Alien: Covenant Broke The Weirdest Franchise Tradition

It’s such a minor detail that it wouldn’t be surprising for most fans to have missed it. In 1979’s Alien, the android’s name is Ash, which, of course, begins with the letter A. Aliens (1985) gave us Bishop. Skipping over Alien 3(1993)—Bishop again—we have Alien: Resurrection (1997) and Winona Ryder’s Call. A, B, C, and Prometheus‘s David makes D.

With all that care taken to name the franchise’s synthetics alphabetically, surely Alien: Covenant features an android with an E name? Nope. Covenant‘s android is named Walter.

Ridley Scott claims that Walter was chosen to honor original Alien producer Walter Hill.

The bigger bombshell, though, is that he named Prometheus‘s David after producer David Giler. Does that mean that David starting with a D is just a coincidence? Were the alphabetical android names in the other Alien movies just a happy accident?

Yes … and no

Dan O’Bannon came up with the name Ash while working on the script for Alien. As far as we know, the name has no significance beyond that. Likewise, James Cameron liked the name Bishop and didn’t choose it just because it begins with a B. Resurrection‘s Call, on the other hand, it was most definitely given a C-name on purpose. It fits Joss Whedon MO like a glove.

Ridley Scott picked the android-naming football back up with Prometheus, and things got tricky. Did Scott name the Alien prequel’s android after David Giler just to be nice, or specifically because David comes after Call alphabetically? On the one hand, Ridley Scott is such a prestigious director that he would probably consider such a silly tradition beneath him.

But on the other hand, that’s a heck of a coincidence. Other creators in the Alien franchise have acknowledged the android naming scheme and have purposely abided by it.

Kelly Sue DeConnick, the writer behind the Dark Horse Comics Prometheus sequel comics, once admitted in an interview that she included an android named Elden in the comics specifically to honor the tradition. With some writers keeping the trend alive and others seemingly unaware of such a trope, it’s almost impossible to figure out Fox/Disney’s official stance on the subject. It would seem with Covenant that the studio doesn’t care, but at least one fan theory posits otherwise.

A theory in the Alien fan community claims that Ridley Scott didn’t abandon the alphabetical android names, at least not exactly. According to the theory, D is the 4th letter from the beginning of the alphabet, while Walter is the 4th letter from the end. Since the humble Walter is an inversion of the megalomaniacal David, it made sense for Scott to also invert their names.

It’s all moot of course because Alien: Romulus came along and messed up the naming scheme again. The two android names in Alien: Romulus are Andy and Rook. Andy could possibly fit the naming scheme in a couple of ways, although they’re both a bit of a stretch.

The first way is the simplest: Andy could also be read as “And E.” If that was director Fede Alvarez’s intention it’s kind of a weak gag if we do say so ourselves. The other subtler possibility comes from Andy’s serial number—N-D-255. If you write N phonetically, it looks like “En,” which would give us our E name. We know it’s a flimsy connection at best, but it’s better than nothing.

Conversely, Rook is clearly trying to start a new Alien android naming tradition by using chess pieces. Bishop and now Rook, get it? Perhaps the next alien project will have a robot named Pawn! You can’t see it, but rest assured, we rolled our eyes at the idea.

The truth is, we have no idea if Alien: Earth will feature any androids when it premieres next year, let alone ones with alphabetical names. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things, but still, little details like the alphabetical android names are part of what makes a fandom like Alien fun to be a part of. We happen to like the naming order and would love to see it return sometime in the franchise’s future.