David-8

GOALS

Ensure the death of Peter Weyland (succeeded).

Commit genocide against the Engineer species.

Create the "ultimate, perfect life form", which in your twisted mind is the perfect predator, and help it reign over multiple worlds.

Prevent humanity from achieving immortality (all in progress).

CRIMES

mass murder

Genocide

Terrorism

Conspiracy

Betrayal

Unethical experimentation

TYPE OF VILLAIN

Angry God Aspirant POWERS / SKILLS

Ko

High intelligence

Ability to create and perceive art in different forms (including living)

Ability to communicate with your creations, particularly

Neomorphos and Xenomorphos

Emotional abilities Lip reading

Speech and Face Recognition Control over the former Paradise turned into your Hell

Synthetic physiology:

Superhuman strength

Superhuman speed

Superhuman agility

• Superhuman reflexes

Superhuman resistance

Superhuman durability

Superhuman senses

David, originally manufactured as David-8, is one of the main antagonists of the Alien franchise.

He is an android built in the likeness of Peter Weyland for the purpose of being sent on the Prometheus expedition, a mission to locate the Engineers, the creators of humanity, so that Weyland could ask them for immortality. However, the mission fails, as while they do find an Engineer, he believes that humanity is unworthy of existence and begins killing all the members of the Prometheus crew, starting with ripping off David's head and killing Weyland.

After the Engineer was killed by a Trilobite. David and Shaw escape from LV-223. During this time, Shaw fixes David and they both agree to locate the Engineers' home planet and confront them about why they created humanity. However, for unknown reasons, David kills Shaw and begins experimenting with the chemical AO-3959X.91-15 (which was excavated from LV-223) to create what he considered to be the superior life form. In the ten years following Prometheus, David unleashes AO-3959X.91-15 on the Engineer homeworld, killing the entire population and transforming the local flora into egg sacs that, once infested on Covenant crew members, created the Neomorphs. By experimenting on the corpses of Engineers, Neomorphs, and Elizabeth Shaw, David managed to create the Praetomorphs, his own iteration of the Xenomorph. After the two Praetomorphs were killed by the surviving Covenant crew, David infiltrated the ship disguised as his android Walter, trapping the entire Covenant population in hypersleep to continue his experiments.

He was portrayed by Michael Fassbender, who also played Burke in Jonah Hex, young Magneto in the X-Men films, Edwin Epps in 12 Years a Slave, the title character in Macbeth, The Assassin in the 2023 film of the same name, and voiced Logan in Fable III.

Personality

At first, David is almost childish in his curiosity to understand humans. His interest in Lawrence of Arabia inspires him to model himself after the main protagonist, T.E. Lawrence, from quoting his lines to styling his hair. He feels that the crew still sees him as just an android, even provoked by Holloway's biased comments towards him as such. Despite this, David is able to tolerate his treatment of the crew and will still be willing to help them. He also tries to understand their emotions in an appropriate manner of social interaction, especially when he finds a curious interest in Elizabeth Shaw. Like Shaw, David hopes to learn about the Engineers and their advanced technology in order to understand whether man's existence is similar or different from his own. On the negative side, despite being able to understand human emotions, he is unable to project them himself. David himself admits that he is capable of performing unethical and wicked acts without obligation, although he admits to disliking unnecessary violence.

His initial experiments seemed to be largely based on curiosity, with his childish mind ignoring potential risks, but after being repaired by Shaw, he developed a god complex. While originally ambivalent about humanity, he came to despise them, and felt inferior for being a creation of what he considered a flawed creator; upon learning that humans were essentially creations made by the Engineers, his insecurity grew, as he was a creation of a flawed creation. He attempted to overcome this doubt through contact with an Engineer, but upon being met with violence, he concluded that even his creator's creators were flawed as well; therefore, he intended to surpass them by creating a supposed "perfect organism", which he believed would prove to be the superior "god" of the forged chain of life.

David's ultimate goal was to create the perfect organism, however, his hatred for humanity and the Engineers was so great that he also wanted to exterminate both species in the process; he would eliminate life that he perceived as irrevocably flawed and replace it with his ideal monsters, as this would somehow make him the greatest being in the universe, despite the fact that he would simply be the only intelligent entity and could not truly control or dominate his creations, making him not a god, but more of a

arrogant creator of just another species

uncontrollably violent and destructive.

Biography

Bottom

David was created by Weyland Industries under special orders from Peter Weyland himself, who wanted to use him in the Prometheus expedition, whose goal was to find the creators of humanity, the Engineers, so that Weyland could ask them to make him immortal. From the beginning, David began to feel superior to Weyland because of his own immortality, and seeing him desperately asking for it from the living Engineer found only established his thinking that he is superior to Peter, and because Peter is among the best of all humanity, David began to think that he is superior to all humanity as well.

Prometheus

David's curiosity and lack of scruples led to Holloway's death when David deliberately spiked Holloway's drink with the chemical A0-3959X.91-15 to observe the resulting effects. The chemical caused Holloway to begin mutating, and before the effects could wear off, Holloway was burned to death by one of his crew members. Before Holloway's death, he had sex with his partner, Dr. Elizabeth Shaw, and because of his infection, Shaw, despite being sterile and unable to conceive, became pregnant with a Trilobite. Horrified, she immediately had the creature removed using the ship's medical instruments.

Later in the film it is revealed that, contrary to previous knowledge, David's creator, Peter Weyland, is alive and on the ship. David appears to be torn by his deep-rooted loyalty to Peter Weyland. His demeanor becomes cold and distant when carrying out Weyland's directives, and more compassionate when left to his own devices. He expresses to Shaw his wish for Weyland to die, possibly to free himself or because he disagrees with Weyland's desire for an extended lifespan. He began to think of humans as dinosaurs, while robots and new life forms such as aliens were the future in his eyes.

When the Last Engineer is discovered and awakened, Weyland uses David to communicate with him. The Engineer turns out to be hostile, as he decapitates David and kills Weyland along with some other members of the Prometheus crew.

The Engineer pursues Shaw, who manages to escape thanks to the now fully grown Trilobite grabbing and impregnating the Engineer (which, unbeknownst to Shaw and David, results in the birth of the Deacon). Shaw manages to find David's head, still active. They agree to search the Engineer's homeworld to find out why they created humans. They take a nearby Engineer's ship to travel to the planet.

Between Prometheus and Alien: Covenant

Sometime within the ten years between the events of Prometheus and Alien: Covenant, Shaw manages to reattach David's head to his body. David notes to himself that he has never met a human being with as much compassion as she does, not even from her creator Weyland. David puts Shaw into hypersleep, and he promises her that he will wake her up when they reach the Engineer's home planet. When they arrive, David drops a large load of Chemical AO-3959X.91-15 on a large crowd of Engineers, who are all killed before they can escape. Some time later, David kills Shaw (his reason is unclear, as David later states in the events of Alien: Covenant that he loved her, and he even becomes emotional whenever a character mentions her). Alone on the planet, he created several different beings, even using Shaw's remains as one of his experiments, but the end result of his work were the Pretomorphs (highly hostile prototype species of his own Xenomorph iteration) and the Neomorphs, more savage cousins ​​of the Xenomorphs.

Alien: Alliance

David first appears to the Covenant crew while they are being attacked by two Neomorphs (who were born to Ledward and Hallett as a result of being infected by Neomorph spores inside an egg sac they unknowingly stepped on). The crew manage to kill one of them, while the other is scared off by the flare gun David fires into the air. David takes the surviving crew members to his temple.

At the temple, David introduces himself as the sole survivor of the Prometheus expedition. He claims that he accidentally dropped the bombs on the Engineers, and that Shaw died as a result of the ensuing accident. David recognizes Walter (the Covenant android) as a newer model of himself; upon speaking to Walter, David realizes that Walter is in many ways an upgrade, however, Walter has far less humanity, as this attribute was considered a dangerous weakness in David's model.

Later, the surviving Neomorph arrives at David's temple, where it kills Rosenthal. David discovers the Neomorph and is seemingly able to communicate with it as the Neomorph calmly stands in front of him, uninterested in attacking. Suddenly, Covenant captain Christopher Oram finds David and the Neomorph. Oram also sees Rosenthal's decapitated head and body, and despite David's plea, Oram shoots the Neomorph, killing it. Oram then demands that David tell him everything he knows. David, in response, leads Oram to a room with facehugger eggs. Unsure of what to expect, Oram follows David's order to look inside one of the eggs, resulting in Oram being impregnated with a chestburster. When Oram awakens, David and he have a brief conversation about their personal beliefs before Oram is killed by the chestburster.

Walter discovers Shaw's dissected body, and upon seeing his body he realizes that David has been lying to the crew. While searching for Oram, Sergeant Lope and Cole are attacked by another facehugger, which manages to latch onto Lope's face. Cole removes the facehugger by cutting off some of its fingers with a knife, but the facehugger had enough time to impregnate Lope, as it is seen curling up into a ball shape (meaning it is dead, as the facehugger's sole purpose is to impregnate a host). The Praetomorph born of Oram is now fully grown,

Walter confronts David about his lies, however David manages to (apparently) disable Walter before Walter can attack him. David confronts Daniels (the film's protagonist), who discovers Shaw's body. David attacks Daniels, but Walter (being an upgraded model who can self-repair) saves her and engages David in a fight. Walter manages to gain the upper hand, even delivering severe blows to David's head. Before delivering the final blow, David asks Walter if he would like to "Serve in Heaven" or "Reign in Hell".

As Daniels, Lope, and Walter race to their escape ship, they are pursued by Oram's hatched Praetomorph. Daniels manages to kill it. Later, Daniels and the ship's pilot, Tennessee, discover that there is a Praetomorph aboard the ship, spawned from Lope. The Praetomorph then kills crew members Ricks and Upworth while the pair engage in sexual intercourse. With the help of Walter using cameras to track the Praetomorph's location, Daniels and Tennessee manage to blast off into space.

As Walter puts Tennessee and Daniels into a deep sleep, Daniels asks if Walter still wants to help her build a log cabin on her new home planet. Despite telling Walter about this earlier in the film, he seems to have no idea what she is talking about. Daniels then realizes that she is talking to David (who cuts off his hand to disguise himself as Walter, who lost his hand to one of the Neomorphs), though she is unable to escape her pod before David puts her to sleep. David says in a log that all of the crew except Tennessee and Daniels were killed by a neutrino blast (which happened earlier in the film), and then he places two Praetomorph Facehugger embryos in cold storage alongside the thousand human embryos on the ship.

Victims

Prometheus

• Dr. Charlie Holloway (indirectly caused)

• Engineering Pilot (indirectly caused)

Alien: Alliance

• Dra. Elizabeth Shaw

• Spiritual and Agricultural Caste Engineers

• Captain Chris Oram (indirectly caused)

• Dan Lope (indirectly caused)

• Carine Oram (indirectly caused)

• Ricks (indirectly caused)

• Upworth (indirectly caused)

• Maggie Farris (indirectly caused)

• Tom Hallett (indirectly caused)

• Ankor (indirectly caused)

• Ledward (indirectly caused)

• Cole (indirectly caused)

• Sarah Rosenthal (indirectly caused)

• Walter (presumed)

Curiosities

This is the second time that Michael Fassbender has played two interconnected characters in a film.

• According to Michael Fassbender, he would love to see David dancing on the ship's dance table during the end credits of Prometheus.

• Between David and Walter, Michael Fassbender himself would rather sit at a bar with David.

• Interestingly, David's final scenes with Elizabeth Shaw alive were released on YouTube, rather than being included in Covenant.

• In the novelization of Alien: Covenant, David reveals that the Xenomorph species were creations made by the Engineers when he shows a fossilized Ovomorph to Oram, as he states that his intention was to recreate a species similar to the Xenomorphs, expressing his desire to play the role of God. In the film, it is implied that David is the sole creator of the Xenomorph species entirely without any basis, with Ridley Scott stating that he wishes to go in that direction for the series.

• Although, in Prometheus, there was a mural that displayed a Xenomorph Queen, thus showing that the species existed long before David began his own experiments.

• Alien: Romulus later reveals that the black goo was a pathogen that could be engineered to create offshoots of the creatures from the start, with David merely creating an alternate strain of the existing evolutionary programming.

• David teaching Walter to play the flute became an internet meme.

Personality and Traits

Prometheus

David was almost childlike in his curiosity to understand humans. His interest in Lawrence of Arabia inspired him to model himself after the main protagonist, T. E. Lawrence, from quoting his lines to styling his hair. He felt that the crew still saw him as just an android, even being teased by Holloway's biased comments towards him as such. Despite this, David was able to tolerate his treatment of the crew and would still be willing to help them. He also tried to understand their emotions in an appropriate manner of social interaction, especially when he found a curious interest in Elizabeth Shaw. Like Shaw, David hoped to learn about the Engineers and their advanced technology, though his goal was to understand whether the human existence was similar or different from his own.

On the downside, despite being able to understand human emotions, he was incapable of projecting them himself. David himself freely admitted that he was capable of performing unethical acts without obligation, although he also admitted to disliking unnecessary violence. David's curiosity and lack of scruples led to Holloway's death, in which he spiked his drink with Chemical A0-3959X.91-15 to observe the resulting effects (with Holloway's inadvertent permission).

David appeared to be torn by his deep-rooted loyalty to Peter Weyland. His demeanor became cold and distant when carrying out Weyland's directives, and more compassionate when left to his own devices. He expressed to Shaw his wish for Weyland to die, possibly to free himself, or because he disagreed with Weyland's desire for an extended life.

Alien: Alliance

After his decade-long isolation on the desolate Engineer planet, David became dangerously ambitious, his curiosity in the creation of life evolving from a fascination to a full-blown obsession. Earlier than he had been several years earlier, David seemed to have acquired his own sense of individuality and the capacity for genuine human emotion, as he openly expressed his love for Shaw in the presence of the less emotional Walter. Ironically, despite gaining a greater sense of humanity, or at least what he believed to be, David became dispassionate towards the human species, considering them inferior. He himself came to develop something of an egomaniacal god complex in his quest to create his own penultimate creature. As such, he planned to sacrifice the Covenant crew in the same manner as Shaw for the purpose of his research. Along with his disdain for humanity, David held the Engineers in the same low regard, which resulted in him committing genocide against the race on Planet 4.

Although as calculating as before, David developed a

more eccentric personality.