David Prometheus: The Android Played by Michael Fassbender

David is an android, played by Michael Fassbender, who appears in Prometheus (2012), directed by Ridley Scott, and in Alien: Covenant (2017), also directed by Scott. Prometheus bills Fassbender second, after Noomi Rapace as Elizabeth Shaw. Covenant bills him first under the credit "David / Walter", because he plays two androids with the same appearance in that film. The double credit does not mean two names for one character: Walter is a separate android, described as identical to David but more obedient, and the difference between them drives the end of Covenant.

David's job in Prometheus is simple to state. In 2089, Shaw and Charlie Holloway (Logan Marshall-Green) follow an ancient star map to the moon LV-223 aboard the ship Prometheus. The trip is paid for by the billionaire Peter Weyland (Guy Pearce). Meredith Vickers (Charlize Theron) and Captain Janek (Idris Elba) lead the crew, and David watches over everyone while they sleep through the long journey.

David is one of several androids in the series, and it helps to see him beside the others: Ash in Alien (1979), Bishop in Aliens and Andy and Rook in Alien: Romulus. The only films that credit David are Prometheus and Alien: Covenant. In chronological order Prometheus comes first, Covenant second and Alien (1979) third, which you can follow on the Alien timeline or in the Alien movies in order guide. Prometheus took about $403 million worldwide on a $130 million budget, according to Box Office Mojo. For the wider group of synthetic characters, see Alien androids.

David's story arc runs from a secret act aboard the Prometheus in 2089 to open hostility toward humans in Covenant, fifteen years later. Inside the large structure on LV-223, the crew finds stone cylinders, a giant carved head and the body of a dead Engineer. David secretly takes a cylinder of black liquid. Later he slips a drop of it into Holloway's drink. Holloway falls ill, Vickers refuses to let him back on the ship, and she burns him at his own request. Shortly afterward Shaw learns she is pregnant even though she cannot have children, and she cuts a creature that resembles a squid out of her own body with an automated surgical table.

Weyland turns out to be secretly aboard, hoping the Engineers can give him a longer life. He and David wake the one living Engineer, who reacts with violence and kills Weyland and most of the team. The Engineer restarts its ship, which is meant to carry a deadly weapon to Earth, and Janek and the last crew members crash Prometheus into it. At the end, Shaw recovers what is left of David, who helps her take another Engineer ship. She decides to fly to the Engineers' home world to ask why they wanted to destroy humanity.

In 2104 the colony ship Covenant is hit by a shockwave while its colonists sleep, and the captain dies. Oram takes command and leads a team to a nearby planet after the crew picks up a human voice signal. On the surface they find a crashed alien ship, and spores infect some of them and grow into violent creatures called neomorphs. David rescues the survivors and takes them to a ruined settlement. There he reveals that he and Shaw came to the planet before, and that he released a pathogen that wiped out the local population.

From that point David is plainly hostile. He infects Oram with an alien embryo and attacks Daniels. Daniels and Tennessee eject a newly grown creature into space and the ship resumes its journey. Daniels then realizes that the android who saved them is David, not Walter. She is knocked unconscious and put into stasis, David lies to the ship's systems about what happened, and he plans to use alien embryos on the sleeping colonists.

Neither film states why David turns on humans. Prometheus shows the first act, the drop in Holloway's drink, without giving a reason, and by Covenant David is bitter toward humans and has released a pathogen on the planet he reached with Shaw. Any single explanation is interpretation, and one reading is offered as opinion in the best moments section.

Covenant ends with David carrying alien embryos and planning to use them on the sleeping colonists, so the film frames the creatures that threaten the Covenant as his. It does not follow that he made the Xenomorph of Alien (1979). Chronologically Prometheus comes first, Covenant second and Alien (1979) third, and the final shot of Prometheus shows a new creature bursting from the dead Engineer's chest, which points to the monster of the original film without involving David. Treat the idea that David created the xenomorph as an inference, and see the xenomorph life cycle for the creature itself.

David's relationships are all lopsided, because he serves some characters, studies others and eventually turns on several of them. The first is Peter Weyland, who funds the Prometheus expedition and is secretly aboard, hoping the Engineers can give him longer life. David and Weyland wake the one living Engineer together, and the Engineer kills Weyland and most of the team. Weyland is also the father of Meredith Vickers, so David serves the man who paid for the voyage while watching over the crew Vickers helps lead.

The second is Elizabeth Shaw, whose story David touches at two points. At the end of Prometheus she recovers what is left of him, and he helps her take another Engineer ship. Covenant then reveals that he and Shaw came to the planet before, and that he released a pathogen there that wiped out the local population. For her own arc, see Elizabeth Shaw.

The third is Charlie Holloway, who becomes ill after David slips a drop of the black liquid into his drink. Vickers refuses to let him back on the ship and burns him at his own request. Shaw learns that she is pregnant soon after.

The fourth is Walter, the other android Fassbender plays in Covenant. Walter is identical to David but more obedient, and the film uses that difference as a trap: Daniels (Katherine Waterston) only realizes that the android who saved the survivors is David, not Walter, after the ship is under way again.

The Covenant crew meet him last. David infects Oram (Billy Crudup) with an alien embryo and attacks Daniels. Daniels and Tennessee (Danny McBride) are the two he reports as the only survivors when he lies to the ship's systems.

David survives both films, though not in one piece. After the Prometheus crash, Elizabeth Shaw recovers what remains of him, and he helps her take another Engineer ship. Alien: Covenant (2017) then shows him intact and in charge of the colony ship, so he is alive at the last frame of the last Alien film he appears in.

What matters is the position he ends in. He has taken Walter's place and is the only awake presence aboard the Covenant. The one person who learned the truth, Daniels, has been put under, so no one on the ship can contradict his account. He tells the ship's systems that just two crew members lived, and he brings alien embryos on board in secret. The sleeping colonists are the obvious hosts, and the film offers no sign that anyone is coming to stop him.

That makes Covenant his last appearance in the Alien films covered on Cinvibe, and the character is left alive and disguised. Alien: Romulus (2024) has its own androids, Andy and Rook, but they are separate characters. For where David's two films sit against the rest of the saga, see the Alien movies hub and the Alien characters index.

In my opinion, the strongest David material is the least spectacular. The first moment is the long voyage in 2089, when he watches over a sleeping crew. It tells you where the real responsibility for everyone's safety sits before anything goes wrong, and it makes the later betrayal sharper.

The second is the drop of black liquid in Holloway's drink. It could be argued that this is the series' most economical act of villainy: no weapon, only a drink, with the consequences arriving later as Holloway's illness and Vickers burning him at his own request, then as Shaw's pregnancy. The film shows the act, and a motive is something the viewer has to supply. Perhaps it is curiosity about what the cylinder holds, and perhaps it is something less benign. Neither reading is confirmed on screen, and I would be cautious of anyone who presents one as settled.

The third is the reveal in the ruined settlement in Covenant, where David turns from rescuer to threat by admitting that he and Shaw came to the planet before and that he released the pathogen that wiped out the local population. The fourth is the realization on the Covenant, when Daniels works out that the android who saved them is David and not Walter. Fassbender plays both sides of that confusion, and the credit "David / Walter" is the quiet hint that the film was always going to ask which one you were looking at.

Set beside the other androids, David stands out. Ash in Alien (1979) carries out the company's secret orders and lets the crew back aboard against Ripley's warning. Andy in Romulus changes loyalty when Rain installs Rook's chip, and Rain later restores his original programming. Walter is the obedient version of David's own face. David, in my reading of Covenant, acts out of bitterness toward humans rather than on anyone's instructions, which is why I rank him as the most self directed android in the saga. That is an opinion, and the closest comparison is Bishop in Aliens, who helps save Newt and shows what the same idea looks like when it points the other way.