Alien Franchise Timeline: 2120, Romulus, and Timestamped Easter Eggs
The Alien saga’s in-universe chronology runs from Prometheus in 2093 through Covenant in 2104, then Alien: Earth in 2120, the original Alien in 2122, Alien: Romulus in 2142, and onward into Aliens and beyond. Games and tie-ins slot in along the way, with Alien: Isolation landing at 2137, right between Earth’s android uprising and Romulus’s deep-space scramble.
TL;DR:
- Viewers new to the franchise should choose release order to preserve the original films’ creature and corporate reveals before the prequels explain the mythology.
- Alien: Earth is set in 2120, two years before Alien, while Romulus takes place in 2142, between Alien and Aliens, not after them.
- Romulus does not continue Prometheus or Covenant, and its standalone story works as an entry point without following David’s prequel arc.
- Alien: Isolation takes place in 2137, after Alien and before Romulus; include it if Amanda Ripley’s story or survival horror interests you.
- For a compact sampler, choose Alien, Aliens, Prometheus, Romulus, and Alien: Earth to cover classic horror, expanded mythology, and the franchise’s recent reinventions.
Table of Contents
- The Alien Franchise Timeline, Year by Year
- Release Order Versus Chronological Order: Why the Gap Matters
- Which Watch Order Should You Pick?
- Untangling AvP, Romulus, and the Prometheus-Covenant Question
- Where the Games and Tie-Ins Fit
- How We Cross-Check Alien’s Timeline Down to the Frame
- Pick the Order That Matches What You Want From the Franchise
- Catch Every Timestamped Detail Across the Alien Universe
- FAQ
- Sources
The Alien Franchise Timeline, Year by Year
Laying out every major entry by its in-universe date clears up the confusion faster than any release-order chart ever could. Here is the chronological spine, with the detail that makes each entry worth its place.
- Prometheus, 2093: The Weyland Corporation’s Prometheus vessel reaches the moon LV-223 hunting the origins of humanity, and instead wakes something that should have stayed buried. David the android’s curiosity, not corporate ambition, ends up driving the real plot.
- Alien: Covenant, 2104: A colony ship called Covenant stumbles onto David’s private experiment station, where a decade of unsupervised tinkering has produced the proto-Xenomorph lineage. Prometheus precedes Covenant by eleven years, and that gap matters because it is the stretch where David goes from scientist to creator with nobody watching.
- Alien: Isolation (game), 2137: Amanda Ripley, daughter of Ellen Ripley, boards the space station Sevastopol chasing answers about her mother’s disappearance and finds a single, patient Xenomorph instead. The game sits comfortably between the prequels and the original film, and it is often the first place newer fans encounter the creature’s stalking behavior in detail.
- Alien: Earth, 2120: The TV series plants its flag two years before the Nostromo ever picks up a distress call, following a corporate-funded crew that intercepts a crashed research vessel carrying something alien. Alien: Earth is set in 2120, which makes it a direct lead-in to 1979’s Alien rather than a distant prequel like Prometheus.
- Alien, 2122: The Nostromo answers a distress beacon on LV-426 and brings something back aboard that picks off the crew one by one. This is the entry everything else either sets up or spins off from, and it remains the gold standard for how the franchise balances dread with a confined setting.
- Alien: Romulus, 2142: A group of young colonists scavenging a derelict station run straight into a dormant Xenomorph population and a familiar corporate agenda. Romulus is set in 2142 and is not a direct sequel to Prometheus; it operates as a standalone horror entry that happens to land chronologically between Alien and Aliens.
- Aliens, 2179: Ellen Ripley returns to LV-426 with a Colonial Marine unit decades after her escape, only to find a colony already overrun. The jump from 2122 to 2179 is the single biggest time skip among the core films, and it resets the stakes from survival horror to full-blown war.
- Alien 3, roughly 2179 aftermath: Ripley crash-lands on a prison planet immediately after the events of Aliens, and the body count starts almost before she catches her breath. The film picks up the timeline within the same rough window as Aliens closes, with no significant gap.
- Alien Resurrection, 2381: Two centuries later, a cloned Ripley is revived aboard a military vessel conducting Xenomorph experiments, closing out the core film series on a stranger, more genetically tangled note than anything before it.
Tie-in novels and comics fill in smaller gaps across this span, but the nine entries above are the ones every credible franchise chronology, including the franchise’s own Wikipedia overview, anchors itself to.
Release Order Versus Chronological Order: Why the Gap Matters
Watching the films in the order they hit theaters tells a completely different story than watching them by in-universe date, and the gap between those two approaches is not a minor curiosity.
Release order:
- Alien (1979)
- Aliens (1986)
- Alien 3 (1992)
- Alien Resurrection (1997)
- Prometheus (2012)
- Alien: Covenant (2017)
- Alien: Romulus (2024)
- Alien: Earth (TV, 2025)
Chronological order:
- Prometheus, Alien: Covenant, Alien: Earth, Alien, Alien: Romulus, Aliens, Alien 3, Alien Resurrection
Ridley Scott did not plan Prometheus and Covenant until decades after the originals existed, so release order preserves the franchise’s actual creative evolution: you get the raw, confined horror of Alien first, then watch the mythology expand backward once Scott decided to explore it. Chronological order flips that experience. You arrive at Alien already knowing where the Xenomorph came from, which trades the original’s mystery for a sense of dread-laden inevitability.
Some of Alien’s most effective reveals, like the creature’s life cycle and the company’s willingness to sacrifice its crew, land harder when you have not already absorbed that information from the prequels. That is the real trade-off between the two approaches.
Which Watch Order Should You Pick?
Your ideal order depends entirely on what you want out of the franchise, so match the list below to your actual goal rather than defaulting to whichever one is loudest online.
- Release order (Alien, Aliens, Alien 3, Resurrection, Prometheus, Covenant, Romulus, Earth): best for first-time viewers who want to experience the series the way audiences did, mystery intact, mythology expanding gradually.
- Chronological order (Prometheus, Covenant, Earth, Alien, Romulus, Aliens, Alien 3, Resurrection): best for viewers who prioritize a clean timeline and want every callback to land in the right sequence.
- Prequel-first (Prometheus, Covenant, then the original trilogy): best for fans most interested in David’s arc and the philosophical, creator-and-creation themes Scott layered into the 2010s films.
- Horror-first (Alien, Aliens, Romulus, Alien 3, Resurrection, with the prequels saved for later): best for anyone chasing pure monster-movie tension without the slower, more cerebral prequel pacing.
Alien vs. Predator crossovers and the Alien: Isolation game are optional in every order above. Include them only if you specifically want the Predator connection or Amanda Ripley’s side of the story, since neither is required to follow the core film arc.
Pro Tip: If you only have time for five entries, go Alien, Aliens, Prometheus, Romulus, and Alien: Earth. That combination hits the franchise’s horror peak, its scope expansion, and its two most recent reinventions.
Untangling AvP, Romulus, and the Prometheus-Covenant Question
A few recurring points of confusion keep popping up in franchise discussions, and each one has a clear answer once you separate continuity from marketing.
- Alien vs. Predator crossovers: Most fans and franchise guides treat the AvP films as a separate or optional continuity rather than core canon, so you can skip them entirely without losing anything essential to the main arc.
- Is Romulus a sequel to Prometheus? No. Romulus is set in 2142 and stands apart from the Prometheus and Covenant storyline; it tells a self-contained story that happens to sit chronologically between Alien and Aliens, which is why it works as an entry point for newer fans.
- Does Covenant follow Prometheus directly? Yes, with an eleven-year in-universe gap. Prometheus’s 2093 setting precedes Covenant’s 2104 timeline, and watching them in that order gives David’s transformation its full weight.
The franchise’s willingness to introduce standalone stories like Romulus, rather than forcing every new release to extend a single master plot, is part of why the timeline feels more like a shared universe than one continuous narrative.
Where the Games and Tie-Ins Fit
Alien: Isolation remains the most widely referenced game in the franchise, and its 2137 setting places it just before Alien: Earth and a full fifteen years before the Nostromo’s fateful detour. Amanda Ripley’s hunt for her mother gives the game emotional stakes the films never directly address, which is part of why it gets cited as essential by franchise-timeline builders even though it is not a film.
- Alien: Isolation, 2137: Survival-horror game following Amanda Ripley aboard the Sevastopol station.
- Tie-in novels and comics: Scattered across multiple decades, these generally expand side characters or corporate subplots rather than altering the core chronology.
Most fans treat games and comics as optional deep cuts rather than mandatory viewing, since the film and TV entries carry the primary story. If you want the fuller picture, slot Isolation in after Alien: Earth and before Alien itself, then treat novels and comics as background reading whenever a specific character or ship catches your interest.
How We Cross-Check Alien’s Timeline Down to the Frame
Getting a franchise timeline right means more than listing years. It means verifying what each scene actually shows, which is where our timestamped approach earns its keep. Every entry in our catalog is graded for visibility and difficulty and tied to a sourced reference, so a timeline claim is never just an assertion.
- A dated computer terminal or a ship registry glimpsed for two seconds can confirm or contradict a stated in-universe year.
- Background dialogue referencing a previous incident often pins down how far apart two entries actually sit.
- Corporate logos and uniform designs shift in verifiable ways across the decades the franchise covers.
The Alien: Earth Easter Eggs catalog and the franchise index both apply a timestamped, spoiler-safe method, which is the same grading approach explained on the hardest-to-spot Easter eggs page.
Pick the Order That Matches What You Want From the Franchise
There is no single correct way to watch Alien, and anyone who insists otherwise is ignoring how differently release order and chronological order each reward you. Chase the prequels’ slow-burn philosophy, the original trilogy’s claustrophobic horror, or Romulus and Earth’s modern reinvention, whichever pulls you back for a rewatch. When you want the layered detail behind any of it, our catalog is built for exactly that kind of hunting.
— Christian
Catch Every Timestamped Detail Across the Alien Universe
Once you have picked your order, the real fun is in what you might still be missing frame by frame. The entries are timestamped, sourced, and graded by difficulty, so you can browse without worrying about stumbling into a spoiler before you are ready.
- Start with our Alien: Earth Easter Eggs breakdown for episode-level references tied directly to the 2120 setting.
- Browse the full Easter Eggs by Franchise & Universe index to jump between Alien and dozens of other catalogued universes.
FAQ
Is Alien: Earth set after Alien: Romulus?
No. Alien: Earth is set in 2120, which places it two years before the original Alien in 2122 and twenty-two years before Romulus in 2142. It functions as a lead-in to the first film, not a follow-up to Romulus.
Why did Alien: Covenant underperform at the box office?
Covenant shifted the franchise’s focus toward David’s creator-and-creation arc and themes of artificial intelligence, which left some audiences expecting classic Xenomorph-driven horror instead. That tonal pivot, combined with being the second prequel in a row, cooled reception compared to Prometheus.
Is Alien: Romulus a direct sequel to Prometheus?
No. Romulus is set in 2142 and tells a standalone story rather than continuing Prometheus or Covenant’s narrative thread. It sits chronologically between Alien and Aliens instead.
Should I watch Alien: Covenant or Prometheus first?
Watch Prometheus first. Prometheus is set in 2093 and precedes Covenant’s 2104 setting, and the eleven-year gap is central to understanding David’s transformation across both films.
Do the Alien vs. Predator movies fit into this timeline?
Most fans and franchise guides treat the Alien vs. Predator films as a separate or optional continuity rather than part of the core chronology. You can skip them without losing any thread of the main Alien storyline.