In general, it’s a fascinating bit of franchising studio-think because it would obviously never happen today, right? In an era of endless sequels and shared universes, killing off any major characters, particularly fan favorites, with all the pomp and circumstance of brushing your teeth before bed is a comically short-sighted move that risks aggravating a fanbase.

It remains to be seen if Alien: Covenant defying this conventional wisdom will have any similar negative blowback, particularly since Prometheus is no Aliens. After a flawed movie that has as many detractors as it does devotees, there is a reason Scott and company felt compelled to rewrite their franchise’s Bible and make it about David and the xenomorph. Still, in the context of just the quality of Covenant, it makes for unsatisfying storytelling and, I would argue, robs Scott of making the best possible movie.

To Alien: Covenant’s credit, it treats this course correction with more solemnity than Alien 3. In the 2017 movie, the missing and deceased Elizabeth Shaw is a lingering presence over all of the actions taken by Michael Fassbender’s David. Even for a duplicitous robot with a God Complex, the synthetic is definitely aware that he did something truly cruel. Remembering his dead human companion with the reverence of a child grieving a parent, it takes a while for him to admit that there is no body beneath the grave and flowers he designated for her. More like Oedipus than the Prometheian Greek tragedy of his ship’s namesake, he slaughtered his mother so he could be his own man (and god).

On the flipside, however, it also opens the movie for a rather regressive cultural reading, which is odd since Scott’s heroines are often presented with such feminist strength, including Shaw. In the end, the woman he depicted as having enough of a survival instinct to perform an abortion on herself, lest she be forced to carry a monster to birth by David, becomes nothing but an alien-baby farm for the male and misogynistic robot. One he drugs up and uses to help give birth to his apparently numerous experiments, ever violating her compliant body.

This has profoundly problematic implications. This movie’s new female lead, Daniels (Katherine Waterston), is aghast to discover that David killed her and worse. And as the prequel series noticeably strains in its shift of focus from one heroine to another, it unintentionally admits the human (and female) characters matter not at all. This is really David’s series now. Whoever he’s tucking in (likely with bed bugs) is incidental. Fodder for his fantasies.