Was the Deacon shown to us right from the beginning of the movie, on the Mural?

Shambhala: the Deacon is a separate line from the xeno. Somewhere Ridley once said that the engineers could control the xeno, teach it and civilize it. Not so with the trilobite and its Deacon. Why? Because they can't control when or how it is conceived. Human sexuality infected with Bio-former puts the trilobite and Deacon beyond any possibility of the engineers' control, whatsoever. Humans could breed them for the sole purpose of combating the engineers. It's a three step process, C-section the fetus, trilobite and "Deacon" the engineers. Incidentally, these three steps have nothing to do with any other way the Deacon may choose to reproduce itself. This is only to say what "weaponizing" the trilobite and Deacon against the engineers entails. This is what they feared. So, if they sent "Jesus" it was because they knew that a woman's sexuality and her womb was the ultimate weapon. Hence sexual morality, etc. But finally, they decided not to take any chances, eliminate the human species. We don't know the order of their experiments. What we do know is that human reproduction throws a weaponized curve ball into the mix for the engineers.

I also think that Svanya has put her finger on an additional matter. But here's the thing, it all comes down to a matter of control, or the lack thereof. The engineers can't control the lethality of bio-former once it is combined with human sexuality. Period.

@Svanya, Yeah, If the Deacon evolves into a queen, perhaps the first "impregnation" (male and female) generated a sexual determination in the creature. Anyway this creature needs to reproduce, and if it is hermaphrodite then will have to evolve into a fertile female that can lay eggs. Unless of course that the Deacon continue to be hermaphrodite and become their victims in cocoons as the first Xenomorph. But anyway it is quite possible that the sexuality of Xenomorphs has much to do with human contact with the Black Bioformer and explains the point of the queen.

@Gahlaktus, "A king has his ring and then he dies...it's inevitable"...Yeah, it is possible that human beings are destined to dethrone the Engineers, and they know it. Then they tried to exterminate mankind but for some reason changed their minds for 2000 years. (And then again one of them want to kill us). The Deacon may be a collateral version of the Xenomorph, an ancestor, or the latest in weaponry. However, in Prometheus we have something similar to what we see in the Star Wars prequels, and that something is a Huge! technological contrast, For now I think the Prometheus compare with the Nostromo is similar to comparing the Derelict with the Juggernaut.. But the Urns certainly seem more advanced and manageable than the eggs.

Shambhala: I agree but that always always happens with movies until someone makes up a convenient fiction explaining away those differences and inconsistencies.

[i]Well here's a little problem, because the Xenomorph can be impregnated in men and women.. So if Deacon can only be the result of a Trilobite in the womb of a woman...well...then the Deacon would be an ancestor of the Xenomorph and not an updated version.[/i] On the contrary, the need for a Deacon's creation to be dependent on the impregnation of an infected man laying his seed within a woman MAKES the Deacon an updated version of the Xenomorph. Man hasn't been around long enough for it to be an ancestor. I have more to say, but let's chew on this a bit.

I think Gahlaktus is really onto something. I don't think the Engineers can reproduce via heterosexual pairings either. Earth may have been interesting to them because a male/female dichotomy, which produces infinite genetic diversity very easily, was already established here when they originally mixed in their DNA. I'm not convinced that the black goo is their original technology. I believe they may have stolen it from THEIR gods. Hence, the worshipful nature of the temple room(s).

I don't mean to be cras, but did you just say that engineers are homosexuals with the added benefit of being able to conceive? Seeing that they're 100% genetic matches to us and they either have penises or vaginas (or both)......hold up......I've gotten myself all confused now picturing engineer sex.

sukkal : I agree with you. I think they stole it too. Not only that, after really thinking about the real substance behind Svanya's post, moreover, and reading the wonderful link on the Sumerian sources behind Prometheus that she provided. I think I know where the LV 426 Space Jockey was headed : he and his group were headed to the home world of the creators, the naga, or dragon lords to, wipe them out with the xeno. The Prometheus group was headed to earth to wipe it out. About a month ago there was this guy who swore he had seen a version of Prometheus, where at the end, Shaw was on the way to the home world of a group of "banana headed" highly intelligent extraterrestrials who were humanities true creators. He got shouted down and called a fraud and was never heard from again. Now, after having read the stuff that Svanya provided, I'm inclined to think that's where Shaw is going to wind up-- at the home world of the naga. We're going to have a Paradise Lost scenario, which to my mind is a good thing. I happen to love Milton. His gloomy world is quite like the one on LV 223.

hi iv just joined after reading through all your comments and iv just watched the film I must say that I was expecting more, mainly answers really but never mind, it is still a great film and will be going to see it again, as I said I read through what you all have said and iv watched and listened to what R.S has said, but I cant help but think that he is hiding something its like he is talking in riddles, what I have put together is that this film in his eyes is not a prequel but more like a prequel to a prequel if that makes sense, Its connected but not directly and I think that is because there is more to come. He talks about this being a separate story that precedes the story of Alien but is not directly connected to that franchise. According to Scott, though the film shares "strands of Alien's DNA, so to speak", and takes place in the same universe, Prometheus will explore its own mythology and ideas. So although Prometheus may well not be directly connected to alien the next one might be, only time will tell.

The 'Deacon' and the 'Xenomorph' exist roughly contemporaneously. This means they are two different species with a common ancestor. There is not enough information in the film to tell which of the two species is closest to the common ancestor, and thus more primitive than the other species. Chimpanzees and humans exist at the same time. They did not evolve from one another. They share a common ancestor. It is also important to note that the "Engineers" did not truly design humans, but merely used their own DNA to derive life on Earth. They didn't create the original design, they simply exploited it. This was likely the case with the Xenomorphs as well. They took an existing, dangerous, organism and monkeyed around with in an effort to make it predictable enough to control and lethal. I think many of the organisms encountered in the movie are not related to the Xenomorph at all. These were simply other types of biological weapons that the Engineers were experimenting with.

Guys I read everything and just want to say that this is giving me an orgasim but I Am just a little confused on one thing. If this goo was suppose to be involved into the spawning of this deacon alien, then why does that guy with the mohawk ( can't think of his name ) turn into a killer super zombie? Just wanted to say that David is a reaper dooms day device and he indoctrinated weyland

I believe the Black Goo is universal cosmic slime that acts as a vehicle or host for life to emerge. It was no afterthought that the first Engineer went to the water for his sacrifice since the our primordial planet was greater than 75% water and what was needed as a conduit to spread infinite amounts of DNA. since we share their DNA as homosapiens we are a match as their distant descendants. It would have been interesting if shaw had compared their DNA with Neanderthals DNA.

I don't know if anyone has mentioned this before and I do apologize for my redundancy if someone has, but I was also looking at the concept art and I enlarged the image of the creature crouching beneath the Engineer and I compared the arms to that of the creature holding the Alien egg and they are one and the same. I don't know what that creature is or if that's it's head or a facehugger attached after exposing itself to an open egg. I don't know if it is even connected to the film but it should be.

What if the Engineers did not create the Xenos in the first place? Maybe the black goo is a mutagen derived from Xeno DNA. Behind the mural/door/tomb is an egg silo or maybe even a queen. The engineers found the Xenos somewhere and decided to use them for research or to weaponize them. They would need "lab rats" that are genetically similar to them so they create humans. Bring the ooz back to your petri dish and see what happens. The dead engineers in the facility lost control of the Xenos as happens when one tries to control them. The first engineer in the film was trying to stop the development of the Xeno DNA by destroying the facility/polluting the water supply.

@Gahlaktus Your posts on Jun-09-2012 10:59 PM & Jun-09-2012 11:42 PM are exactly what I was thinking after I watched the movie, almost word for word.

Draconis : I agree with you Prometheus is a vast riddle. RS wants us to think and question. I also think he's hiding a lot that he intends to reveal later. He also has hidden some things right in front of our eyes.

wilv : I was just following the logic of Svanya's original post. If I assumed that what she had posted was true then it followed - given the events of the movie - you don't need a facehugger to birth a Deacon if you're a woman. Now, that would have to be absolutely scary for an engineer. Why? Because a woman can midwife the life cycle without apparent loss of life. No derelicts. Midwives are weapons. They can take down - no pun intended - the engineers. That's absolutely scary and powerful. Remember RS directed Thelma & Louise, he created Ripley. Now Shaw. The concept that WE all mutually exposed as a consequence of Svanya's post is something RS would do. Incidentally, as a consequence of her role in Thelma & Louise, and conversations with women over the years, Geena Davis is now doing unique women-centered work in the state of California. Big things have small beginnings. Thought you guys might like to know.

[i]Because a woman can midwife the life cycle without apparent loss of life. No derelicts. Midwives are weapons. They can take down - no pun intended - the engineers.[/i] If this is so, and I don't disagree, then was probably what motivated the engineer to go after Shaw after crashing as opposed to heading to the next ship. He was trying to quarantine/contain the "wombs-day-weapon" ; ).

Here is why I feel the Deacon is a proto-xeno. The Deacon is the outcome from the ooze in the shrine. Never once did we see what was actually in a 'finished urn'. The urn that David took, came from the shrine, that was actually locked down, and put in a form of hybernation, cryo-stasis. When David opened the shrine, that kicked off the life cycle of those urns. All creatures that we saw, were a product of the shrine. The urns loaded into the Juggernaut were the final product, and did not require special treatment to keep them dormant. Whatever lurked in those only required delivery to the unsuspecting planet(s) that the Engineers were planning to 'attack'. I look at the shrine's urns as the stepping stones to the final product, which could, in fact, be the bio-mechanical xenomorph of Alien and Aliens. I tend to disagree with the fact that the derelict on 426 is millions of years old. I would like say it is one of the few Engineer ships that was able to evacuate 233. Technological evolution is why I believe this. Even 40 years of time, is enough to completely change technology to a point where it would no longer appear anything like it's predecessors. The Derelict on 426, and the ships of 233 had the exact same design. Surely they would have engineered a better design in millions of years. Just look at the differences between the ship that seeded Earth, versus the Juggernauts. I also feel that there isn't anyway for Deacon to be a female. Since it's make-up is comprised of the host's genetic composition, I feel Deacon has to be a male. Shaw gave birth to an egg layer, Ripley hosted a Queen. Every other 'Alien birth' we've witness has been male, due to the host being male. It stands to reason that the Xenomorph takes on it's hosts composition. Now whether we have a scenario where the genetic composition of the Xeno allows it's species to 'change sex', as some reptiles, bugs and fish, can do on Earth, is yet to be determined. I consider Deacon to be more of a male Frankenstein creature, seeded by an older ooze, and birthed in an unorthodox method that the Engineers did not expect. Other thoughts.. The derelict on 426 already delivered it's payload, before succumbing to it's demise, which will explain the lack of Urns. Perhaps it ran and escaped the outbreak on 233, before even getting loaded, with the pilot not knowing it was infected.

Abordoli : I think so. The engineer couldn't allow Shaw to live. She knew their vulnerability. In fact, she put it together quite quickly - she channeled Lisbeth Salander, yelled "Diiiie", hit the button and released the trilobite. The engineer died. She knows how to kill them. What she hasn't figured out is "why they want to kill us." Of course, the real answer was staring us in the face all the time. But if the main character doesn't feign ignorance we wouldn't have a sequel. Now, we wouldn't want that now would we?

Lampodi : I do think the engineers created the xeno but they did so accidentally. Look once again at the wall mural. That's what the engineers were trying to create, a perfect fusion of engineer and something else. That something else wasn't a xeno. I believe the creature portrayed in the wall mural is quite advanced and highly intelligent. It is like a dragon or naga. In ancient mythologies the naga, or snakes and dragons emerge from the primeval waters as the true creators of life. Nowadays we call them waveforms or superstrings. The ancients viewed these waveforms as gods because they conceived them to be superconscious, creative, and highly intelligent. I will suggest to you that the engineers were their servitors at some point and rebelled. These beings have powers the engineers don't have. I think the engineers were trying to recreate these beings by merging one of them with an engineer--perhaps the engineer signaled by the presence of the big head. That experiment failed but created the xeno and other lifeforms to which the engineers were susceptible. They died as a consequence of these monstrosities. Behind that wall is the body of that failed experiment in stasis.

Majestic Lizard : What an appropriate name! I think you're right the engineers didn't create humanity but were the servitors of those who did. They were the servitors of beings that resembled the being in the wall mural. I think they may be at war, or were once at war. Hence the "military" facility at LV 223. In the minds of the engineers human beings are rivals for the regard of these beings. Human beings can also midwife the Deacon without facehuggers. Perhaps the engineers believe human beings are genetically programmed to be able to to be used as weapons by the nagas in their war with the engineers. such a way (by the creators-- the nagas) Humans are natural allies of the nagas. They can be used without ever knowing about either the nagas or the engineers. This is the logic of the situation however crazy it sounds. And it sounds pretty crazy to me. A quantum physicist once said that another quantum physicists theory had to wrong because it wasn't crazy enough. That's a true story. By that reasoning this post has to be so crazy that it's somewhere in the neighborhood of truth.

Here's an amazingly clear image of the mural I found in another thread that also shows facehuggers. [img]http://img651.imageshack.us/img651/2910/georgeft.jpg[/img]

Okay everybody, just hold your horses right here. Some of you feel (and I am NOT shuting anyone down here) that the "proto Xeno" isn't a prototype at all. This is because the dating presented in this film suggest that this ship and its contents are younger that of the "Alien" spacecraft and ITS contents. I disagree here because of one reason and I'd really love you all to let me know if this makes sense. We know from a long line of movies and stories that the "xenomorph" takes on some characteristics of its host prior to birthing. Have any of you considered that the Deacon is simply our first glance at a Xeno coming out of an engineer? Have you considered that THAT is why Deacon doesn't look like the later Xenomorphs? Ridley Scott himself said in an interview that the xeno here was to the well known xeno as apes are to us. I know that the dates in the movie are odd, but maybe we weren't meant to have all of the answers just yet. I Believe that Scott has much more in store for us and i do believe that, despite the carbon dating etc., Deacon is only Deacon because he came out of an engineer and the xenomorph we all know and love is the pinnacle. In all honesty if you all want to take the dates seriously then try this. LV 426 has the ship with the eggs and Prometheus doesn't use eggs but base ingredients for evolutionary mutation. So is it to hard to think that maybe the engineers had in fact already perfected the Xenomorph and thats what is on LV 426 and the Planet in Prometheus is jus the factory used to put ingredients together? It even suggests that Deacon might be a fluke because humans got in the way of the Xenomorph evolutionary line and "D" ended up in an engineer and not a human. I think he hardly looks like the most advanced bioweapon compared to the Xeno we know and love. Food for thought fellas, lemme kno what you think.

I'd never noticed the humanoid figure on the bottom left, with an original Giger design facehugger attached. Kewl.

Imagery of the Deacon from the film (and moreso from the Artwork book) bring to mind the videogame MDK from a few years ago: http://www.myfreewallpapers.net/games/wallpapers/mdk-2.jpg

@artyoh : I noticed that and honestly i think that makes perfect sense if you jus read my description about how im pretty sure that the Xenomorph we all know was already created by the engineers and there was a batch of em already on the ship on LV 426. the face hugger in the mural is the small one we're all used to seeing which would mean that they had already been prerfected. I'm tellin you guys, Humans reactivated this desolate factory and their Android messed with the order of how the goo gets used to creat xenos and the resulting sequence of events made Deacon. Though i will say that i bet Deacon-like accidents (or maybe not accidents) have happened on this planets facility before because that mural DOES look jus like that bugger.

NICnac: I think that's right. The LV 426 xeno precedes the Deacon. In one interview RS said that the LV 426 space jockey was a member of an alternate group of engineers that left LV 223 about one hundred years before the events that befell the engineers on LV 223. His cargo got out of control. He landed on LV 426. The rest is history.

Someone else also pointed out that if you look at the entire mural from a distance the thing looks like a xeno egg. That to me is further indication that the Engineers were well aware of the xenos we know. [img]http://i.imgur.com/Ib9zs.jpg[/img]

@Shambhala: Not an egg...the bag is the placenta...after-birth.

NICnac I think your onto something there XD

[i]I'd never noticed the humanoid figure on the bottom left, with an original Giger design facehugger attached. Kewl.[/i] Not only that, I see flying face-huggers too. Any thoughts as to what that is above the xeno's head. Looks a bit "queenish" to me. Thoughts? [url=http://img651.imageshack.us/img651/2910/georgeft.jpg][img]http://img651.imageshack.us/img651/2910/georgeft.jpg[/img][/url]

Antony is right it does iv been trying to see wot else is in it and kept looking at that lol thanks :)

I think it's pretty clear that the "Deacon" Alien we see at the end of the movie is a primative form of the xenomorph and that the carving in the ampule room is meant to be a generic representation. 1. The ampule room is the temple that Ridley Scott originally wanted in the 1979 Alien movie before Fox cut the budget. He discusses this at length in the Making of Alien documentary on the bonus features DVD. 2. The Deacon carving is a re-worked version of the birthing cycle art by HR Giger that was slated to appear in the temple in Alien 1979. The carving simply conveys the ideas (a) this is a violent & predatory organism, (b) this is how the organism works, e.g. egg to facehugger to chestburster, which grows up to be the Alien, and (c) this is the birthing chamber where that process starts. 3. The black goo is the seed that begins the process. The process is iterative and relies on evolution to produce the end result. This is clear from the progression in the movie. The first generation of the "Alien" is the host mutated by the black goo. The best example of this is Fifield. If you watch carefully, after being sprayed with acid, he lands face first in the black goo before his helmet melts to his face. After a period of time, he becomes a monster with superhuman strength and perfect hostility, but without the structural perfection that Ash describes in Alien 1979. The "cobralien" or mutated worms are the same first generation version, which we see writing in the black goo as the team leaves after the first visit. 4. The second generation of the Alien was created by Charlie, a first generation Alien-in-progress, impregnating Shaw. Here the technology has its first chance to evolve and does so, changing its shape and abilities. It no longer uses the host for anything but gestation, similar to how the cycle is intended to work as described by the ampule room carving. 5. The "deacon" is the third generation, implanted into the engineer at the end of the movie. Here we finally see the cycle we would expect to see; that is, host gets impregnated by a facehugger followed by a chestburster, which eventually grows up into a primative xenomorph. Given enough cycles of this, we would expect a queen to emerge, which will begin to produce eggs, and the entire cycle repeats and enhances itself. This is the intended outcome of the technology, going all the way back to the carving. 6. The "Deacon" carving doesn't have to be the Deacon we see at the end. It was common for HR Giger to have multiple versions of the Alien that each looked sightly different in his art. It also doesn't really look like the Deacon at the end of the movie (in my opinion).

Yes @ Shambhala good eye, I wonder the same thing after watching the movie yesterday, but if it is as others have suggested then the Xenos from Alien and not the Proto-Xeno from Prometheus pre-date humanity or perhaps humanity is much older than what we think. 2000 years into the past according to what we see in the movie our creators for some unknown reason decided to wipe the slate clean and as David sated some times to create you must destroy.

Four things I would like to point out: 1. In the Mural, if you look at the shape around the Deacon, you will see the Queens "Crown" or crest. 2. When you see the Deacon stand up you will notice lines on the top of its head, IN the shape of the crest which foreshadows an evolution and the crest unfolding from the head. 3. Ridley states in an interview that the Juggernaught on LV-426 did not crash but it was a forced landing. He also states that something had entered the cargo hold at some point and evolved and began laying the eggs and caused the pilot to set down and become infected as well as set the warning beacon. 4. If you look at a close up of the ORIGINAL Queen Alien's head, she has 3 pieces of carapace covering her face. the top two are fused but there is a definite line showing the original piece. Also the Queen's lower jaw is longer than the top jaw at times, just like the Deacon, and last but not least, the hands. The Deacons hands are almost identical to the Queens and of course as it evolves there will come the second pair of arms. Obviously, considering it's birthing state and the second head piece, Deacon's evolution is HIGHLY accelerated and may explain the quick transformation to reproduce, hence the eggs on the Juggernaught and our dead pilot on LV-426. The mural OBVIOUSLY depicts the Deacon as well as the egg/Facehugger cycle and the Xenomorph, which means it has happened before and plays into the theme from Thus Spoke Zarathustra of Eternal Recurrence. Everything that HAS happened WILL happen again and may explain why we have dead engineers with chests burst in the stasis chamber and the trigger of the evacuation from the facility. Basically an experiment gone horribly wrong. Another thing stated in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, which is what the plot came from, says that eventually every entity will create something beyond itself and will ultimately be destroyed by it.

Another thing to point out that I just thought of, and someone else brought this up, is the fact that David seems to know EXACTLY how to create the Deacon meaning it MUST have happened before for him to gain the knowledge either from the walls or the ooze.

I'm going to go ahead and assume that the design of the Proto-Xeno/Deacon was largely due to the fact that It is still a baby (think of it like its a chestburster) and its still going to grow. Therefore it can have a very basic, sleek design, so that if it reappears in adult form, Ridley Scott can make it look basically however he wants. It makes me wonder why people are hating on its design, when I was easily able to come to this conclusion as I was walking out of the theater. Its not like I'm a genius. Yea it looks simple and basic and there's not much to it. Of course it doesn't look as sexy as the classic Xenomorph. Its not supposed to. Its not a fully fleshed out creature. Its basically a concept design that will probably be elaborated on in the sequel(s). And when a sequel is made, he can have the Deacon be in adult form and alter its appearance as he sees fit.

Well, in the Mural we can see the classic facehuggers, then Xenomorphs are very old. But recently abordoli found an article that gives us a couple of new possibilities: 1) The Xenomorphs are of natural origin, but are difficult to handle and contain. And the engineers decided to create their own versions that resulted in a failed experiment. 2) Zeta Reticuli is a binary star system, and LV-223 and LV-426 are moons of different planets (possibly one on each system)