Films In Alien (1979) Ripley is introduced as a
warrant officer aboard the
Nostromo, a spaceship en route to Earth from Thedus. Having been placed in
stasis for the long journey home, the crew is awakened when the
Nostromo receives a transmission of unknown origin from a nearby
planetoid. Following their landing, an unknown creature infiltrates the ship, and kills every other member of the crew. Ripley is the only member to escape from the
Nostromo prior to its explosion, which she deliberately started to kill the monster. However, she discovers that the
Alien is also aboard the ship's shuttle, but expels it into space before putting herself in stasis for the return trip to Earth.
In Aliens (1986) 57 years later, Ripley awakes from her stasis. Her testimony regarding the Alien is met with extreme skepticism; she loses her space flight license as a result of her "questionable judgment" and finds out that her daughter,
Amanda, has died of old age. However, after contact is lost with a colony on LV-426 (the planet where her crew first encountered the Alien eggs), Ripley accompanies a group of Colonial Marines to investigate. They find the planet infested by many Aliens, who wipe out almost all of the marines. Ripley finally escapes the planet with
Corporal Dwayne Hicks, the
android Bishop, and Newt, a young girl who is the last surviving colonist. Back on the
Sulaco, they are soon attacked by the surviving
Alien Queen, which is finally expelled into space by Ripley. Ripley enters hypersleep alongside the three other survivors for the return to Earth.
In Alien 3 (1992) The
Sulaco launches an escape pod containing the four survivors, which then crashes on Fiorina 'Fury' 161, an abandoned foundry facility and penal colony. Ripley alone survives the crash. Unbeknownst to her, an Alien egg had been aboard the ship. Once hatched in the prison, the creature begins to kill inmates and guards, but strangely refuses to kill her. After rallying the inmates and preparing the defense against the creature, Ripley discovers the embryo of an Alien Queen growing inside her, thus realizing why she had not been attacked. After having killed the Alien by
thermal shock, Ripley sacrifices herself by diving into a gigantic furnace just as the alien Queen begins to erupt from her chest, aiming to exterminate the final trace of the Aliens and prevent the Weyland-Yutani Corporation from using it as a
biological weapon.
In Alien Resurrection (1997) 200 years after her death, scientists clone Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) and surgically retrieve the Alien Queen embryo from her body. The United Systems Military hopes to breed Aliens to study on the spaceship USM
Auriga, using kidnapped hosts delivered to them by a group of mercenaries. The Aliens escape their enclosures, while Ripley and the mercenaries attempt to flee to the
Betty. They must destroy the
Auriga, lest it make its emergency landing and unleash Xenomorphs on Earth. Ripley is taken to the Alien nest, where the Queen gives birth to a Newborn, a Xenomorph with human traits. The hybrid Alien recognizes Ripley as its mother and kills the Queen. Ripley escapes to the
Betty, where she tearfully kills the Newborn when it is discovered aboard attacking the other survivors. The
Auriga crashes into Earth, destroying all the remaining Xenomorphs in a massive explosion. From the windows of the
Betty, Ripley look down at Earth and, when asked what she wants to do next, says, "I'm a stranger here myself." In an alternate ending, the
Betty lands in a ruined Paris.
In The Predator (2018) After director
Neill Blomkamp announced on February 19, 2015 that his next film would be a fifth
Alien movie, Weaver confirmed on February 25 that she would reprise her role as Ripley in the film. On January 21, 2017, in response to a fan question on Twitter asking what the chances were of his Alien project actually happening, Blomkamp responded "slim." In April, Scott said he did not think the film would ever be made. He elaborated that there was never a complete script, just a 10-page pitch, that Fox decided they did not want to pursue any further. Commentators have noted this goes against Weaver's and James Cameron's statements about reading Blomkamp's script for the film, although it is possible Weaver and Cameron were referring to the pitch document. On May 1, 2017, Ridley Scott confirmed that the fifth film is not happening. An alternate ending for
The Predator displaying a Weyland-Yutani Corp pod containing Ripley (played by Breanna Watkins) wearing a Weyland-Yutani breathing apparatus shaped like an Alien Facehugger was yet one among several references intended to further connect the
Predator films to the
Alien films.
Video games In Aliens: Colonial Marines (2013) Ripley has two cameos in the "Stasis Interrupted"
DLC for the game. In this prequel campaign, Ripley is seen being impregnated by a facehugger and also appeared recreating the same final scene of
Alien 3. The game also revealed that Hicks actually survived the events of
Alien 3 as he was retrieved by another Colonial Marines team, with the body in the stasis chamber that crashed being another marine who was knocked into Hicks' pod during a firefight, dying when the EEV crashed. Ripley, Newt and Bishop's pods were ejected while Hicks had to go with the other Marines.
In Alien: Isolation (2014) In 2014, Weaver reprised her role as Ripley for the first time in 17 years for a voice cameo in the video game
Alien: Isolation, centered on Ripley's daughter
Amanda, and more extensively in its two
DLCs set during the events of
Alien.
Animated In Alien: Isolation – The Digital Series (2019) In the web animated series
Alien: Isolation – The Digital Series, Ripley was voiced by
Andrea Deck in voiceovers for Ripley's final moments to her daughter.
Biography of Ripley 8 In Alien Resurrection (1997) Two hundred years after Ripley's death, a clone of Ripley is successfully produced aboard the spaceship
Auriga. Her DNA proved difficult to separate from that of the alien that was inside her during the events of
Alien 3, so the first six clones were useless monstrosities. The seventh clone turned out human enough to warrant an attempt at retrieving the alien inside her, but this also ended in failure. The eighth clone proves successful, and becomes the central character of a new story. However, the separation was still not perfect. Number 8 has enhanced strength and reflexes, acidic blood, and an empathic link with the Aliens, and the aliens have slightly more human traits, including a browner skin coloration and changes to their reproductive cycle. Number Eight learns to talk and interact with humans, but soon Aliens escape their confinement and kill most of the crew. She escapes from her cell and later meets and joins a group of mercenaries; developing a close relationship with their youngest member, Annalee Call. The now fully-grown Alien Queen, having developed a womb because of Ripley's DNA, gives birth to a human-Alien hybrid, who kills the Queen and imprints on Number Eight as its mother. After escaping the
Auriga in the
Betty, Ripley kills the newborn Alien by using her own acidic blood to burn a hole through a viewing pane, causing the creature to be sucked violently through the small hole and into the
vacuum of space, saving Call. In a scene included in the extended edition of the film (referenced in the events of
Alien: Sea of Sorrows), the
Betty lands on Earth and Ripley and Call discover that
Paris is desolate.
In Aliens vs. Predator vs. The Terminator (2000) The comic book
Aliens versus Predator versus The Terminator continues the storyline of Ripley 8 after
Resurrection, seeing Ripley 8 allying with the Predators to defeat both a new wave of Aliens and a group of Terminators created by a long-dormant Skynet program to reinvent itself if it was destroyed, culminating in Ripley 8 apparently sacrificing herself to destroy the original super-soldier/Terminator.
In Alien: Sea of Sorrows (2014) At the beginning of
Alien: Sea of Sorrows, set 200 years after the events of
Alien Resurrection, it is revealed that the crashing of the
Auriga at the end of
Alien Resurrection caused the destruction in Paris seen at the end of that film. Additionally, the protagonist of the novel, Decker, is stated to be a descendant of Ellen Ripley, but there are several hints throughout the novel revealing that Decker's grandmother was actually Ripley 8 (mainly his empathic abilities, the fact Amanda Ripley-McClaren is stated to have had no children in
Aliens, and when Decker is shown a picture of Ripley, he says that she is not the person he sees in his head).
Spin-off media Ripley's life and career have been extensively expanded on in various spin-off
comics and
novels, many of which were written before her death on
Fiorina 161, providing instead a chronology continuing on from the end of
Aliens. In the Dark Horse novel series, Ripley appears at the end of Book 3,
The Female War; but subsequent books, in order to bring the book continuity in line with the film continuity, reveal that she is actually an android created in Ripley's likeness and given false memories. All novels were rebooted in 2012, meaning the only canonical books featuring Ripley are
Out of the Shadows (by Tim Lebbon),
Sea of Sorrows (by James A. Moore) and
River of Pain. In
Out of the Shadows, Ripley is woken from stasis 37 years after the events of
Alien, fights Xenomorphs alongside several miners, and is put in stasis again the end of the book with her memory of these events erased to spare her from the worst of the psychological trauma she has experienced. Ripley is mentioned repeatedly in
Sea of Sorrows, which stars the grandson of Ripley 8, and appears in
River of Pain, which takes place before and during the events of
Aliens. An
Audio-Animatronic Ripley was featured in the
Alien scene of
The Great Movie Ride at
Disney's Hollywood Studios at
Walt Disney World from 1989 to 2017. ==Reception==