SPOILER WARNING for Alien: Romulus! If you haven’t already, you can watch the new sci-fi flick with your Hulu subscription.
Context changes everything. It can hit us like a wave in the middle of an experience, or much later on when we’re revisiting a movie, show, book or anything else, really. That just so happened to be the case for after talking with Ailenen Wu about some of the shocking deaths in Alien: Romulus, one of the most terrifying experiences on the 2024 movie schedule.
Ahead of the Hulu streaming debut of Alien: Romulus, I chatted with the actress about everything from key moments for her character, Navarro, and various other topics. At one point in our conversation, I asked Wu about her favorite death scene from Fede Álvarez’s box office hit, and her answer changed the way I saw one particularly crass character:
I think Bjorn's [death]. I just love Spike [Fearn], and he's so good and everyone's so talented, but Bjorn's death scene specifically, 'cause he's painted as such an asshole, for a lack of a better word in the film, that I feel like it really pays off when he dies and we see that moment between him and Kay; the embrace I think was like a second or two, but it shows the audience such a different side of these people, and he dies by a broken heart; like his heart explodes. That's so poetic.
Let me tell ya, Bjorn, the foul-mouthed, immature and oftentimes annoying character, was the person I initially wanted to see get killed by a Xenomorph the most when I first saw Alien: Romulus. However, upon subsequent viewings, I started to come around and see him as one of the film’s more complex personalities. Yeah, he’s a kind of a dick to Andy (David Jonsson), but remember, his mom died not that long before the movie takes place because a synthetic decided to sacrifice a few people to save many.
Couple that with the fact that Fede Alvarez revealed in a Reddit AMA that Bjorn was the father of Kay’s (Isabela) baby – the one that turns into a grotesque human-alien hybrid – and his actions and motivations become all the more clear. The whole “he dies by a broken heart” portion of Wu’s comments hit especially hard considering he’d never make it to Yvaga III or see the birth of his child.
While I still don’t consider Bjorn my favorite character from the Alien: Romulus cast, his death was yet another example of director Fede Alvarez’s ability to make us fall in love with characters so that it hurts when he kills them.
You can watch Bjorn’s heartbreaking and visceral death scene, as well as the rest of Alien: Romulus, streaming on Hulu or by purchasing a digital copy from online retailers. It will also be available on 4K, Blu-Ray and VHS on December 3.
