Alien Timeline: Every Movie and Show in Story Order

Prometheus (2012), directed by Ridley Scott, is the earliest story in the saga, and it opens in 2089 when archaeologists Elizabeth Shaw and Charlie Holloway follow an ancient star map to the moon LV-223. The ship Prometheus carries a crew led by Meredith Vickers and Captain Janek, with the android David watching over them, and the expedition is paid for by Peter Weyland. Inside a vast structure they find the Engineers' cylinders and a dead Engineer, and David secretly takes a cylinder of black liquid. The film ends with Shaw and the damaged David leaving in an Engineer ship, bound for the Engineers' home world, and with a new creature bursting from a dead Engineer. The full story is covered on the Prometheus movie page.

Alien: Covenant (2017), also directed by Ridley Scott, takes place in 2104 aboard a colony ship bound for the distant planet Origae-6. A shockwave kills dozens of sleeping colonists and the captain, so Oram takes command and diverts the crew to a nearby planet after they pick up a human voice transmission. There they meet David, the android who survived the Prometheus mission, and learn that he released a pathogen that wiped out the local population. He then takes the place of the crew's own android, Walter, and the film closes with David secretly carrying alien embryos on the way to the sleeping colonists. For the film itself, see Alien Covenant.

Alien: Earth is set in 2120, about two years before the events of Alien (1979). The eight-episode first season, created by Noah Hawley, premiered on FX and Hulu on August 12, 2025, and it follows Wendy, a hybrid made by putting a child's mind into a synthetic adult body, and the group of hybrids known as the Lost Boys. Five corporations rule this world, among them Prodigy and Weyland-Yutani. When the spaceship USCSS Maginot crashes into the city of New Siam, its dangerous cargo gets loose. Ridley Scott is an executive producer, and FX has renewed the series for a second season.

Alien (1979), directed by Ridley Scott, follows Alien: Earth in story order by about two years. The commercial towing ship Nostromo, with seven crew in hibernation, wakes up after its computer, Mother, picks up a signal from a small moon. Kane is attacked by a creature in a chamber of eggs, and the science officer Ash lets the crew back aboard against Ripley's warning. After the crew is killed one by one, Ripley starts the self-destruct sequence and escapes in the shuttle with the cat Jones, then throws the creature out through an airlock. She records a last log entry and enters hibernation. Read more on Alien 1979.

Alien: Romulus (2024), directed by Fede Álvarez, sits between Alien (1979) and Aliens in story order, because its story begins with a probe recovering a strange cocoon from the wreck of the Nostromo. The Weyland-Yutani company dominates this future, and a young miner named Rain, her android brother Andy and their friends set out to steal cryosleep pods from the derelict Renaissance station. The station's scientists have used facehuggers to make a fluid called Z-01, which can rewrite human DNA, and the film ends with Rain and Andy flying on toward a new planet while the station breaks apart in the planet's rings. Rain's story is covered at Alien Romulus. No release date has been confirmed for a follow-up, and the latest reporting is on the Alien Romulus 2 page.

Yes, Aliens (1986), directed by James Cameron, begins when Ellen Ripley is found drifting in hypersleep after 57 years in space. The company that employs her, Weyland-Yutani, doubts her story about the eggs on LV-426, but when contact is lost with the colony now living there, she goes along with a team of Colonial Marines, together with the company man Burke and the android Bishop. They find one survivor, a girl called Newt, and Ripley later fights the alien queen in a power loader and pushes her out of an airlock. Ripley, Newt, Hicks and Bishop then go back into hypersleep. See Aliens 1986.

Alien 3 (1992), directed by David Fincher, continues the story immediately, with the Sulaco heading home carrying Ripley, Newt, Hicks and Bishop in hypersleep. A facehugger is aboard, a fire forces the computer to eject the escape pod, and the pod crashes on Fiorina 161, a foundry world holding a small group of violent male prisoners. Only Ripley survives the crash. A new alien kills inmates, and a scan shows Ripley herself carries a queen embryo. Rather than let the company take it, she throws herself into the furnace, which closes Ripley's story in this film. The film is covered at Alien 3.

Alien Resurrection (1997), directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet, is the last film in story order, and it takes place two hundred years after Ripley died. Military scientists aboard the spaceship Auriga clone her from blood samples, and the clone, called Ripley 8, carries alien DNA that gives her extra strength and acidic blood. A crew of mercenaries on the ship Betty, including Call, Johner and Vriess, arrives with kidnapped humans as hosts. The aliens break loose, a pale hybrid kills the queen, and Ripley sends the hybrid into space through a hole in a window made by her acidic blood. The Auriga hits Earth as the survivors escape. See Alien Resurrection.

AVP: Alien vs. Predator (2004), directed by Paul W. S. Anderson, and Aliens vs Predator: Requiem (2007), directed by Colin and Greg Strause, are listed in the Alien franchise after Alien Resurrection, but they sit outside the main Alien watch order. The first follows an expedition to a pyramid buried under the ice off Antarctica, and ends by setting up a Predalien and a hybrid threat. The second follows that Predalien loose in Gunnison, Colorado, and its ending, in which Colonel Stevens hands Wolf's plasma pistol to Ms. Yutani, hints at the Yutani company gaining Predator technology. To see where these two fit among the other films, read Alien movies in order.

In my opinion, the simplest way to read the Alien timeline is as two runs of stories that were released in a different order from the one in which they happen. The earliest run is Prometheus (2089), Covenant (2104) and Alien: Earth (2120), which all come before Alien (1979). The Ripley line then runs from the Nostromo through Aliens, Alien 3 and Alien Resurrection, with Romulus tucked into the gap between the first two Ripley films because its cocoon comes from the Nostromo wreck.

Is Romulus a sequel to Prometheus? No. Romulus belongs with the main films and builds on the Nostromo, not on the Engineers, so it is a continuation of Alien (1979) in the story. Its Z-01 fluid, made from facehuggers, is a company experiment, in the same tradition as the company's secret orders in the 1979 film.

Should you watch in chronological order? That being said, it could be argued that the answer is no for a first viewing, because release order lets you meet the creature as audiences first did, with the prequels arriving afterward. A good compromise is to watch the original Ripley films first and the prequels afterward; the full comparison is on the Alien movies in order page. You can also see the whole run at Alien movies.