In our current franchise-dominated landscape, it’s hard to imagine an actor having the brass to insist their character be killed off. But that’s what living legend Sigourney Weaver did when she made 1992’s “Alien 3,” reasoning that her “Alien” heroine — the plucky blue-collar space trucker turned badass Xenomorph slayer Ellen Ripley — had endured more than her fair share of bad luck by that point. She would backtrack on that five years later for “Alien: Resurrection,” intrigued by the idea of reprising not the Ripley we knew and loved, but a hybrid alien/human clone with her own quirks and personality (not to mention a killer behind-the-back basketball shot). Weaver would then come precariously close to reprising Ripley proper for Neill Blomkamp’s scrapped “Alien 5,” a sequel that, in a stunt similar to the one David Gordon Green’s “Halloween” pulled, planned to ignore the prior two sequels by taking the ending of “Aliens” in a whole new direction.
With the “Alien” movies now charting a different course thanks to “Alien: Romulus” and Weaver off to spend time in a galaxy far, far away with Din Djarin and his little green son (that and, of course, her continuing adventures on Pandora), it appears we may’ve seen the last of Ripley for real this time. What we haven’t seen, though, are the last of are journalists who just can’t resist asking if Weaver would return to her best-known role yet again when given the opportunity in an interview. (No judgment passed, mind you; seeing as I’m sitting her writing about one such interview, that would be a real living in glass houses/throwing stones sort of situation.) Weaver, for her part, isn’t strictly ruling out a comeback as Ripley like she has in the past … but she doesn’t exactly sound optimistic, either.
Weaver needs a killer reason to reprise Ripley
Contrary to all the rumors swirling wildly ahead of the film’s release, “Romulus” thankfully resisted the urge to draw a direct line between its young heroine, Cailee Spaeny’s Rain, and the matriarch of the “Alien” movies (and no, I don’t mean the Xenomorph Queen) What’s more, given where “Romulus” takes place in the “Alien” timeline, it would require some real contrivances on co-writer and director Fede Álvarez’s part to get it so Ripley isn’t snoozing away in hypersleep by the time the sequel he’s already planning begins. That means it almost certainly wouldn’t meet the strict condition for Ripley’s return that Weaver set down during a recent chat with Deadline.
“I feel like she’s never far away from me, but on the other hand, I have yet to read a script that said, ‘You have got to do this,'” Weaver explained. “So for me, she is in this other dimension, safe from the Alien for the time being.” Adding that it’s “not completely impossible, and certainly a lot of good filmmakers are inspired by the material,” the actor raised perhaps the bigger issue:
“How much does the public really need or want another Ripley movie? I don’t really sit around and think about it, but if it came up, I would consider it. It has come up a bunch of times, but I’m also busy doing other things. Ripley has earned her rest.”
Much as some folks might feel the “Alien” franchise just shouldn’t trudge on without Ripley, that’s not going to happen and Weaver has seemingly more than made her peace with that. Then again, final girls rarely stay retired these days (see also: those “Halloween” comparisons again), and if Ripley can somehow come back (sort of) after chucking herself into a furnace at the end of “Alien 3,” who’s to say for certain we’ll never see her again? But we probably won’t, and that’s fine. Let the poor woman have a break already. In the meantime, you can get your Xenomorph fix by catching “Alien: Romulus” in theaters.