Warning: Contains SPOILERS for Alien: Romulus #1! Since the Alien, the creature has remained a mystery. A truly terrifying example of cosmic horror, the Xenomorph is a twisted perversion of life itself, a parasite that requires death to reproduce, only to bring about even more pain and suffering once matured. And the scariest part? No one knows the species’ history. At least, until now, as Alien may have finally revealed the ancient history of the Xenomorph.

In Alien: Romulus #1 by Zac Thompson and Daniel Picciotto (the official comic book prequel to the 2024 film), fans are shown exactly what happened to the crew of Renaissance Station. As shown in the movie, this Weyland-Yutani science outpost retrieved the Xenomorph Ripley launched into space at the end of the 1979 film (a Xenomorph widely referred to as ‘Big Chap’). This comic picks up right after that moment, and it’s an utter horrorshow for more reasons than one.

The security team believes Big Chap is a threat to the entire station, so they decide to remove it from its stasis and shoot it back out into space. However, the moment they release it from stasis, Big Chap springs to life and rips the face off one of the security guards. Alien's first Xenomorph then proceeds to kill everyone aboard the ship, just like it did upon its debut. Eventually, the last remaining humans give their lives to kill Big Chap once and for all, with the only survivor of the Renaissance being the synthetic Chief Science Officer, Rook.

Before the crew of the Renaissance endures the horror brought about by Big Chap, Rook was cooking up hellish horrors of his own. After cloning the DNA of Big Chap and reverse-engineering the Xenomorph’s life cycle, Rook created a number of Facehuggers. Upon dissecting them, Rook learns that the Facehuggers contain a viscous substance that it uses to incubate a host, a substance Alien fans are quite familiar with: the Black Goo.

That detail alone is the inspiration for this entire theory, the spark that makes a number of confusing and unexplained moments throughout the Alien saga finally make sense: Alien’s Xenomorphs were not created by the Black Goo, they created the Black Goo.

Alien: Romulus Implies the Xenomorphs Created the Black Goo, Not the Other Way Around

The Black Goo Debuted in 2012’s Prometheus as a Substance Capable of Creating & Mutating Life

The Black Goo was introduced in the 2012 film Prometheus as a substance capable of creating and mutating life. The Engineers used the Black Goo (mixed with their own biological makeup through a sacrificial ritual) to seed life on planets across the universe - including Earth. The origin of this substance remained a mystery throughout the film, but the one thing fans do know (if the Black Goo was the true genesis of life on Earth, not just an evolutionary ‘jump-start’) is that it’s billions of years old.

The Black Goo was then prominently featured in Alien: Covenant, as the synthetic, David, used the vast stockpile the Engineers collected on LV-223 to wipe out a civilization of Engineers on the world designated ‘Paradise’. David then experimented with the Black Goo to create life himself, which resulted in a creature nearly identical to the classic Xenomorph (called the Praetomorph).

The Black Goo didn’t create the Xenomorphs, Xenomorphs created the Black Goo.

The Engineers could have come across the Xenomorph species and extracted the Black Goo just as Rook did in Romulus. Given their scientific advancements, the Engineers could have then refined the Black Goo to use as both a way to create life, and as a bioweapon. That would also explain why David’s creation inexplicably takes the form of a Xenomorph, as if the Black Goo was reverting to its original form.

Xenomorphs Predating the Black Goo Would Explain the Engineers’ Mural in Prometheus

If the Xenomorph XX121 species does, in fact, predate the Engineers (or, at least, their usage of the Black Goo to seed/destroy life on other planets), then that would also explain one mystery from 2012’s Prometheus: the Xenomorph Mural. When the crew of the Prometheus enter the Engineer Temple on LV-223 and find a chamber filled with canisters of the Black Goo, they also see something else: a giant mural of what appears to be a Xenomorph looming over the entire cavernous room.

Initially, this was a bit confusing, especially immediately following the events of Alien: Covenant when it was implied that David was the original creator of the Xenomorph species. But, even after the franchise clarified that David merely reverse-engineered the Xenomorph to create his Praetomorph, there were still questions surrounding the mural. Did the Engineers create the Xenomorph and revere it as the ‘perfect organism’? Was this mural a warning about the dangers of what this Black Goo could produce?

No clear explanation was given about the Engineers’ ‘Xenomorph’ mural. But now, there seems to be a pretty good one. If the Engineers derived the Black Goo from the Xenomorph - granting them the ability to create life across the cosmos - then it would make sense that the Engineers would want to honor the Xenomorph as one would a god, hence the massive mural in the chamber where the Black Goo is kept.

Alien has Teased the Xenomorphs’ Ancient, Perhaps Otherworldly Origin for Some Time

20th Century Studios’ Alien Vol. 1-2

So, if the Xenomorphs predate the Engineers and are responsible for creating the Black Goo rather than being created by the Black Goo (as most life in the cosmos seems to be, including humans), that leaves only one question: who created the Xenomorphs? It’s possible that the Xenomorphs were simply a product of evolution on a far-off world, but the idea that they hold the power to create, mutate, and destroy life within their very DNA doesn’t seem accidental. In other words, it’s totally reasonable to theorize that the Xenomorphs are otherworldly in nature - perhaps even interdimensional.

Interestingly enough, the idea that the Xenomorph is not from this plane of existence, but rather a hellish dimension that’s slowly creeping into this one, is not new. In 20th Century Studios’ Alien Vol. 1-2, writer Phillip Kennedy Johnson introduces a character referred to as ‘The Goddess’ or ‘The Woman in the Dark’. This entity would haunt the dreams of those subdued by a Facehugger, especially those that survived Facehugger impregnation, cursing them with precognitive visions of the day when she and her brood of endless Xenomorphs would consume the universe.

Maybe the Xenomorphs are something akin to demons that somehow manifested on this physical plane, with the sole purpose of using their Black Goo to infect, mutate, and eventually kill the entire universe - and in their hubris, the Engineers helped them do it. While just a theory based on evidence from across the Alien mythos, this possibility makes the Xenomorph infinitely more terrifying. It explains that their ancient history in Alien lore stretches beyond the Black Goo - beyond the universe itself - making the Xenomorph a true pillar of cosmic horror.

Alien: Romulus #1 by 20th Century Studios is available now.