Alien movies in order: the complete Alien timeline

Ian Sandwell, Mireia Mullor, Cameron K McEwan

16 December 2024 at 10:12 am·13-min read

xenomorph, alien romulus — The complete Alien timeline 20th Century Studios

Alien: Romulus brought the Alien series back in style in 2024, and it did so by going back in time for an untold story set between Alien and Aliens.

If you're just catching up on the new movie now that it's on Hulu in the US (but not yet on Disney+ in the UK), then it might lead you to want to rewatch the entire series to date.

But in which order do you rewatch the seven Alien movies released so far? (Yes, we're ignoring the two Alien vs Predator movies.)

You could go for the simple release order strategy or, if you wanted to be more in-depth, you could watch them in chronological order.

We're here to help with the definitive Alien timeline, including how to watch the Alien movies in release order, chronological order and a detailed timeline of when the events took place exactly.

archie renaux, cailee spaeny, alien romulus — 20th Century Studios

Alien movies in release order

The simplest way to carry out a rewatch of the Alien series is to watch them in the order they were originally released.

If you want to suffer through both Alien vs Predator movies, they were released in 2004 and 2007 in the gap between Alien: Resurrection and Prometheus.

We don't recommend it and they're not necessary to your understanding, so we've left them out of the release order below.

Here's the Alien movies in release order:

• Alien (1979)
• Aliens (1986)
• Alien 3 (1992)
• Alien: Resurrection (1997)
• Prometheus (2012)
• Alien: Covenant (2017)
• Alien: Romulus (2024)

xenomorph, cailee spaeny, alien romulus — 20th Century Studios

Alien movies in chronological order

Unlike in other long-running series, the Alien movies are fairly easy to watch in chronological order if that's how you choose to watch them.

Alien: Romulus doesn't do a Halloween and forget all the other movies, so there's no concerns about branching timelines. It takes place in 2142, 20 years after Alien and 37 years before the events of Aliens.

(If you want to know more about how specifically Alien: Romulus connects to the Alien timeline, we've got you covered here.)

As with the release order, we've left the Alien vs Predator movies out of this chronological order. If you really want to watch them as part of your rewatch though, they take place before the events of all the other movies, bar the opening of Prometheus.

Here's the Alien movies in chronological order:

• Prometheus
• Alien: Covenant
• Alien
• Alien: Romulus
• Aliens
• Alien 3
• Alien: Resurrection

sigourney weaver, alien resurrection — 20th Century Studios

Alien timeline

If you really want a detailed breakdown of all the major events in the Alien movies to date, we're here to help with the definitive Alien timeline.

(We've focused on the movies and haven't included the wider canon works because that would take us all year.)

4 billion - 2 million BC – An alien race, later dubbed "The Engineers", visit Earth and leave one of their own behind. His body breaks down after he drinks black goo, and his DNA enters the water, recombining to create life.

35,000 BC – Evidence of the Engineers in Scotland.

3590 BC – Sumerian evidence of Engineers' visit to Earth.

2470 BC – Egyptian evidence of Engineers' visit to Earth.

1540 BC – Babylonian evidence of Engineers' visit to Earth.

8th century BC – the Prometheus myth (about a Titan who brought man to life from clay and stole the secret of fire from the Gods) first appears in Greek mythology.

620 BC – Mayan evidence of Engineers' visit to Earth.

1st century AD – The Engineers prepare a "death ship", filled with jars of black goo, to send to Earth in order to destroy their wayward children, humanity. (The decapitated Engineer found by the Prometheus crew on LV-223 was carbon-dated to 2,000 years before, "give or take".)

1990 – Peter Weyland, the man who will create the Weyland Corp, is born.

2004 – Aliens and Predators do stuff. Together. If you've seen the AvP films, then you'll know it's best we move on.

2012 – Peter Weyland founds Weyland Corp, the company behind so many doomed space missions.

Around 2030 – Weyland creates David, an android.

2080s – Dr Elizabeth Shaw and Dr Charlie Holloway discover evidence of "star maps" from Babylonian, Sumerian, Mayan, Egyptian and Mesopotamian eras.

2089 – Shaw discovers another star map, or "invitation", in a cave on the Isle of Skye, Scotland.

2091 – The USCSS Prometheus, a space exploration ship built by Weyland Corp, leaves Earth on its journey to LV-223.

2092 – Ellen Ripley is born on Earth. (January 7, to be precise.)

2093 – All but two of the Prometheus crew are killed after an encounter on LV-223 with an alien species and a revived Engineer. The ship is destroyed and Dr Shaw and a severely damaged David leave on an Engineer ship to find the Engineers' homeworld.

2094 – Shaw presumably rebuilds David, and according to David's testimony in Alien: Covenant, he and Shaw arrive at "Paradise", a planet home to millions of Engineers. He uses their ship's toxic black-goo payload to destroy the entire population.

2104 – Covenant, a colonisation ship carrying thousands of humans and embryos, takes a detour to an unnamed planet (Paradise) on its way to Origae-6. There the crew discover David and a new species, the neomorph.

After the incursion on the planet, where the majority of the crew are killed, David is revealed to have bio-engineered aliens as we know them. He brings their embryos on board alongside the human embryos. The ship continues its journey to Origae-6.

2120 – Space vessel Nostromo leaves Earth.

2122 – After detecting a signal, Nostromo lands on planetoid LV-426. After being infected by an alien facehugger, executive officer Kane dies when an alien bursts through his chest. It picks off the crew one by one, leaving Ripley and Jones, the ship's cat, alive.

2142 – A group of young colonists, including Rain and her synthetic 'brother' Andy, from Jackson's Star mining colony break into Weyland-Yutani station, the Renaissance, only to find it was carrying out experiments on the original Xenomorph.

Chaos and death ensues, as well as the birth of a human-alien hybrid called the Offspring, leaving Rain and Andy the only survivors once Rain manages to eject the Offspring out into space. They then set course to Yvaga III, but do they get there? Who knows.

2179 – After drifting in stasis for 57 years, Ripley is rescued but returns to LV-426 because contact with the new human colony there, Hadley's Hope, has been lost.

Arriving with a military squad, they find the sole human survivor, Newt, more face-huggers, a swarm of aliens and a pretty badass Queen. Ripley escapes with Newt, Corporal Hicks and android Bishop, and heads back to Earth in the Sulaco.

There must be at least two facehuggers on board, though, and as they sleep, one impregnates Ripley with a queen. A fire starts somehow and the humans' life pod ejects, landing near a penal colony on Fiorina 161. Only Ripley and one other facehugger survive. Ripley kills the resulting alien, then dies by suicide, jumping into a furnace.

2379 – The United Systems Military clone Ripley (and her bio-passenger) from medical samples saved from Fiorina 161. They surgically remove the alien queen in order to breed the species, a number of which escape on board the Auriga, killing many.

Auriga crashes into Earth's atmosphere and blows up. The Ripley clone, meanwhile, escapes aboard the Betty with the android Call.