Aileen Wu is at the center of what can be described as one of the most traumatic and gnarliest scenes in Alien: Romulus – and the Alien franchise as a whole – but her character, Navarro, is also heavily featured in one of the 2024 movie’s most touching, albeit shortest moments.
Ahead of Alien: Romulus making its Hulu streaming debut in November 2024, Wu sat down with us to talk about one of the best horror movies of the year. During that chat, the conversation turned to a scene early in the movie where Navarro is peacefully standing in sunlight as she checks on some Weyland-Yutani cryo-pods. Her answer has us seeing the character, and the scene, in a whole new light:
Navarro herself grew up with her real biological mother who had to leave her when she was very little. And Navarro doesn’t know where she is, doesn’t know if she’s alive, but I think her mother passed down to her all these little characteristics that we see during the film – her mother tongue, the language that she speaks, the ring she has, and her faith to something greater, if we wanna put it in a religious way.
While it is easy to pick up on the characters’ motivations for leaving the death-trap mines on on the Jackson’s Star colony, and it’s clear that the core cast is more like a tight-knit family than a group of friends, this side of Navarro was never made entirely clear just by watching the movie.
Wu, who revealed that she and the other members of the cast and crew were constantly improving on set and coming up with different backstories, explained that she saw Navarro’s ill-fated trip out into space as not only a chance to help her friends find a better life for themselves, but also one to find her mother:
So I think Navarro is very much like, ‘I will do this for you guys,’ but I think secretly for herself and her heart, this is a chance to go seek out her mother again and find something that connects her through her blood, through her DNA.
But the personal touch doesn’t end there. Earlier in the chat, Wu told us that the scene of her blissfully staring into the sunlight and a chance at a better tomorrow was the last thing she filmed on her last day on set. She would go on to add that this particular moment was something that she and director Fede Álvarez discussed a lot that day.
For his part, Álvarez previously opened to us about the “perverse exercise” of making us love his characters, so this all completely checks out.
If you missed Alien: Romulus on the big screen during its massively successful box office run over the summer, you can watch it streaming with a Hulu subscription or by purchasing a digital copy from online retailers. It will also be available on 4K, Blu-Ray and VHS (yes, you read that correctly) on December 3, 2024.
