The movie opens on Earth with David (Michael Fassbender) having a discussion with a middle-aged Peter Weyland (Guy Pearce), setting this scene decades before the events in Prometheus. The story resumes a decade after the Prometheus went missing. Walter (Michael Fassbender) is aboard the Covenant, a colony ship bound for Origae-6. The ship is struck by a neutrino burst that requires waking the crew. Several colonists and Captain Branson are killed in their stasis pods. First Mate Christopher Oram (Billy Crudup) becomes the new captain and the new first mate is Dany Branson (Katherine Waterston), the grieving wife of the deceased Captain Branson. While repairing the damage, Tennessee (Danny McBride) intercepts a signal - clearly human - from a nearby planet that appears to be a near perfect planet for a colony. Though Dany advises against it, Oram changes course to investigate.
The planet looks great and even at the landing site, Oram starts plotting where to build the new colony. Of course, a couple of crewmen are soon infected with a parasite that quickly grows into a xenomorph. Disaster follows catastrophe and the surviving crew are rescued from rampaging xenomorphs by the arrival of David, formerly of the Prometheus. David explains how Dr. Elizabeth Shaw died when they crashed on the planet and the planet is devoid of any non-xenomoprhs because of the parasite.
The movie is engaging and generally fun though often the suspension of disbelief becomes impossible. The cluelessness of some characters grates although not as much as in Prometheus. There is some great action and all the standard tropes one expects from an Alien movie.
Spoilers beyond this point
Oram is abysmally stupid. Oh, and he is very religious. Therefore, devout people are stupid and make terrible decisions. I see no other reason for highlighting his religiosity. First, showing absolutely no sympathy, he literally orders that there will be no observance of the death of Captain Branson and is later irritated that Dany and several others had an impromptu funeral for him. Seriously? How much more unsympathetic can we make this idiot? The ship arrives at the signal origin and the majority of the crew go to the planet to investigate its habitability and the source of the signal. They are not wearing any sort of air filtration as they exit the ship. I'm sure it will be fine. No, it turns out that it isn't fine. The landing craft is destroyed and the survivors are stranded. Oram finds David communicating with a full-grown xenomorph that has clearly just killed one of the crew in an area that David had assured them was safe. Does Oram shoot the clearly treacherous android? No. Does he restrain him? No. Does he tell the rest of his crew? No. Our genius, devoutly religious captain follows David into the bowels of the complex and then, with further assurances that it is perfectly safe, approaches an alien egg that opens when he gets close. Then, with added prompting to take a look, sticks his face in it to see what that thing is under the surface. Hello, Facehugger. Now, if he hadn't already seen an alien burst from one of his crew, this truly clueless decision might have rated slightly lower on the abysmal stupidity scale but not by much. Sadly, he is not the stupidest character.
In the most brainless move ever, Dany leaves Walter to fight it out with his identical twin, David. When 'Walter' rejoins her later, she has no doubts that it's Walter. After all, Walter has only one hand and the android that just climbed aboard has only one hand; it must be Walter. Back on the Covenant, a xenomorph has burst from one of the survivors and starts killing the remnants of the crew. It is left to Dany, Tennessee, and 'Walter' to kill it. At the end, Dany has just put Tennessee in his stasis pod and climbs into her own. Walter is just activating it when she asks a question that Walter should be able to answer but isn't. Oh no! You're not Walter! Gee, how did you not see that coming? How did you not have some means of confirming that you came back with the correct android? Heck, even if you did come back with the right android, it probably would have been wise to jettison him into space just to be certain.
In a flashback scene, we are shown that David hovered over the Engineer city and unleashed the plague that was meant for Earth. The whole planet was swept of all animal life. But this doesn't fit what we have seen previously. We are led to believe that the Engineers abandoned LV-223 - the planet from Prometheus - hundreds of years ago but we have the Engineer homeworld in range of a comparatively ancient ship. Huh? Also, if David only committed planet-wide genocide in the last decade, where are all the cities and ruins? Even from space, the Covenant should have been able to see that a vast and highly advanced civilization had lived here. Why no satellites in orbit? This spacefaring race seems to live primitively. Surely, David didn't arrive on the only spaceship on the planet and their must be some means of traveling from population center to population center. Or did this one dinky city constitute the whole of Engineer population?
Walter observes that David is insane. Sure, he is a nutter but he's also stupid. His goal is to get off the planet with his 'children.' He practically danced with glee when he heard there were 2,000 colonists on the Covenant. The last thing he should be doing is infecting the crew that might get him off the planet. Heck, with every infected individual, that is one more mark against Tennessee launching a rescue.
If Tennessee had any sense, he would have set course for Origae-6 as soon as he learned his wife had died when the lander exploded. Even if he does rescue the survivors, they absolutely, positively must been in quarantined, not mingling with the 3 crewmen who didn't set foot on the death planet.
It was enjoyable while watching it but collapsed under the weight of its stupidity when I had an opportunity to think about it. Leave your brain behind - most of the Covenant crew did - and enjoy the popcorn fun.
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