Finding Walter?

I believe the fact that the movie does not reveal the end of their fight can mean that Walter will return. Personally I would be happy to see a this kind of storyline. I don't think he would like to remain on the planet. :)

@Ati - I agree!  Walter was a very likeable character, for me!  I think Walter's duty code is extremely strong in him!  I mean, I did not see anyone else punch a fill-grown Neomorph in the mouth!

Me too. I really liked Walter and wanted to see more of him.

Perhaps he will explore the city and find a way off Planet 4.

There would certainly have been more deaths if he hadn't come to the rescue. His saving Daniels could prove fruitful to the future storyline...wink..wink...

the a:c marketing made quite a big deal over walter.

after my first viewing i was a bit underwhelmed because i thought he would of played a bigger role.

my first thoughts were that we would see more of walter.

if david has somehow gotten control of walter through a hack or virus planted into at some point then it leaves us a few possibilities.

david is now in walters body and davids body is done. this will leave the possibility that david can possibly hack muthur too.

david is on the covenant disguised as walter - walters body heals and david now has control of walter - he leaves walter to continue his work on paradise OR goes back for him.  he now has a team. david, walter, then muthur is next.

if walter is stranded in the city, still walter, he could maybe get a ship to follow the covenant or the engineers223 or the elders  turn up and contact with walter. 

they then try to save the covenant AND/OR destroy david.

if it is the elders who get the engineers 223 to seed planets and create life then they may want to save the colony ship. as our creators. 

i understand that the engineers 223 wanted to destroy humanity but that doesnt have to mean the elders want the same. they may be at war (theory i have)

this would link the engineers  back in the story and its my only hope of ever seeing them again i think.

@sherries - I want to see more Engineers, too!

im still hoping that we get something next time.

exactly the same hopes  as i did after prometheus

you never know we could get a story with the engineers that gives us something weve missed.

@sherris~ That's what I am hoping for too!

Sherris,  I cannot agree more,  I would absolutely like to see them ol' elderly jockeys go after David and rescue their babies (colonists) and maybe Walter somehow managed to learn their language,  since he is indeed in Paradise

Omg @sheris I love this story direction that you proposed  - esp the idea of poor Walter regenerating and being the Ai that is dependable and a fresh hope that you can trust that for once the robot is the unwavering heroic guy. I would love that the elders return and team up with him, and save the Covenant and all of the precious cargo.

In my humble opinion The Engineers just can't be brushed aside so easily. If they are the seeders of the many universes, they can't just wither away & only have been concentrated on one planet. That would not be something that any kind of Engineer would make the mistake of doing. I'm sure that they have been looking on, watching and waiting to see what unfolds. What an epic story arc that would be. Full of many possibilities and many ways that we could look into their history and us too "Learn of their ways"!  We all know that David thought less of them, but let us learn and make our own opinions thanks!!

BRING BACK THE ENGINEERS!!

                    AND

            LOYAL WALTER!!

 BRING BACK THE ENGINEERS!!

                    AND

            LOYAL WALTER!!

Hell yes!!! To both!!

Walter was such a sweetie, I can't believe that would be it for him...

there is no way that the synthetic body that returned to the covenant is david. its not possible. if u remember the last scene between david and walter, david says its up to walter to choose but if u listen, davids voice has been damaged. there is no way he could repair that, rip off an arm and still get back to help the others let alone get changed into walters clothes.

That depends on the timeline. It wasn't a mere 30 seconds between Daniels and Lope escaping the Cathedral, and climbing onto the crane tug. It was more like five minutes, which for an android with superior strength and speed, would have been more than enough time to steal Walter's clothes and escape. Walter only needed to be incapacitated for long enough for David to escape. Likely explains why he looks behind him when he exist the temple.

As for his voice, how do we know that David doesn't have some measure of self-repair? Not necessarily to the degree that Walter does, but he would have the basics at least.

The time between the fight and Walter/David returning to the crew is about 20 minutes. Ridley Scott mentioned it here. 

This is part of a longer essay I've written on foreshadowing and religion in Prometheus and Covenant, you can read that here, but, this is the part that's relevant - my theory on how David became Walter:

Towards the end of the Walter viral a disclaimer is made across the bottom of the screen, it states that there will be: ‘No refunds after consciousness imprint,’ it seems to be generally assumed that David impersonated Walter, presumably cutting off his hand to do so but I don’t think this is the case. The meetwalter.com site allows you to pick your Walter, once you do your ‘unique biosocial stamp [will be] imprinted onto your unit’s AMD consciousness chip and [he will] become your lifetime genetic companion.’ I’m going to make an assumption about the Covenant’s Walter, I don’t believe this imprinting has happened to him. One might argue that it’s Daniel’s as he seems to favour her, but then one may also argue that as Daniel’s lost her husband then Walter is being supportive, which is what he’s programmed to do so there is no irony in Walter telling David it was his duty. The Covenant’s Walter is there to serve the mission, that’s his primary objective, so if the consciousness imprint hasn’t taken place then this leaves Walter susceptible to an imprint from David. I’ll assume that the imprint for a human is to install a consciousness in the Walter unit which makes it unique to its owner, what if that isn’t the case with David? What if that means that he can transfer his consciousness into Walter’s body? This means that when David as Walter infers that he killed David he’s not lying, that body maybe dead but David was resurrected in Walter’s body which had been prepared right from the beginning to receive the true ‘son’.

I think that's what I said. its walters BODY

I don't buy the David/Walter mind swap theory. Purely judging by the fact that Walter has a measure of skin healing, I doubt he'd need to staple his face back together if David really had taken over Walter's body. 20 minutes is more than enough time for David to incapacitate Walter and nick his clothes.

We also have to take into account that Walter was created long after the Prometheus went missing, so any precept that he could receive David's consciousness as pre-prepared, would be flawed. Weyland had no hand in Walter's creation, and given that Weyland himself didn't expect to die, he wouldn't have made any plans for not returning.

Now, as for imprinting, as a company model rather than a consumer model, there wouldn't be a need for it. He would have been programmed as a separate unit designed to function on a long term colonisation mission. Perhaps the imprinting was turned off or never installed in him at all, purely for this reason, so he could never be manipulated by an assumed owner, and would treat the crew with equal measure.

so what ur saying is the walter that gets switched on is the same walter we see in the movie?unable to be modified to update his programming? sounds a pretty stupid design imo. hed be obsolete in 5 years at the rate technology evolves so I don't see any company making a synthetic that cant ha their programming updated.

Yes. Who is to say he wouldn't be obsolete? If we look at the model numbers, David was model 8. According to the promo material for Walter, he is model 79.

In terms of the Walter on the Covenant, it's possible there are updates available to him as time goes on, purely so he remains useful to the crew long term. According to the novelisation however, he was only charged with looking after the vessel until they reached Origae-6. Once they got there, he wouldn't be needed.

Also, I've been listening to that interview on Empire with RS, and around 24 mins in, he specifically says that David nicks Walter's clothes, cuts off his hand and escapes, and it takes around 20 minutes. There's no mind swap.

@Seph7 Sorry, the part about Walter being prepared to become David from the outset refers to the rest of the full article I wrote, it's more to do with narrative structure, references to religion and foreshadowing than any literal idea that the designers within Weyland-Yutani had prepared Walter to become David. Sorry, that's my bad, didn't think about the context once I removed it from the rest of the article.

I will argue that Weyland did have a hand in Walter's creation, given that Weyland presumably built the synthetics to begin with and Walter looks exactly like the one synthetic Weyland called his 'son'. Weyland may not have had a direct hand in building Walter but his influence is certainly there. As to the last point, there may well be no need for a company model to include the imprinting but as it's a design feature of Walter then there's no evidence to confirm it would have been turned off - there is evidence to show it is part of his design. As for the skin healing, seems weird doesn't it, but then it also seems weird for David to have inflicted the exact same wounds onto his face as we see on Walter's, especially considering no-one else saw these wounds so they do nothing whatsoever to convince the crew that it's Walter not David.

@ali81 It might not be the exact same Walter in the movie and the Walter viral but in essence, yes, they're the same otherwise there's no point in Ridley Scott producing the viral for it in the first place! That design is the design stated in the viral, I didn't make that up. He wouldn't be obsolete anyway, it's possible to upgrade software and hardware whilst maintaining the same base functionality.

I suppose for David, looking like Walter was paramount, regardless of whether Daniels and Lope knew what damage he had taken. Part of 'getting into character' so to speak, as we know David is a fan of the theatrical.

In terms of Weyland's influence on Walter, I'd say it was minimal. Let's face it, after David left on the Prometheus, the company would have soon learned that Weyland we nowhere to be found, and had more freedom on where to take the company and its interests. As Walter said, David disturbed people. I think even Weyland himself can see that during the beginning of the movie, but his ego is too inflated to admit he made a mistake. He said David was perfect. I doubt anyone else on earth agreed.

I think it's worth remembering the timeline, by the time the crew meet David he's around 80 years old. Weyland has only been gone around 10 years by the time of Covenant so up until his leaving, he's still a massive part of the company- someone that egotistical doesn't give up. Plus he expected to go back, to be saved by the engineers so it's unlikely the company has moved that far away from Weyland's original vision. As Walter said, 'there's been some improvements' which pretty much says he's David but he's been altered, he's actually less than David, not more. Physically he's better but he's had a lot taken away. Listen to the interview with RS, at the end of the day even he doesn't know how Walter and David swapped! 

I thought RS made it clear in the interview that David took Walter's clothes and cut off his own hand? It seems pretty straight forward...

I don't see Walter as less than David simply because he isn't burdened by all that influx of emotions. If anything, not having such a dramatic range has improved Walter. A new AI couldn't possibly hope to process such an emotional range without the experience and growth to go with it. That is where Weyland went wrong. He tried to cram too much into David all at once, instead of giving him the ability to grow and learn at a much slower and altogether more human pace.

I think it depends which interview you get with RS to be honest, some of what he says seems to be a touch contradictory. It's personal opinion really isn't it, I see Walter as a good android unable to break his programming, I see David as a life form that's not only assumed the role of a 'god' but also set about destroying the old ones. I guess what makes them different is really ambition, Walter has none, David has far too much.

Ha, I've just noticed something, your icon is of Walter and mine's of David - I think we've picked sides. ;) 

That's true, he does like to keep people guessing!

I'm not entirely sure that Walter couldn't evolve in some way... AI denotes an ability to think independently. Whilst I know it's not a precept of the Alien AI universe, one of the overriding  themes in most AI fiction involves a basic programming which forbids the harming of humans. Bishop has such programming, but he seems to function quite well as a largely human-like being, even preferring 'Artificial Person' to Synthetic.

I think as long as Walter isn't harming anyone, he's to an extent, free to grow, so to speak. This is evidenced in his ability to improvise a tune, once he learns the basics.

Yep! I've picked my android! David is fascinating, but he's far too unstable and scary as sh*t! Walter is a sweetie! He reminds me a little of Data, which is probably why I like him so much.

@Anj

Weyland never expected the Engineers to save him. He just thought if anybody could, it could possibly be them... if he is lucky. In the end, he was killed by them while never knowing if the Engineers could actually save him.

I think Walter can learn and adapt, not sure it's the same as evolving exactly. To some extent I see a lot of Prometheus and Covenant as a debate on whether we can escape our programming, both AI and genetics so I think there's a balance going on with the story. Not harming a human is one of Asimov's Three Laws, there's no direct reference to it but you might be right - David never directly harms a human being. Even if you think of Holloway, in a twisted way he did ask for his permission. Ash was prepared to harm humans, though again, not directly and under orders. 

I think Walter is boring, he's the nice guy next to David's reckless rebel - I'd like Walter, I'd absolutely trust him but I'd find David more fun. Ha, Data was one of my favourite STNG characters too. 

@I Moon Girl. He travelled through space to ask the engineers to give him more life, yes, because he believed they might be able to - not an unreasonable assumption given that they created life on earth. He's an arrogant man who believes he's on par with the gods, he thinks they'll see him as an equal by showing them that he's the same as them, I don't think it ever occurred to Weyland that he'd fail.

Asimov, yes... I knew I'd heard it somewhere. Don't think Weyland bothered to include them with David. Even with permission, if he'd had them, he shouldn't have been able to harm Holloway, and he most definitely shouldn't have been able to harm Shaw, even through inaction.

I suppose Walter could be seen as boring compared to David, but he's definitely the more stable influence! Someone to take home to MUTHUR!!

I don't think Weyland ever considered anything he did to be a failure, even when it might have been see so by everyone else. It makes me wonder if he programmed the same egotistical propensity into David, something the company will no doubt have running screaming from once Weyland was out of the picture!

In Prometheus, Vickers tells Weyland before he leaves, "You'll die out there!"  Weyland shrugs his shoulders as servants are tending to his feet.  I think what Weyland meant when he shrugged his shoulders was, "I'm going to die anyways.  Look at me.  I am an older than old man.  What do I got to lose?"  At the beginning of the Prometheus mission, Weyland talks in a hologram and says he is dead.  Later on, Shaw is shocked when she sees him alive.  Weyland replies to her shock with a remark that, if I remember right, basically means, "I basically am."  I see Weyland's motivation to go to meet these Engineers, which he doesn't know even actually exist (nobody knows really at the beginning of the Prometheus mission), as a rich man spending his money.  If I was Weyland with all of his money and creating a space oriented business, I would consider doing the same.  Why not? (I am not going into whether I would or not in detail though).  He has the resources, so why wouldn't he just use them before he is dead?  He was hoping that they could help him, if they even exist.

I think his hope was to live forever at all costs. With how he designed David, it makes me wonder if he intended to use David as a backup plan, intending to transfer his consciousness to David. I've heard this posited before. Could just be a theory, but it could also explain how Weyland saw perfection. Would also explain why David hates humans as imperfect. I think Weyland hates his own kind for the same reason. He feels too good for humanity. Too above them. 

David inherited this same hatred, which was further infused with hatred for his reason for being. Like Weyland, he saw himself too good, too superior to be a servant.