Get A Refresh On The Alien Franchise Before 'Covenant'

Close to 40 years after the first film premiered in 1979, the Alien franchise is adding a new movie to it's revered sci-fi line-up. Alien: Covenant is set to hit theaters and pick up where the plot of Prometheus left off. Back in 2012, Prometheus was itself a continuation and pseudo-prequel to the Alien films of the '70s and '80s. Meant to act as an origin story around the aliens that haunted Ripley and her crew back in the day as well as an origins story for the franchise, Prometheus packed a lot of plot into its story. In preparing for Alien: Covenant, which will theoretically take place after Prometheus and before 1979's Alien, let's revisit the plot of Prometheus and see where the story took us.

Prometheus follows archaeologist Elizabeth Shaw in the year 2089. After finding ancient maps which appear to hint as various locations out in the cosmos, Shaw and her partner, Charlie Holloway, are compelled to find out where they lead. They convince Peter Weyland, extremely wealthy tech and science entrepreneur, to finance the trip and provide the use of his spacecraft to make sure the mission goes smoothly. For Shaw and Charlie, these maps could lead to "the Engineers," the ancient alien race they believe created humans.

Of course, things don't exactly go well for Shaw or the Prometheus team. Upon arriving on a moon-like planet noted on the map, the crew finds a large building which seems to be housing eggs. That's right, this is a very bad sign. Of course, the Prometheus team investigates, find out the eggs are full of demon alien spawn, and all hell breaks loose. We also see the prototypes of the facehugger aliens that plagued the original Alien crews, providing a link back to the first films in the franchise. Fun, right?

At one point in the film, Shaw is present when the android tasked to help the Prometheus crew, David (played to eerie effect by Michael Fassbender), awakes on of the Engineers in the structure. Shaw demands to know why the Engineers would create the facehuggers and whether or not they had intentions to use them to destroy the humans (it's revealed the Engineers were planning to go to Earth at one point). Before Shaw can get an answer, the Engineer goes rogue and Shaw is forced to combat it as well as the aliens running loose on the ship. It. Is. Madness.

Luckily, we know that while the rest of the team got mowed down by the aliens, Shaw and David escaped. As a special promo for Alien: Covenant, a prologue clip called "The Crossing" was released which detailed what happened to Shaw and David in the immediate aftermath of Prometheus. Shaw repairs David. Then, David puts Shaw into a cryo-sleep in one of the Engineer's pods. David flew the Engineer's ship to what appears to be an alien planet complete with a new alien race.

It's a mysterious bridge to Alien: Covenant, to be sure. "The Crossing" leaves viewers set up with plenty of questions about the aliens, the Engineers, and whether or not we'll see more of Shaw and David in future films.