How Alien: Romulus resurrected that character from the original film

Warning: This article contains spoilers from Alien: Romulus.

Androids are a constant in the Alien franchise. Every film has at least one “synthetic” character that processes the plot’s events in a more calculating manner than the frightened humans alongside them, and you can usually identify them by the milky goo that spurts from their veins instead of blood.

Several Alien androids have recurred in different versions across the films: Lance Henriksen’s Bishop features in both Aliens and Alien3, with Henriksen also playing the robot’s human creator (who apparently invented the Bishop line in his likeness) in the latter. Michael Fassbender’s David is central to both Prometheus and Alien: Covenant, with the actor also taking on a dual role as the additional, identical android Walter in the latter. But when Alien: Romulus director Fede Álvarez and producer Ridley Scott (who also directed three previous films in the franchise, including the one that started it all) were planning the newest installment, they had an important realization. 

“Historically, there’s just a limited amount of synthetics, and that’s why some come back a few times,” Álvarez tells Entertainment Weekly. “So we were talking, and Ridley and I felt like the one that has never been back was the best one of them all, the original model played by Ian Holm.”

That conversation led directly to a shocking reveal in Alien: Romulus, one that’s been kept out of trailers and even the film’s Comic-Con panel. As the characters make their way through the titular derelict space station, newcomers Rain (Cailee Spaeny) and her synthetic brother Andy (David Jonsson) come upon a half-destroyed android. This talking torso looks exactly like Holm, who played the android Ash in the original Alien. 

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Holm died in 2020, but that didn’t present a practical problem since Álvarez already intended to build an android torso rather than employ a visual trick like having an actor imitate being cleaved in half by standing through a hole in a table (as Holm did in the 1979 film). But the first thing the director did after that conversation with Scott was reach out to the late actor’s estate.

“The whole thing started with me calling the estate and talking with his widow,” Álvarez says. “She felt that Ian was given the cold shoulder by Hollywood in the last years of his life, that he would've loved to be part of more projects after The Hobbit, but he wasn't. So she was thrilled about the idea of having him back.”

To be clear, the character with Holm’s likeness in Alien: Romulus is not exactly Ash. The new film is set between the events of Alien and Aliens, meaning that Ash has already been destroyed by Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) along with the rest of the spaceship Nostromo. The Alien: Romulus character is named “Rook” (alluding to the chess metaphor suggested by “Bishop”), but shares the same basic template. 

“He has the likeness, but he has a different demeanor. Rook and Ash have the same knowledge because it’s all Mother,” says Álvarez, referring to the operating system that runs the spaceships in Alien films. “It's a different android, but it's the same consciousness of Mother that moved from one android to the other.”

Alien: Romulus has an android of its own in the form of Andy. Built by Rain's parents to watch over her, Andy is a sensitive older brother who is prone to malfunction when we first meet him. But after he comes into contact with Rook, he gets new programming that makes him way more powerful (capable of squishing a facehugger with one hand, for instance) but also more subservient to the corporate interests of Weyland-Yutani.

The creation of Rook was achieved through a combination of animatronics built to resemble Holm and actor Daniel Betts performing his lines. This ability of filmmakers to bring dead actors back to the screen through technology is still relatively new, so it was a priority for Álvarez to check in with Holm’s family. 

“As soon as we finished the rough version, the first thing I did was a call with all his family to make sure they were the first ones that saw it,” Álvarez says. “It was a very, very emotional call. They lost him not too long ago, and I lost my dad, too, around the same time. So I could relate to their pain and also their excitement to see him back in the movie. I'm super proud of how we did it and how we worked with them. I can't wait for the fans to lose their minds at seeing one of their favorite faces from the original.” 

Alien: Romulus is in theaters now.