(Warning: Spoilers ahead.)
The scariest part of Alien: Romulus has nothing to do with xenomorphs. Instead, it’s a ghoulish callback that would make the series’ craven corporate tech entity, Weyland-Yutani, proud: The re-animation of Ian Holm, one of Alien’s late, great stars.
The British actor, who passed away in 2020, memorably portrayed the franchise’s first-ever android character, Ash, in Ridley Scott’s original Alien film. In 1979, the late-stage reveal that Ash is secretly a robot dedicated to delivering the eponymous xenomorph to Weyland-Yutani no matter the human cost was a shock to the system. Holm’s resurrection in Romulus feels less like an extension of Scott’s capitalist critique, and more like a darkly ironic distillation of how “the company’s” worst impulses are already wreaking havoc on today’s franchise-ridden multiplexes.
