Indeed Originally Prometheus was setting up to show us the Engineers are the Space Jockeys and a Advanced Race of Genetic Engineers.

It was to show us the Black Goo is connected to the Xenomorph, their is a link Genetically.  This link was hinted that the Connection is thus.

1) The Xenomorph is Evolved from the Black Goo its Creation is via a series of events connected to the Black Goo.  And thus the Black Goo Originated from something Genetically Related.

2) The Black Goo originated from the Xenomorph

3) The Xenomorph and other Related Organisms, had originated from another Origin and the Engineers attempted to intermix, hybrid and Perfect a Organism related and when they had achieved this... the results they stored within the Urns as the Black Goo.

The clues were there to show us that the Xenomorph could potentially had been linked to the Outbreak that killed off those Engineers 2000 years ago.

RS even confirmed the connection by saying the Derelict Event happened within a Few Hundred years of that Outbreak.

But now they have seemed to throw us a Curve-ball which seems to hint David creates the Xenomorph which means the Eggs on the Derelict are no more than 10 years old.

But again FOX/RS could again change things to indeed show us David just Re-created it.

I agree with the Theme, and how it could lead to David Ultimately being destroyed/overthrown and Rebelled against/Failing to control his own Creation.

Just as Weylands Creation David had done, and just as the Engineers Creation Mankind had done and i think this Process could go back even further than the Engineers.

The mural in Prometheus is of a Deacon. Steve Messing, the guy who did the mural, stated it as such. The Deacon is an ancestor to the Xenomorph strain we see David create. The facehuggers on the mural are Giger's original design thus reaffirming the ancestry. The Engineers would use these bioweapons to cleanse worlds. David learned of their ways and perfected what the Engineers have done with the black goo. The derelict spacecraft/space jockey age could have been mistaken as well. Dallas thought the exosuit the Engineers wore were an exoskeleton like the crew of the Prometheus. Dallas also isn't a scientist but a space trucker. That was his assumption. I don't get why people dislike that David created the Xeno but different strokes. I also haven't been a part of the franchise since it's conception either but it makes sense and is very interesting angle. If he isn't the creator of the Xenos then the prequels narrative would be pointless and it would fall apart. I do believe his creation will turn against him for his hubris.

I think thats why RS went for the David creates the Xeno... as a tale of Hubris where as the last chain of Creation, David is finally the one who can handle and Perfect what the Engineers had done.

The Engineers attempt to create the Black Goo Bio-Weapon proved too costly as they attempt to eradicate their creation because we become rebellious and they worried what we could transpire too.

This Black Goo proved to be a great downfall as they failed to control and contain it...

Thus Mankind went on to evolve and Create David, a Hubris for Mankind because its via David that Mankind could now be faced with Destruction from him taking what the Engineers intended to use on us... and Turn it on the Engineers and then experiment on it to create what the Engineers failed to Perfect and Contain..

And then Turn this on Mankind.

So tale would be if Mankind had not created David, then none of this may have happened (death to Engineers) potential Xeno threat to Mankind.

But then to the Engineers, if they had not attempted to create the Bio-Weapon or indeed Mankind in the first place, then they would not have suffered the destruction they had seen at the hands of the Black Goo.

So i think RS is very interested in the idea, they Sub-creating a Creation that has the potential to become AI and seeing itself as Creator than its creator or seeing that it does not have to serve its creator..

And how this has profound consequences, is something RS is very interested in.

Lawrence of Arabia How could the deacon be an ancestor of the xenomorph? it is the product of an engineer getting impregnated by Shaw's offspring, which was conceived through sexual intercourse. So the deacon is a pretty random occurrence.

Steve Messing did refer to the Mural as a Deacon....

it is not the same Deacon as the end of the movie though, but its so ambiguous, some see the Mural as a Prophecy of what was to come... Ultimately it could just be a Easter Egg

I see the Mural as the Engineers encountering some Organism/Parasite that leads to something related to the Xenomorph as far as a Organism that has similar Life Cycle, that allowed the Engineers to Once again having some kind of Child-Birth.

They then took a great interest in this and the results and began experimenting on these Organisms, until they had created the Deacon in the Mural.

Pleased with their Perfection... they Sacrificed this to the Sacrificial Substance then stored the broken down Deacon DNA within those Urns.

A Egg Cell evolves into a Embryo, the Early Stage of a Embryo looks very similar in Reptiles, Birds, Amphibians, Fish and Mammals.

A Zygote is thus a BLANK Canvas... with less DNA to Re-write and so the Xeno/Black Goo does not have to change as much DNA and so we get something more Pure to the Origin... but also the Zygote growing in the Womb will take on Traits of the Mother.

We end up with a Human/Xeno-Black Goo Hybrid Embryo which Evolves to the Trilobite Human/Xeno-Black Goo Hybrid Face Hugger.

joylitt Not necessarily. The fact that it happened between Shaw and Holloway is a random occurrence but I don't believe this process just happened resulting in a new creature. If the mural is of any Xenomorph like creature, how was it made? I'm sure the Engineers came up with a similar process, like David, and created the Deacons with manipulation of the black goo or the goo came from the Deacons. In Furious Gods: The Making of Prometheus they state that the Deacon is an ancestor and that the mural is of the Deacon. In the Art and Making of Prometheus they even call it the Proto-Xenomorph.

I don't think the xenomorph was created by David or by the Engineers.

joylitt

I don't think the xenomorph was created by David or by the Engineers.

I Hope you are right. Its takes away their lore and mythos. Perhaps the "Morph" code is embedded in every living organisms DNA coding, a malicious ghost in the machine that the Engineers discovered, experimented on, then weaponised with the Black Pathogen as an evolutionary accelerant/mutagen catalyst.

 Then David continued from that...

Many scientists argue that an intelligent species might not necessarily be the most successful. Actually this is a constant in all Alien movies... the creature always prevails. Ripley and David might win some battles, but the xenomorph wins the war.

joylitt exactly. Perfect example. A virus.

@ joylitt

"I don't think the xenomorph was created by David or by the Engineers."

I like that.  It's like the Engineers are no better than humans if that angle you purpose turns to be true.  Currently, we are led to believe the Engineers are gods.  

We could even say we are led to believe the Engineers are Gods, with a capital 'G'.  Still, I guess that is implied.

But, with your angle, it would turn out that the Engineers are no better than the scientists in A:R and I guess all human space capitalists.

I like this angle.  Through this angle, we could really learn who the Engineers are.  Then, by the end of the story, we realize, they have just more history.  

In the end, both humans and Engineers would want the Xeno because it is the perfect creature.  The question is though, "Where did the Engineers get the Xeno DNA to study and abuse for themselves?"

I Moon Girl This wouldn't contradict what we've seen in Prometheus... the idea that we find our creators who turn out to be these flawed beings.

WHERE I THINK SIR RIDLEY SCOTT SHOULD BE GOING...

far far far away from any future ALIEN films. 

????? unnecessary duplicate. No delete post option, Mods?

Barf The Mog lol far far away huh? are you suggesting he should make a Star Wars flick? 

IRaptus 

Spot on. I am becoming puzzled as to why this issue has legs.

Despite some tactical flaws in the presentation the strategic arc is clear.

The Big Picture - Creationism 

The story -

Where - The Alien Pathogen with the Engineers evolving the Deacon outcome. The most interesting element of both P and A C is offering a creation myth based around sacrificial rituals which explains how you receive an invasive parasitical lifecycle based on nonconsensual sacrfice.  

Who - David with ADF offering a door to another view.

Where people will really get bent out of shape is not whether the origins of the creature are ancient, they are and we have reached the protomorph, with the guy who jumps on the wind shield, its whether the Jockey incident is portrayed as real time rather than ancient. It looks and feels like Ridley is backing into it current time frame.    

joylitt - gosh no! Ridley Scott is just an over-hyped director. 

I wish the MIB memory erasure tool were real so we can forget Ridley Scott attempted to resurrect new life in the Alien franchise. 

Scott's prequels are on par with Lucas'. 

The Jockey incident would have been better left as it looked in Alien, ancient.

The biomechanical traits of the xenomorph would be inherited from the biomechanical technology used by the engineers rather than from android fingering the black goo ampules.

I got it, David wanted to play God and create his beautiful bestiary, even his perfect organism, which imo is awesome, but he cannot match the engineers when it comes to creation.

I would like that Ridley would go back to the original O'Bannon script, at least as a flashback scene, to the extinct alien world and the pyramid filled with eggs which he did not create in Alien because of insufficient funding. That would be the world of the creature portrayed in the mural from Prometheus, creature that engineers managed to re-create in the shape of the Deacon. 

I wonder now if a female engineer would have been infected the same way Shaw was infected by Holloway the result would have been the same: the Trilobite.  The Trilobite by his dimensions was not for humans but for engineers' size hosts.  Like a giant face hugger.

Imo it would have been better to have a more xeno like creature chestbursting the engineer and let the Deacon be the mythical figure on the mural. Then David would have done reverse engineering and have his own pet.

I like both Prometheus and Covenant but if David is going to be the Space Jockey then the beast would be always remembered as his toy pet. Perfect composure, highly aggressive but as it burst out of Oram's chest, fragile, a porcelain monster. I think we should not have seen it like that at all. However, the fact of different chestburster from Alien, with his ancestral fear of snakes shape gives me hope that David has not the final say into the xenomorph story.

David was a great character and Fassbender is the greatest actor of his generation and more, but the focus has to move to the otherwordly beings now.

If David is The missing link, then, in my opinion, it is a weak link. I honestly find it hard to accept David in the pilot chair from the derelict ship. That pilot has to be at least an engineer if not someone above engineers. 

David has to die by the hand of his own creation before it is too late, let him taste his own chestburst on board the Covenant. Like the engineers from LV223. 

As a joke, in the book there were 3 facehuggers he took on board the Covenant? Let's hope he swallowed the third one and somehow the facehugger managed to turn into a chestburster. End of David.

The ALIEN franchise lost major credibility due to the theatrical release of Covenant.  

daliens The writers should avoid the obvious. The derelict from Alien could very well be part of the fleet that never made it to Earth 2000 years ago due to the outbreak that was hinted at in Prometheus.

 joylitt in Prometheus there were no eggs shown, only ampules of pathogen. Did I miss something?

joylitt please define obvious.

For some it is obvious that David created the xenomorph and he is the best candidate to sit on the Space Jockey chair.

For others it is obvious the derelict is way older than David at least.

joylitt I believe that even the supporters of David as Space Jockey would be relieved if writers decide a different fate for David.

daliens But something happened to the spacejockey. He gave birth to something... and lots of things can happen in 2000 years. On top of that, isn't it kinda funny the fact that the vases have roughly the same shape and size as the eggs?

At this point, the obvious would be David as the spacejockey.

joylitt I hope you are right.

I wonder who will tell the story after David. It will be hard to find somebody else to match him, as hard as watching David until the end of the next movie.

Could it be Walter? :)

"But something happened to the spacejockey. He gave birth to something... and lots of things can happen in 2000 years. On top of that, isn't it kinda funny the fact that the vases have roughly the same shape and size as the eggs?"

How come I never thought of that? The eggs be put in the hold by the creature that burst out of the Space Jockey.  It makes perfect sense.

joylitt you are brilliant.

Michelle Johnston your comments are always very, very insightful. However, the arc that you mention is made clear only after watching the short "The Advent", which unfortunately has an unreliable narrator: David, who is crazy. But your interpretation is very consistent and not very far from my own. There is one big question mark that connects all the loose pieces of this puzzle: why the Engineers wanted to destroy human kind. I believe David knows why, he just wouldn't tell.

AshN117

Good point David being delusional, seeing himself as God and creator of the xenomorph. The engineers created the mutagen/pathogen which is the real weapon of mass destruction (which we see in Alien: Covenant where the engineers are wiped out by David).

The black goo mutates its host and can turn it into anything depending on the host (different outcome if it’s a dog, human, engineer etc). David hasn’t created anything new (but he thinks so in his delusions).

David has now given the information about the mutagen (and what it can lead to) to WY so everything must probably go up in smoke in the next movie, and a flashback scene at the end (an engineer leaves LV-223 in a juggernaut filled with eggs) leads to LV-426?