[WARNING: THIS ARTICLE CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR ALIEN: ROMULUS]
Every entry in the Alien franchise features a special variation of the iconic Xenomorph, whether it be the warrior variant in James Cameron’s Aliens or the ‘protomorph’ created by David in Alien: Covenant.
Naturally, Alien: Romulus also shares its variant of a xenomorph dubbed the Alien Offspring, and to everyone’s surprise, he’s played by an internet celebrity.
Who Plays the Final Monster in Alien: Romulus?
For context, when Alien: Romulus hit theaters, the internet was immediately flooded with reactions and memes. One joke was that the final alien in the movie—which had some disturbing human features—looked a lot like Robert Bobroczky, an internet personality who had become a meme for being the tallest teenager in the world.
At 13 years old, Bobroczky had already grown to 7’4” in height, and he would then gain a few more inches and play high school basketball at 7’7”.
Posts like this have been coming out:
To everyone’s surprise, the Alien Offspring in the movie was actually Bobroczky himself, and Romulus had turned out to be his first acting gig. Imagine the surprise on some fans when the guy they were memeing about turned out to be the actual actor:
This was a video of Bobroczky circulating a few years ago:
The Variants in Alien: Romulus
Though the traditional xenomorph does appear in the movie, the Alien Offspring was a result of a very complicated mix of a human child and the mother injecting herself with a manmade serum that was derived from some xeno ‘facehuggers.’
In the film, the serum was developed in order to give its recipient instant healing powers and resilience like the xenomorphs, but based on what was seen in the lab, there were still a few kinks that the serum had to work out i.e., the mouse they shot up with it exploded into an unholy mass of black alien material.
Though the Alien Offspring does have human features, it still has classic xenomorph parts like the tail, the silver teeth, and the inner mouth. It kind of looks like someone stretched a human around a xenomorph body—but the silhouette undoubtedly belongs to Bobroczky.
Offspring vs. Hybrid
It is worth noting that the Alien Offspring isn’t the franchise’s first attempt at making a human-like xenomorph. Back in 1997, Alien Resurrection had introduced something called ‘The Hybrid’ which was a result of cloning human and xenomorph DNA. Check this out:
The Hybrid itself was considered a different kind of disturbing, and the Offspring in Romulus is considered by some to be an homage to it—despite its reputation among the fandom as one of the worst alien variants to come out of the franchise.
Admittedly, Romulus wasn’t perfect, but it definitely sparked some new discussions in the Alien fandom, and some new appreciation has been shown for underrated entries like Prometheus and Covenant. Fingers crossed that 20th Century Studios greenlights a sequel soon.
Alien: Romulus is now showing in theaters.