The fundamental question; who's the space jockey (AC Plot Spoilers)

I think what Ridley has done with Covenant and Prometheus is actually quite clever though perhaps it wasn't necessarily intentional. After Prometheus there was some backlash to what Ridley had done specifically over the fact he hadn't incorporated the Xenomorph into the film which to use his word he felt had been, 'cooked' and so with Covenant he basically did a Force Awakens and made a movie for Alien fans. Now in that he obviously had to continue the story of Prometheus whilst making an Alien movie so we had the big revelation of David suppossedly creating Xenomorphs which has from what I can tell annoyed a lot of fans.

But, it isn't directly stated or implied at all that David created the entire species. Now I don't doubt that was the intention and personally I think it's a pretty cool thread to follow bringing in that whole God vs man trope where the Engineers created humanity which it came to fear specifically when humanity made AI (rightly so given what David does in Covenant) and then the AI made the Xenomorph so you have that theme in these prequels that the creation of a groups creation is created to destroy that first group. So humans made AI, probably not to kill Engineers but that's what happens, David arrives on Paradise and exterminates them. The AI then makes Xenomorphs purely out of hatred for his own creator and desires his children to purge the now defective creator in his mind which is humanity.

Now the Space Jockey in my mind is an Engineer, yes I know there are a lot of theories out there that it's a completely different species mainly because it is so much bigger than the Engineers in Prometheus but on the evidence provided we can only really draw that conclusion that it is an Engineer and doing so does take away some of the mystery surrounding it in Alien, which I think is really where some of these theories may come from - they want to keep that mystery and rightly so.

The thing is the Space Jockey we have no idea what it was doing to end up on LV-426 we know it was killed by a chestburster, we also know it is transporting millions of Xenomorph eggs for an unknown purpose. We also know the remains are so old they have been fossilized. I think I read some article where it was hinted to be around 1 million years old, though its more likely to be a few thousand given the degree of fossilization, it is however older than the Prometheus Engineers which weren't fossilized they even reanimated the decapitated head of one of them.

The big question here then is how can a derelict ship several thousand years old be transporting millions of Ovomorphs if David created the entire species of Xenomorph? Simply put he can't. I do not think there is any sort of time travel in that universe either so I do not think it's simply a matter of suggesting he went back in time. There is also the Xenomorph mural in Prometheus which personally I felt was actually another species we haven't seen yet when I first watched Prometheus but we do learn from Fifield and Milburn that several of the Engineer corpses they find have their chests burst open, the only known cause for that is a Xenomorph. The Deacon does so too but it clearly slices the entire torso open during birth given its size. The Neomorph appears to burst out of any body part depending on which orifice it entered through.

So already both in Alien and in Prometheus there are already too many things indicating the Engineers have certainly dealt with Xenomorphs in the past with the youngest ones that we know are aware of them being 2000 years older than David. We also know David had 10 years in which to experiment with the black goo which caused the aggressive animalistic Neopmorphs anyway through some reaction to the flora on Paradise (the Engineer home world) in that time he also learnt about the Engineer culture and I would bet that David was particularly interested in their usage of the black goo and its capabilities. Going off what we see in Prometheus and the original Alien I don't think its likely the Engineers would have simply made the black goo and not observed what it does, upon observation why would they not study the horrors that emerged, which lends even more credit to the Engineers being on remote worlds like LV-223 to perform weapons tests. Perhaps the Space Jockey was an early weapons tester and was transporting Xenomorph eggs for testing when he crashed opposed to simply creating them when he arrived at his destination which maybe was LV-223. Maybe he was fleeing the incident on LV-223 and trying to save his fellow kind and took the Xenomorph eggs away being infected in the process.

Now that is why I think Ridley has been clever but perhaps not completely intentionally because he has been listening to the fans and no doubt he will listen to the fan reaction of Covenant which I thought was a good movie, a little rushed in parts because it seemed to be trying to cram so much in but still a very enjoyable film. There of course has been backlash regarding David creating Engineers but given what we already know there is the safety net to say well yes David made the Xenomorphs in Covenant, that's obvious and it's even easier to say well David studied what the Engineers did and replicated it, the eggs in Covenant are also physically different to the ones in Alien and there are small differences between the Xenomorphs in Covenant and the rest of the series so it leaves room to say well David put his own spin on it, just look at the chestbursters in Covenant compared to Alien, completely different and the Xenomorphs in Covenant are far less stealthy and more likely to attack with brute force.

We also know the Xenomorph takes on the characteristics of its host so there's also the room to say well the Engineers had created Ovomorphs that would birth Xenomorphs but they had not used it on humans before so the creature in the mural may have been an Ultramorph which bore similarity to a Xenomorph was probably created in exactly the same way but was bigger no doubt and was as different to a Xenomorph as an Engineer is to a human. So by that logic you can say well David created the Xenomorph because the Engineers never tested on a human host. It could also be explained that Davids Xenomorph, being created in conjunction with human DNA or at least with study of the human anatomy being used in its construction, was that the Xenomorphs in Covenant were designed to grow more efficiently within a human host which would explain why they emerge far quicker than the regular Xenomorphs plus it would further establish how much David truly hates humanity that he replicated what the Engineers achieved and focused it more on attacking human DNA.

I see the xenomorph on the mural as some kind of revelation, a prophecy recorded by ancient engineers. 

@K-Theory 

Indeed that is a very good point.. We dont know anything about the Scorpion Docking Ship apart from it Hovers and its no doubt created by the same Race who created the Juggernaught.  We dont know if this Docking ship is Manned or Automatic or even where it got to.

So the theory that i had, would raise that Question of where did it go for 10 years, why has it not come back, does it take more than 10 years to get to where the other Engineers are?

These are all unknowns...  The same Question applies to why these beings on Paradise never went back to LV-223 after thousands of years, surely there was no contact? who knows?

LV-223 had many Ships and Docks, at least 5 Ships if there was One Per Temple.  Paradise has the Docking Ship and One Hanger that is too small for the Docking Ship.

One Answer i can only assume, is the Hierarchy have created life on many many Worlds, their Navigation Systems point to other Galaxies which the closest is 2.5 Millions Light Years away.. so the area of our Galaxy that LV-223/426 fall in from Earth and Paradise that is within 5 years maximum from Earth for the Covenant.

Is but just a drop in the Ocean of the Potential amount of Space these Engineers have covered... And so they could just see Paradise, LV-223 and Earth as just one say Apple Tree in vast Orchard thats gone Bad... and decided to not bother and abandon it.

"Big Dave: How can the SJ be a suit that contained many Engineers? That doesn’t make sense. One suit per Engineer is just enough. I think about this"

LOL i think you misread my post ;)  When i mean Space Jockey Suit i mean those Suits in General and the Space Jockey in Alien was a Engineer, or some other being.  I never meant that they contain more than one Person lol