10 Movie Villains Totally Ruined In The Sequels

6. The Engineers - Alien: Covenant

The Original

Alien prequel Prometheus introduced audiences to the Engineers, the race of humanoid entities which were responsible for the creation of humanity as we know it.

And in the film's third act, it becomes clear that the Engineers are not terribly pleased about what humans have been getting up to, as one of their kind attempts to unleash the black goo pathogen on Earth in order to wipe the human race out.

Prometheus ends without giving audiences a clear explanation for the Engineers' hostile behaviour - though fans latched onto the idea that Jesus was an Engineer, and this was revenge for killing him.

All the same, it was certainly the movie's most compelling mystery, and one which fans looked forward to seeing expanded upon in the follow-up.

The Sequel

Alien: Covenant was, as the title implies, less of a Prometheus sequel and more of a new Alien movie, and that's embodied no more obviously than the fact that the Engineers' role is massively scaled back.

The Engineers are largely absent from Covenant, save for a flashback where malevolent android David (Michael Fassbender) is shown bombing the Engineer city, presumably killing most of their kind in one fell swoop.

It felt like a hasty ret-con to shift away from the divisive nature of Prometheus and focus instead on the usual Xenomorph shenanigans, flushing some promising antagonists down the toilet in the process.

Rumours abounded last year that the next Alien movie may bring some surviving Engineers back to chase David down, but you probably shouldn't count on that happening.