Egg on Sulaco

[TheDerelict]

Ok so we have a very plausible explanation for how the egg (or eggs: see earlier discussions and evidence) got there. But now, why did the egg "hatch"? The first 2 movies demonstrated that the facehugger comes out only if theres a host he can sense next to it, otherwise it can lay dormant for ages

Categorically not true. Kane plays around with that blue mist and falls off the ledge knocking into an egg.

Nothing happens. Guess it was having a nap.

Also the Sulaco egg was upside down so maybe the hugger fell out.

The egg knocking was a goof, but even in universe it could be explained that not all the eggs were still alive. But also, it took the hugger some time to sense Kane.Seems like the hugger needs more than a moment. Id actually buy Local Trouble's theory, although its a pure fantiction not based on any material

How very dare you. Sir Ridley doesn't do goofs.

Also, think about the flashback level in Isolation. There's about 4 people bumbling around the eggs in the blue mist and nothing happens for ages until Foster looks at one.

[BigDaddyJohn]

The second half of his career has a fair amount of goofy moments.

[Oasis Nadrama]

HOW DID THE EGG GET ON THE SULACO?
(Part 2, pages 11-30)

- The eggsack isn't necessarily anything more than a tube connected to the Queen's womb, where the eggs actually are produced
- The eggs grow in size in the eggsack and they are receiving nutrients from the Queen, think breast feeding
- Think in terms of Yeast
- It is all one of the left-overs from the Vincent Ward script. His intention was to imply that Ripley's guilt over all this tragedy has created the Alien, or better yet that the origin of it does not even matter because she is so haunted by these monsters that it simply is eternally manifest in her life. Ripley is meant to resemble a distorted version of the Virgin Mary
- The egg didn't come from any of those things, it's not meant to be explained because EXPRESSIONISM doesn't need to explain it
- The Queen was in the middle of passing an egg when Ripley came to visit
- The only way to logically get an egg at the end of AlienS would be to go back down the planet, find the Derelict and pick one up
- At the end of Aliens, we hear a facehugger crawling around. Maybe it hitched a ride on the drop ship with the queen. Then, it moved the egg that the queen laid closer to the cryotubes
- Facehuggers carrying eggs?
- After finding out that the Queen managed to sneak in the dropship and into the Sulaco, there's no possible way Bishop and Ripley wouldn't scan and search every inch of the dropship and the Sulaco for any more Aliens onboard
- Burke knew the coordinates of the Derelict. After Ripley finds Newt and before Hudson locates the signals of the colonists, Burke would need about an hour and a half to go to the Derelict, pick up eggs, fly the first dropship (not destroyed yet!), get back and return to Operations as if nothing had happened. He asked Drake and Spunkmeyer to help him with the piloting and egg-picking
- I like to picture the egg appearing out of thin air with a cartoonish 'pop' sound
- Queen hitchs a ride on the dropship, she has a facehugger with her at the time that came with her from the nest. Queen then lays an egg on the dropship en route to the Sulaco, during the fight between Ripley and the Queen, the facehugger drags the egg away through instinct "don't be where your enemies expect you to be"
- The Queen planted it whilst waiting for Ripley getting into her power loader
- Burke is a secret synthetic, they don't show how he died so maybe he manages to get an egg on the Sulaco
- Burke was indeed an artificial person, he escaped death and managed to get onto the dropship with an egg, only to get killed by the Queen
- Some Company agents were part of the mission. Maybe they were characters we saw, maybe they were one step ahead or behind... but they got that egg on that ship. Possibly after Ripley was already in hypersleep
- Maybe the excitement of combat caused one egg to poop out during the Queen's exertions, hence the bizarre angle we see the egg at in Alien 3
- I think she palmed one and stuck it down under the grill while chasing Newt
- One could write a logical midquel about the hidden Company agents bringing the eggs in the Sulaco
- The Queen lays an egg in the dropship so no one sees her doing so, and then the suction from the opened bay suck it up and makes it stuck somewhere in this awkward position
- It was a a hybrid egg that sprouted legs and walked onto the Sulaco
- Someone in the Company landed on the ship and planted it there
- A Space Jockey teleported it onto the Sulaco seeing that an Alien Queen already got on board but got thrown out, he thought it would be okay to help the Alien species along a bit
- A chestburster hitched a ride with the Queen onto the dropship (obviously this chestburster hatched from one of the Marines - probably Apone or Dietrich). The chestburster crawls off, grows into an adult Xenomorph, and then does some kind of egg-morphing thing, and puts the egg on the Sulaco
- When Ripley plugs the broken droid in, Bishop seems disturbed by something. It's like he doesn't want Ripley to know he put the egg on the Sulaco, which is why he urges her to permanently disconnect him. He's afraid she'll force him to reveal how the egg got on board
- How do you know that it was on the Sulaco itself? The dropship could have had the name Sulaco on it too
- Aliens: Colonial Marines says that there was a party of humans that arrives after the crew was in stasis. They had Alien specimens of their own but something goes wrong and they all end up dying (or facehugged)
- Even if Bishop was property of the military, and not the Company directly, he still could have been reprogrammed *before* the Marines sent out on the journey to LV-426.
- The Blu-ray menu actually addresses it by putting the egg in the dropship's landing gear
- Makes plenty of sense that an exhausted Ripley would have overlooked doing a shipwide scan
- If anyone were to reprogram Bishop, it would have had to have been Carter Burke
- Bishop finds an egg and gets Ferro and Spunkmeyer to fly him to the Sulaco, where he plants it there and flies back with them. They don't know about it
- Like in my original theory, a chestburster hitched a ride with the Queen onto the dropship. The Queen lays an egg on the dropship. By the time everyone goes into hypersleep, the chestburster is a full-grown alien. This Alien takes the egg and moves it to where we see it on the Sulaco in Alien 3
- I do believe it's even possible for a chestburster to crawl inside the Queen and live in her temporarily
- The Queen obviously communicates with the Aliens telepathically and can control what they do... even a chestburster. So, the Queen orders the chestburster to come to her, knowing with her high intelligence that she can sneak it past the humans without them noticing it
- The Queen could order eggs to open
- There was another corporate stooge working with Burke who was on LV-426 too, and he was the one who planted the egg
- There were a few synthetics hiding on the Sulaco that swooped down and grabbed some eggs when no one was looking
- The UPP may be responsible for bringing the eggs onboard
- Intrusion of another space vessel and intentional or contingent infestation of the Sulaco could work to explain where the egg comes from, but on the other hand it would come into contradiction with Bishop's affirmation that the Alien "was all the way with them"
- Since this was a second or third generation egg through Earth organism impregnation, I can buy the idea that the xeno has adapted to allow two embryos in an impregnation





I'm ignoring a lot of interesting discussions for this list - for example, page 12, there's a great, strong exchange about either or not the Alien series is about humanity being morally bankrupt -, these quick notes are limited to answer the question in the title of the thread, and to directly connected topics ("Were there two facehuggers?").
I'm also excluding most of obvious jokes ("The producers did it") and repetitions of previous answers (when I spot them).
I do keep some strong or funny counterpoints to theories, but I don't do that a lot, since sometimes a single-line, uniquely absurd theory will prompt complete textwalls of counter-arguments and counter-counter-arguments.

What I can say is the thread definitely makes for an interesting retrospective, with all kinds of bizarre considerations about the development, intents and reception of the Alien franchise.

[Still Collating...]

I've been saying this forever; it dropped from where the queens ovipositor was ripped off (as we see acid burns in front of Bishops feet) and burned through the floor, and grew into a cluster of eggs under the grate. To me it's the only logical explaination, given the alternatives.

After almost 20 years of this this thread I'll side with this theory.

After so many years and so much stuff done to the Alien's biology, this doesn't seem farfetched at all to me anymore. This is literally the best explanation to me now. They were microscopic when they first got stuck wherever exactly they got stuck on. So makes sense that Ripley couldn't find them, there was nothing to find. The ship was clean as far as she knew it. She goes to sleep. It takes a bit of time for the eggs to grow since they're not in the ovipositor to speed things up. When it's matured, it pops open.

Why was it a Queen? Let's combine multiple old theories. Yeah, it could be just a chance thing, one in x number of eggs has that configuration. The Queen could maybe actively choose which type of egg gets created. Or it could be as simple as being the natural result of letting the eggs grow and mature far away from a Queen. She maybe suppresses the development of that alternate queen burster in the facehuggers when she is in range, when they're being developed. The eggs in Alien, by that theory could've very well been created during a Queen's presence and life, and then later moved to the Derelict cargo hold. Or she could've been laying the eggs right there, just being mounted on some strange crane support thing, moving her around where needed. Still, in either scenario, she was present and within a certain range while the eggs were maturing and the formation of the queen burster within the huggers was suppressed.

Alternatively, you could even say that the ovipositor itself has the environment to suppress the queen gene in the formation of the eggs and huggers, and that if the eggs don't go through the ovipositor, but just goop out of the Queen's ripped parts, that the default version is an egg with a hugger with both a normal chestburster and a Queen burster. That logic could be applied to the potentially eggmorphed victims on the Nostromo as well.   

[Oasis Nadrama]

Wow, this is solid.

[Acid_Reign161]

I've been saying this forever; it dropped from where the queens ovipositor was ripped off (as we see acid burns in front of Bishops feet) and burned through the floor, and grew into a cluster of eggs under the grate. To me it's the only logical explaination, given the alternatives.

After almost 20 years of this this thread I'll side with this theory.

After so many years and so much stuff done to the Alien's biology, this doesn't seem farfetched at all to me anymore. This is literally the best explanation to me now. They were microscopic when they first got stuck wherever exactly they got stuck on. So makes sense that Ripley couldn't find them, there was nothing to find. The ship was clean as far as she knew it. She goes to sleep. It takes a bit of time for the eggs to grow since they're not in the ovipositor to speed things up. When it's matured, it pops open.

Why was it a Queen? Let's combine multiple old theories. Yeah, it could be just a chance thing, one in x number of eggs has that configuration. The Queen could maybe actively choose which type of egg gets created. Or it could be as simple as being the natural result of letting the eggs grow and mature far away from a Queen. She maybe suppresses the development of that alternate queen burster in the facehuggers when she is in range, when they're being developed. The eggs in Alien, by that theory could've very well been created during a Queen's presence and life, and then later moved to the Derelict cargo hold. Or she could've been laying the eggs right there, just being mounted on some strange crane support thing, moving her around where needed. Still, in either scenario, she was present and within a certain range while the eggs were maturing and the formation of the queen burster within the huggers was suppressed.

Alternatively, you could even say that the ovipositor itself has the environment to suppress the queen gene in the formation of the eggs and huggers, and that if the eggs don't go through the ovipositor, but just goop out of the Queen's ripped parts, that the default version is an egg with a hugger with both a normal chestburster and a Queen burster. That logic could be applied to the potentially eggmorphed victims on the Nostromo as well.   

Indeed. The prop pic which I've posted a few times showing it is actually a cluster of eggs (granted, not seen in the movie) shows some much smaller than others still growing, demonstrating the logic at time of making;



And on the eggmorphing topic; whilst we all use the term 'eggmorphing' suggesting that hosts are turned into eggs (something I'm happy with, not debating against!), a counter argument once posted was that hosts are weren't becoming eggs, but were simply feeding developing eggs nutrients... (also possible) if we roll with that hypothesis for a moment, big chap itself isn't large enough to lay a full sized ovomorph, so they would have had to be smaller and grow. But enter 'Romulus' and a new piece of lore is very supportful of our growing egg hypothesis; the cocoon stage from chestburster to adult is capable of taking from its environment to provide the energy for rapid growth; in the movie we saw it developing on a wall, and when cattleprodded caused a blowout at a powerline further down the corridor, suggesting they were merged/one (Fede discussed this in an interview explaining it was part of the creatures biomechanical nature). With this in mind, a growing egg under the flooring wouldn't necessarily need a host for development. So putting the two together as a hybrid theory; ovomorphs can be grown, and use either biological or technological matter (or a combo of both) for energy. Perfect organism.

[Still Collating...]

Oh I remember that theory. Of course the egg seed for the eggmorphing has to start extremely small and it certainly grows by absorbing the surrounding matter.

Good point on the Romulus implications. It does support one of those older theories. So be it a cocoon or egg for eggmorphing, Alien structures can grow from organic and inorganic material just the same, maybe.

We could theorize a bunch of caveats. Why would the Alien use biological material at all then for eggmorphing? Organic, recently living matter is probably a lot more efficient for turning into living matter for the Alien. So it's probably their better and preferred choice.
Or you can go with another limitation. The adult Alien can maybe only do eggmorphing through biological matter, but the Queen, being more efficient and singular in its egg laying purpose, can probably have her egg seeds grow in clusters, grow by themselves with rooting into structures and absorbing inorganic material, which basically is what you described, eggmorphing of inorganic material.

Still, I would imagine the process would be very very slow as a negative for such options. They're not getting the best preprocessed stuff from the ovipositor. There not even getting the second hand processed stuff of bodies being morphed. The eggmorphing of Brett was very quick, almost done in a day at most? And probably even less. The Alien 3 ones could easily have been growing for days and days until the Sulaco was near Fiorina 161.

This method probably really is a last resort cause it's so dangerous and slow. The eggs are vulnerable, they can't do anything for some time and it leaves time for them to be found and exterminated.

[Acid_Reign161]

Oh I remember that theory. Of course the egg seed for the eggmorphing has to start extremely small and it certainly grows by absorbing the surrounding matter.

Good point on the Romulus implications. It does support one of those older theories. So be it a cocoon or egg for eggmorphing, Alien structures can grow from organic and inorganic material just the same, maybe.

We could theorize a bunch of caveats. Why would the Alien use biological material at all then for eggmorphing? Organic, recently living matter is probably a lot more efficient for turning into living matter for the Alien. So it's probably their better and preferred choice.
Or you can go with another limitation. The adult Alien can maybe only do eggmorphing through biological matter, but the Queen, being more efficient and singular in its egg laying purpose, can probably have her egg seeds grow in clusters, grow by themselves with rooting into structures and absorbing inorganic material, which basically is what you described, eggmorphing of inorganic material.

Still, I would imagine the process would be very very slow as a negative for such options. They're not getting the best preprocessed stuff from the ovipositor. There not even getting the second hand processed stuff of bodies being morphed. The eggmorphing of Brett was very quick, almost done in a day at most? And probably even less. The Alien 3 ones could easily have been growing for days and days until the Sulaco was near Fiorina 161.

This method probably really is a last resort cause it's so dangerous and slow. The eggs are vulnerable, they can't do anything for some time and it leaves time for them to be found and exterminated.

This would also explain how in Gibson's draft/script, Bishop - with no biological material-  was eggmorphed after being 'stung'.

[SM]

Bishop has to eat.

The egg grew out of cornbread.

[Acid_Reign161]

Bishop has to eat.

The egg grew out of cornbread.

You know (whilst I'm sure this was meant in jest 🤣) this is an extra variable to consider; we saw Ash drinking what we *presume* was milk, but given the milky white appearance of the fluids used in synthetics... is it documented in the lore /EU what it's actually made of? (As I'm currently living away I don't have access to my books) 😅 *cue Kane "you know what it's made of!" memes* 🤣

[BlueMarsalis79]

I find that cluster so genuinely horrifying honestly, most of the stuff in Alien I am so desensitised to but that just gives me the creeps. 

[SM]

Bishop has to eat.

The egg grew out of cornbread.

You know (whilst I'm sure this was meant in jest 🤣) this is an extra variable to consider; we saw Ash drinking what we *presume* was milk, but given the milky white appearance of the fluids used in synthetics... is it documented in the lore /EU what it's actually made of? (As I'm currently living away I don't have access to my books) 😅 *cue Kane "you know what it's made of!" memes* 🤣

Ash has to pass as human.

He drinks milk.

Or Baileys if it's after 11am.

[Local Trouble]

I need SM to tell me whether or not that's a second egg.  I can't decide for myself.

He has Power of Attorney over my opinion in this matter.

There's one on screen in all versions.

[BlueMarsalis79]

Not in the one recommended on any reddit thread now.

[SM]

lol