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David

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When you first meet David in 2012's Prometheus, you may peg as one of the classic Alien synthetics who eventually betrays his crew. And, well, you wouldn't be wrong about that. But David is much more than that, acting as one of the key characters in the Alien universe as the creator of the Xenomorph and the reasons the powerful company Weyland-Yutani knows about the creature.

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Who Is David?

David, also known as David 8, is a Weyland Corporation synthetic in the Alien universe played by Michael Fassbender. He was created by the Weyland Corporation with the purpose of serving Peter Weyland. He is Weyland's ultimate creation in the tech innovator's long career of trying to cure disease, cheat death, and achieve immortality. Thus, David is the legacy Weyland will leave behind, much like a "son.

David, on the other hand, almost instantly sees Weyland as a flawed, mortal individual whose endeavors raise questions about the human race as a whole. And if a flawed creator can make something perfect...then what does that mean about the act of creation itself? This "glitch" in David, his immediate contempt for servitude, could be because the David model was rushed.

During his time serving Weyland, David develops some interesting ideas regarding life, death, and the human race. He starts to see humans as inferior, especially compared to him. Later on, he develops another obsession: creation. Specifically, the creation of perfection.

Michael Fassbender as David in Prometheus

David becomes consumed with creation, striving for it even though it was the one thing that synthetics weren't designed or programmed to do. His ideas regarding creation and the flawed nature of humanity form a dangerous combination in David's mind that rear its ugly head during the doomed USCSS Prometheus mission, and especially after the death of Peter Weyland.

Weyland ironically dies in 2012's Prometheus after meeting his maker specifically to find a way to stave off his rapidly approaching death. This releases David from his shackles, making him a free synthetic able to do whatever he wants. This freedom gives David the chance to dabble in all of the disturbing ideas he had been exploring in his mind.

David conducts a range of biological experiments involving Black Goo and old Engineer plans, eventually culminating in the creation of the Praetomorph species. His goal is to create the perfect organism, which humans and Engineers, of course, are not. He also acts out of a misguided sense of "love," using the one human who was ever kind to him, Dr. Elizabeth Shaw, as a crucial part of his alien experiments, killing her in her cryosleep on the way to Planet 4.

AI Characters (Synthetics) in the Alien Movie Franchise

Prometheus

David does embody the classic Alien trope of the AI inevitably turning on their crew as per the orders given to them by their superiors, usually focused on the preservation of alien species rather than the humans on their ship. The interesting thing about David is that he follows his own cold and detached volitions instead of those of his superiors.

The Prometheus story begins with David exploring the ship while the crew is in cryosleep. We see him busying himself by studying things like art, music, and ancient human language until the rest of the crew wakes up.

Things with David appear normal until they reach the rock they were searching for, a moon named LV-223. There, the crew finds an abandoned Engineer bio-weapons lab, where the ancient species was conducting experiments on a substance called Black Goo.

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Black Goo is a genetic mutagen capable of both creating and destroying life. In the case of the Engineers, they were eventually planning on using the mutagen to destroy life on Earth, which they also happened to create in the first place.

David gets hold of the Black Goo and begins to conduct his own experiments, starting with frenemy Dr. Charlie Holloway. David spikes Holloway's drink with Black Goo, setting off a horrendous chain of events that resulted in Shaw bearing a whole new alien species, the Trilobite.

Shaw does manage to remove the Trilobite via C-section just before the team heads down to the last remaining Engineer to ask if it can give Peter Weyland more life. The Engineer turns hostile, ripping David's head off, using it to bludgeon Weyland, and moving on to attack everyone else in the room.

Shaw escapes, making her way back to the ship where she lures the Engineer into the Trilobite's path. The Trilobite manages to capture the Engineer and impregnate it, creating a new species dubbed the Deacon.

Michael Fassbender as David's head in Prometheus

Shaw heads back to the Engineer's ship, thinking all is lost. David, however, tells her about the existence of another ship that they could use to escape. This prompts Shaw to pick up David's disembodied head and secure his body, taking him to the ship to repair him — giving him another chance, not yet knowing what he would become.

The movie ends with the pair heading off to Planet 4, the Engineer's home planet.

Prometheus: Cast of Characters

Alien: Covenant

2017's Alien: Covenant is where David really goes off the rails. While we see glimpses of David's strange behavior when he spikes Holloway with the Black Goo in Prometheus things take a turn for the much worse in Covenant.

Alien: Covenant begins with the crew of the USCSS Covenant dropping their original plan to take over 2000 colonists to a new planet to settle. Instead, they caught wind of a radio broadcast David made of Shaw singing John Denver's "Take Me Home, Country Roads" and decided to go there instead, falling right into David's trap.

Unleashing the payload on Planet 4

After Shaw and David arrive on Planet 4, David drops the ship's cargo of Black Goo on the planet's inhabitants, committing genocide before he even stepped foot on the ground. With all of the planet's inhabitants gone, David is free to conduct all the experiments he wanted to, and that he did.

Starting with Dr. Shaw herself, who may or may not have been alive to actually see Planet 4 - though David mentions her rejecting his idea of creating a new "Eden" type of paradise. David conducts a range of experiments with the Black Goo mutagen. Eventually, his experiments stop due to a lack of living hosts, which the Xenomorph species needs to procreate. This prompts him to lure in more unsuspecting hosts using Shaw's recording.

When the USCSS Covenant crew lands, David greets them, pretending to be stranded on the planet after the ship crash-landed on Planet 4, killing Shaw in the process. Unbeknownst to them, David is planning on using them all for his Black Goo experiments.

The crew arrives with their own synthetic, Walter. Walter is the same model synthetic as David, albeit a more modern version, meaning they shared the same appearance. This plays a key role later on in the film. Walter is a course-corrected version of David, designed with less improvisational idiosyncrasies that the David model had which allowed it to act more human. Thus, he cannot create.

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Slowly but surely, the crew of the Covenant start to drop. Some by natural contamination with the Neomorph spores from outside the ship, and some, like the Captain, Chris Oram, by David sacrificing them to his Praetomorph specimens.

The Fassbender twist...

Eventually, Walter catches on to David's devilish machinations and the two fight to the death while Walter tries to protect Covenant terraformist Katherine "Danny" Daniels. "Walter" then returns to the Covenant crew as they prepare to leave the planet. Unfortunately, however, it's not Walter at all. It is David pretending to be Walter. With Danny and pilot Tennessee "Tee" Faris in cryopsleep, David is now free to use them and the colonists for his experiments...presumedly creating the Xenomorphs and using Daniels to make the Xenomorph Queen (as shown in the Covenant sequel short film, Advent)

David stores Praetomorph Facehuggers in the ship's storage, allowing himself the chance to continue his experiments once the ship lands.

There is no sequel to Alien: Covenant, leaving David in full control of the ship, and it's 2000 colonists, and the Facehugger embryos. With no official media depicting what happens to the ship after David takes control of it, we can only imagine what kind of twisted experiments he had in store for the ships and whether they even made it to Origae 6.

Alien: Covenant Cast of Characters

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Alien: Earth Hulu
Initial Release: Aug 12, 2025
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