As a film set between the events of Alien and Aliens, Alien: Romulus features callbacks to the past and future events in the franchise. To pull off one of those callbacks, director Fede Alvarez had to use a mixture of A.I., animatronics, and CGI to digitally resurrect an actor from the past in a new role. Now, Alvarez is defending his choice to do so.

Warning: the following contains spoilers for Alien: Romulus. If you haven't seen the movie or don't want to know what happens, stop reading now.

Relatively early in the film, Romulus introduces a new synthetic android, Rook, who has the face and voice of the late Alien actor Ian Holm, who passed away in 2020. In the first film, Holm portrayed a different synthetic named Ash. While speaking with the Los Angeles Times, Alvarez said that he got the approval of his idea from Holm's widow, Sophie de Stempel, and from Ridley Scott, who directed Alien and knew Holm throughout his life.