I made a thread the other day that basically near as hell echoes this plot as a direct way forward for the prequels. Just have the Engineers explore why their colony got straight f**ked, realize whatever human/android did this, and learning that its the Covenant. David arrives on Paradise, letting loose a beacon from the Covenant later on to attract other people who could carry the progeny of the Covenant crew that's been festering on "Paradise", what have you. And have the Engineers pissed as f**k their planet of origin suffered genocide, and you got a team that received David's SOS and arrive on paradise some time later. When the aliens get onboard whatever vessel the colonial military arrive on they self destruct, or perhaps not leading to the opening of another sequel.
And it all boils down to the complete genocide of the Engineers homeworld while learning of their culture from whomever followed the Colony Ship's SOS. Which would better explain this poster/marketing gimmick
Whatever happens the last of the engineers mount a counter attack once and for all on Earth now that we pretty much ruined everything beyond their hopes and dreams, relay to the LV-223, but it's too late and many of the Juggernauts fly out into space as their crews as are assaulted, except for one who crash lands on nearby LV-426, let's out a beacon. Knowing one way or another this is connected to the operation to rescue the Covenant crew from whatever SOS, they triangulate the position to the same Gas Giant, with the same set of moons that were considered quarantine, which the Prometheus went missing from. Intrigued if there might be survivors, or indeed, this hostile race staging an attack on Earth, they get a ship, the Nostromo, a beat up tug nobody would care if they got missing. To locate whatever happened to the Colonial troops far far away on Paradise. And to locate and retrieve whatever killed them off. Nobody would notice if they just simply died and they could intercept the Nostromo once it gets into the core systems on its way to Earth. But Ripley kind of f**ked that all up.
I think the most powerful take away from all of this in a plot sense, is David committed the largest scale genocide on the progenitors of life on Earth, and god knows life on Earth elsewhere throughout the cosmos. David killed God. And nobody cares. And nobody, perhaps a select few, would know about it. It also explains why the company would want the Alien so badly as a weapon, as it was designed as an extremely potent population leveler, it was designed that way.
And really, for all David wanted to be God, creating his own life, his largest accomplishment in the deepest darkest untraveled part of space, nobody knew or appreciated his work. His goal in his life ultimately proving thankless.
It isn't word for word what I had in mind for a sequel, but it's pretty god damn close as just mental masturbation of where they could go from here. Which is either a plus for me a or a minus for Ridley for being so predictable.
