| Director | Ridley Scott |
|---|---|
| Budget | $97 million |
| Box office | $240.9 million |
In 2104, the spaceship Covenant is en route to colonize the planet Origae-6, carrying 2,000 colonists and 1,140 human embryos in cryogenic stasis. An unexpected shockwave from a nearby star damages the ship and kills 47 colonists, including the captain, Branson. Walter, an advanced android, awakens key personnel to address the situation. During repairs, the crew detects a human voice broadcast from an uncharted, habitable planet. Against the protests of Branson's wife Daniels, new captain Chris Oram decides to investigate.
The crew sends a lander to the planet's surface, where an expedition team tracks the broadcast to a crashed alien ship. Two crew members are unknowingly infected by airborne spores from the local fungi. Alien creatures known as neomorphs rapidly grow inside the pair, killing them in the process, and then attack the team, resulting in the lander's destruction. One neomorph is killed before the survivors are rescued by David, a predecessor of Walter's model that was discontinued for being too human-like.
David leads the survivors to a temple surrounded by thousands of dead humanoids. He claims that he and chief science officer Elizabeth Shaw—the sole survivors of the spaceship Prometheus, which vanished ten years earlier—arrived in the alien ship. However, they lost control and it crashed, leading to Elizabeth's death and releasing a deadly pathogen that annihilated the planet's fauna. The pathogen infects any living animal, either killing it or creating aggressive hybrids.
David reveals his disappointment with Walter's model for lacking his creativity and humanity, and derides their inventor, Peter Weyland, as unworthy of his creations. David confesses his love for Elizabeth, the only person who treated him kindly. When a neomorph infiltrates the temple and kills another team member, David attempts to communicate with it but becomes enraged when Oram kills it. Confronting David, Oram learns that the android has been experimenting with the pathogen to engineer new creatures. David tricks Oram into approaching a facehugger parasite, which fatally impregnates him with a xenomorph embryo.
As the team searches for missing members, Walter discovers Elizabeth's dissected corpse, which David had used in his experiments. David admits to releasing the pathogen deliberately and expresses his disgust for humanity, which he believes is a dying species that his creations will replace. Walter counters that David's mistaken belief that Lord Byron wrote Percy Bysshe Shelley's "Ozymandias" reflects his inaccurate grasp of human history and has led to flawed conclusions. David kills Walter.
David attacks Daniels, planning to experiment on her. Having repaired himself, Walter surprises David and defends Daniels. Team member Dan Lope is attacked by a facehugger. Cole manages to cut it off but is killed by Oram's xenomorph. Covenant pilot Tennessee uses the cargo lift to rescue Daniels, Lope, and a trailing Walter. When the xenomorph leaps aboard, Daniels confronts it and uses a loading arm to crush it.
Back on the Covenant, a xenomorph hatches from Lope's chest. Daniels and Tennessee lure it into the terraforming bay and eject it into space.
The ship resumes its journey to Origae-6. As Walter places Daniels into stasis, she realizes he is actually David. Before she can act, the stasis pod renders her unconscious. David sends a transmission claiming that the crew, except Daniels and Tennessee, were killed in the neutrino burst. He regurgitates two facehugger embryos and surveys the slumbering colonists, planning to use them in his experiments.