What’s The Best Order In Which To Watch The Alien Movies?

The face-hugging, chest-bursting, creepy, crawly xenomorphs of the Alien franchise always find a way to come back. Whether it’s the quasi-midquel Alien: Romulus or the upcoming prequel TV series, Alien: Earth, or Ridley Scott’s prequel to out-prequel them all, Prometheus, new installments in the Alien franchise will seemingly never stop, which means the chronology of this future-timeline will continue to get a tiny bit more confusing.

If you’re new to the franchise or want to revisit the entire saga with a broader view, you may be wondering: What order should you watch the Aliens movies in? Is there an ideal chronological order? Does the release order make sense at this point? What counts as canon? What doesn’t?

With Alien: Earth around the corner and a sequel to Alien: Romulus in the works, here’s a guide to the best watch orders for the Alien franchise. Mild spoilers ahead.

Note: Although the continuities sometimes crossover, sometimes, for the purposes of this list, we are not including Predator movies outside of the two Alien vs. Predator movies.

Alien Movies in Release Order

If you want to see the evolution of this topsy-turvy franchise, watching the Alien movies (and the TV series Alien: Isolation and Alien: Earth) in release order is perhaps the most satisfying from an artistic point of view. It’s also the watch order that will help explain the confusion and anxiety Alien fans have had over the decades. This watch order is best for placing the Alien films in their historical context in our world and seeing how the franchise influenced — and was influenced by — the times in which each installment was made.

Here’s the Alien franchise in release order:

1. Alien (1979)
2. Aliens (1986)
3. Alien 3 (1992)
4. Alien: Resurrection (1997)
5. Alien vs. Predator (2004)
6. Aliens vs. Predator — Requiem (2007)
7. Prometheus (2012)
8. Alien: Covenant (2017)
9. Alien: Isolation (2019)
10. Alien: Romulus (2024)
11. Alien: Earth (2025)

Alien Franchise (Canon) in Chronological Order

Likely, the most complicated way to watch the Alien franchise is to follow the in-universe chronology. This is complicated simply because there’s a time jump between the first and second films, and the more recent movies (and upcoming TV show) take place either before the first movie or in between other movies. But if you want to try to make sense of how the xenomorph dominos fall in this franchise, here’s the chronological order.

(Of note, this list only really works if you exclude the two Alien vs. Predator movies because elements of those contradict the canon of Prometheus.)

1. Prometheus (set in the year 2093)
2. Alien: Covenant (set in the year 2104)
3. Alien: Earth (set in the year 2120)
4. Alien (set in the year 2122)
5. Alien: Isolation (set in the year 2137)
6. Alien: Romulus (set in the year 2142)
7. Aliens (set in the year 2179)
8. Alien 3 (set in the year 2179)
9. Alien: Resurrection (set in the year 2381)

Just for clarification, when Ridley Scott made Prometheus in 2012, he seemingly retconned the origin of the xenomorphs, the robots, and all of human life. In the sequel, Covenant, it was implied that the form of xenomorph from the original film was the result of the android David (Michael Fassbender) splicing together various types of creatures. However, another interpretation of this, which Romulus seems to imply, is that David was merely recreating a version of the xenomorphs that already existed.

There are also several short films that Ridley Scott created for Prometheus and Covenant, all of which take place before each of those respective films. The one that is probably the most notable is The Peter Weyland Files: TED Conference, 2023, as it presents a fictive TED Talk given by the founder of the company that becomes Weyland-Yutani, Peter Weyland (Guy Pearce). Essentially, Guy Pearce appears in old-man makeup in Prometheus because, in his faux TED Talk, he’s a much younger man. If you want to get really technical, this fictional TED Talk is the earliest point in the Alien franchise.

However, if you did want to include the AvP movies, you could. But the canon becomes divergent there because in those films, the origin of the xenomorphs is different and a contemporary founder of Weyland-Yutani is a character named Charles Bishop Weyland, played by Lance Henriksen. In other words, if you include the the AvP movies in a chronological watch, you have to exclude Prometheus, Covenant, and probably Alien: Earth.

So, the noncanon Alien watch order, which would include the AvP movies, would look like this:

1. Alien vs. Predator (set in the year 2004)
2. Aliens vs. Predator — Requiem (set in the year 2007)
3. Alien (set in the year 2122)
4. Alien: Isolation (set in the year 2137)
5. Alien: Romulus (set in the year 2142)
6. Aliens (set in the year 2179)
7. Alien 3 (set in the year 2179)
8. Alien: Resurrection (set in the year 2381)

There’s certainly a strong argument here that Romulus should be excluded from this list because it references the events of Prometheus. But you could also do some headcanon and figure out a way that there was an alternate version of the Prometheus mission that somehow didn’t contradict the AvP canon. Maybe.

The Purist Alien Watch Order

Even if you only know a tiny bit about the Alien franchise, you’re probably aware that fans tend to think that only a handful of the films are good or should be fully “counted” as part of the real story. For example, the troubled production of Alien 3 resulted in a deeply dark story in which fan favorites from Aliens perished horribly. Then, the far-future Alien: Resurrection presented a different version of Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) who was no longer human. By the end of the 20th century, conventional wisdom held that these movies did not live up to the brilliance of the first two.

Compounding this problem was Ridley Scott’s return to the franchise with Prometheus, which, while arguably the most thoughtful of all the films, also divided the fan base for a variety of reasons, not the least of which was its very prequel-y need to explain everything. In other words, outside of Ridley Scott’s Alien (1979) and James Cameron’s Aliens (1986), fans have found something wrong with nearly every installment.

Though, oddly enough, Fede Álvarez’s large stand-alone Alien: Romulus seems free of this curse, along with early buzz around Noah Hawley’s new TV series Alien: Earth. So, for a purist, nostalgia-driven watch order, we suggest:

1. Alien (1979)
2. Aliens (1986)
3. Alien: Romulus (2024)
4. Alien: Earth (2025)

Where to Stream the Alien Franchise

If you’re looking to marathon without the aid of Alien DVDs or Blu-rays, it’s not too difficult to find the franchise online. That said, if you were doing any of your Alien marathons with physical media, you will be rewarded for one specific reason: Ridley Scott’s commentaries are delightfully bonkers. The Prometheus director’s commentary alone is essentially one super-long rant from a very charming and wacky uncle.

But if you must stream, as of right now, all the films stream on Hulu or on Disney+ with a Hulu add-on. The web series Alien: Isolation streams on YouTube.

Alien: Earth hits Hulu sometime this summer.