Was the queen just the next evolutionary step in xeno life cycle

I like your point... it could be possible the only problem is who laid the eggs? And hopefully that's what Alien: Covenant and the sequel to Alien: Covenant will explain.

It's possible that the Deacon we saw in Prometheus could have laid the eggs. Then the common facehugger bred through a human host would result in the common xenomorph we all love in the franchise, but the Queen is also responsible for being able to lay the same ovomorphs that the Deacon could lay... that wouldn't work.

Possibly the engineer on the Juggernaut ship was impregnated by a royal facehugger which could be a more evolved xeno like you had stated. 

Chris made a topic on this that many of us debated, but i will just cover it again and that indeed, potentially yes the Queen could be something that evolved from the events after Alien, it could be a freak/unforeseen Accident as far as how the Engineers thought those Eggs would have created.  or Black Goo if the Derelict had that as its Cargo.

I dont know about the Deacon being a Egg Layer... the one from Shaws Baby Trilobite was in essence a Human/Xeno/Engineer Hybrid. Born from a Human/Xeno DNA Face Huger.

The Deacon had Human like Hands and Feet, it lacked a lot of other details of the Xeno such as those Dorsal Tubes etc  It had Enamel Teeth like a Mammal, it appeared fully formed and so not a different stage like a Xeno Chest Buster.

And it appeared to be born with a Placenta.

So if its mainly Mammal than Xenomorph, maybe like most Mammals it cant Lay Eggs?  But we cant for sure rule this out.

The Hammerpedes however are from Worms, that maybe similar to Earth Worms... maybe this is where they got their ability to Regrow the Head but at a more rapid rate due to the Black Goo.

If they are from Worms that are similar Biologically to those on Earth, then most Worms are Hermaphrodites and thus have Male and Female Reproductive Organs but they cant procreate on their own...

You need 2X Worms to Mate and then you end up with 2X Worms with Fertilized Eggs.

If the Hammerpedes Evolve on this, then 2X Hammerpedes would need to Mate and we see TWO was together in Prometheus.

So logically indeed Hammerpedes would have Eggs and become Egg Layers.

As far as either Deacon or Hammerpede leading to the Queen?

Maybe or maybe not, but if it was then it does not have to conflict the Alien timeline..

Worms are native maybe to LV-223? They surely was not brought by the Covenant Crew and so Black Goo + those Worms could have happened in the past thousands of years ago.. quite easy if a outbreak happened.

The Deacon would be more difficult... as for it as far as Prometheus showed we need a Female and for one of their Eggs to get infected.

*We cant rule out Engineers in the past taking Human Females to experiment on in the past.

*Paradise will show us Female Engineer like beings, and so if these are Engineers or related, well they have Females.

And thus Females + Black Goo infecting their Eggs would lead to a Trillobite and so regardless of Hammerpede or Deacon.. both could have happened in the Ancient Past thousands of years prior to Prometheus.

So i dont think if we assume these lead to a Queen and those Eggs, i dont think we have to worry about such a Evolutionary path to a Queen being something that happened after Prometheus or Alien Covenant.

I always believed the reason for a deacon being present in Prometheus was because it was carried as a child would be in the ovaries ( through the trilobite)hence the caesarean op whereas a xeno is hibernated in the chest not birthed. The xeno is basically a parasite

I would think the far reaching Origins of both are a Parasite.

The Deacon ultimately was a Plot Device to show the Black Goo was connected to the Xenomorph.... sadly it was not enough of a connection to please many fans.

I hated the trilobite and wasn't to fond of the deacon either...I wish the engineers had been explored further and was hoping the space jockey was a different species as well...but we have to make do with what we were given..I pray we get a better sequel and believe ridley will deliver us a true horror like alien but I still want this universe explored deeper

from what I saw from the mural, the creature looks more like a deacon than xeno or queen, which to me suggests the deacon lays eggs as the mural depicts all stages of the life cycle. we also need to, unfortunately, see how ridley ties all this into the derelicts fate. if he sticks with his original idea then the eggs pre-date Prometheus but doesn't confirm exactly what laid them, as many people have put the differences between the big chap in alien and the xeno in aliens as they may be different forms of xeno due the existence of the queen. if that is accurate then it could be a different form of queen that laid the eggs seen in alien or even a deacon?

What came first, the chicken or the egg? :-) First off, the alien queen is a product from James Cameron and his team, so it is actually not apart of Alien and Prometheus life cycle. It could be that Ridley and his crew have incorperated the ideas of Aliens-Alien Resurrection and the expanded universe but I doubt it. He even mentioned once in an interview that he hated how they were turned into some ants that have a queen and are pawns on a chessboard rather than unique standalone beings you cannot predict. In one cut scene, the captain in alien turned into an egg and looking at Prometheus where they use organic substances and other means to contract a subject and create life.

I think it would be a great asset to involve a queen. That at the time of Prometheus the evolution of this species was bound to humans to evolve before reproduction and then somewhere in the process (perhaps through Davids help) they manage to evolve to beings who dont need other beings to evolve but only to reproduce.

Tried to explain as simple as possible

I get what ur saying about it not being ridleys idea, he went with egg morphing concept but because it wasn't in the theatrical release Cameron came up with the queen. now I prefer the egg morphing concept as its more horrifying but the queen is also a logical theory. though not ridleys initial path to go with a queen, that doesn't mean he wont incorporate it into this series of films hes doing in some way. after all he did like aliens and what Cameron did with it 

I get it too, nice point Ali. I know it was more a territorial fight at the time when Cameron got Ridleys job to do Aliens, so he did bitch a lot about the marines in space, more corperate and not the secret agency not shown directly and the part with the alien queen being more like insects in nature than aliens be predicted. But i am sure Fox and Ridley will incorperate a lot of the movies that came before Covenant :-) as long as there is no Predator who suddenly plops out and steals the show, i will be happy otherwise screw Fox :-)