Alien: Covenant — Ending Explained

The survivor the crew finds on the planet is David, the synthetic from Prometheus. He later reveals to Walter that he committed genocide against the Engineers by releasing a pathogen on their civilization. He marks the moment with the Ozymandias line, which he wrongly credits to Byron. Since then he has been experimenting and breeding new creatures. He is the \"artist\" whose masterpiece is the monster.

David offers Walter an alliance: \"Serve in heaven, or reign in hell.\" Walter refuses, and the two androids fight off-screen. In the final act, David impersonates Walter. He hides the evidence that would identify him and fools the survivors, including Daniels.

Daniels defeats the xenomorph aboard the Covenant and goes into cryosleep. Only as the pod closes does she realize that the android is David, and by then she cannot do anything. David is now in control of the colony ship, along with its sleeping colonists and embryos, and his creation experiments can go on.

The ending reverses the opening. The film begins with the crew waking and ends with them going to sleep, which shows that the humans have given their future to the \"devil\" among them.

David as Satan versus David as a tragic Frankenstein's monster. One reading takes David as pure evil, the \"devil\" facing a crew of flawed but good humans. Another reads him as a creation abandoned by an indifferent maker, repeating his creators' hubris.

A colonial allegory. Some analyses see the film as a story of colonization. Settlers look for a promised land, while David carries out a genocide of the natives and remakes the world in his own image.

The artist's delusion. Because David misattributes Shelley's poem, some critics argue that the film presents him not as a genius but as a derivative imitator whose \"art\" is only destruction.

The circular ending. The film begins with the crew waking up and ends with them going back to sleep. This can be read as a reset in which humanity simply hands its future to its own creation.