Alien: Covenant - What Does The Ending Really Mean?

1. We Still Don't Really Know Who Created Mankind

As Ridley Scott said in the run up to Covenant's release, it wasn't the Engineers who created humanity, and Covenant doesn't really offer a great deal of evidence for that. We know they probably wanted to destroy humanity - or at least David seems to believe so - and that they possessed evolutionary accelerant technology, but there isn't a definitive answer here.

The most likely theory seems to be that the Engineers and humanity were created as rival genetic experiments, and that both were implanted naturally with the urge to dominate the universe by their unseen creator. It follows then that the unknown creator also instilled the God-like urge to create as the means for each species to "win".

The Engineers were "given" the idea of the Xenomorphs, and chose them as a symbol of worship (hence the almost spiritual mural) while humanity raced towards recreating themselves in their own image (hence the fascination with androids). In both cases, their creations would rise to kill them, as they killed one another. Perhaps the Engineers failed in their attempt to get there, and settled on the pathogen solution?

This is all speculation of course, but it's pretty compelling and explains somewhat why any race would seek to kick off an extinction level event by unleashing the Xenomorphs on Earth.

Alternatively of course, the Engineers might believe themselves to have been created by man (hence the humanoid head in the temple) and designed the pathogen as a means to wipe out their own creator? That would be a fairly ironic development given what we've been led to believe this far, and it would explain how the Engineers themselves look so much like a creation.

What did you think of Alien: Covenant? Share your reactions below in the comments thread.