorph dubbed "The Dragon." Alien 3’s primary antagonist might be only a single Xenomorph, but to make up for his loner status, he was an especially brutal beast. In the theatrical version of Alien 3, his kill count is a whopping fifteen, while in the extended Assembly Cut it is no less than 17, making him the most lethal single Xenomorph in the entire franchise. For a frame of reference, the original Alien only managed to kill five characters in the movie.
Of course, a lot of fans still didn’t care for Alien 3’s return to the grim atmosphere of the original after the more explosive antics of Aliens. The early deaths of Newt and Bishop, for example, put a lot of viewers off Alien 3, as the movie made it clear from the outset no one was safe but also left some feeling there were few characters worth rooting for. The lethality of the Dragon proves that Alien 3 was a movie caught between a rock and a hard place, as returning to a lone Xenomorph villain after the series had killed dozens of them in the previous sequel felt like a less impressive threat, whereas trying to up the number of Xenomorphs again would have just amounted to aping Aliens.
Ultimately, creating one super-powerful Xenomorph was an effective way to reintroduce the titular monster as a terrifying threat after Aliens reduced them to cannon fodder. However, a great villain alone wasn’t enough to save Alien 3 from critics who complained the movie featured a lack of relatable characters and a relentlessly downbeat tone. In recent years, though, some fans have begun to reconsider Alien 3’s status as the black sheep of the series, and the Dragon’s impressive kill count does undoubtedly ensure the sequel moves at a clip and features some memorably nasty deaths.
