Prometheus is perhaps one of the most curious prequels ever made precisely because it constantly doesn't want to actually be an Alien prequel.

It's as though Ridley Scott went out of his way to fall shy of connecting dots he knows people were expecting him to connect. The planetoid it takes place on (LV-223) isn't actually the planetoid from the 1979 movie (LV-426). The xenomorph isn't actually the same xenomorph from the first movie. The "space jockey" we all thought was a weird, giant alien with an elephant face is actually just a space suit for a human-looking alien. The whole thing is a fascinating, frustrating exercise in sidestepping fan expectations. Though, in retrospect, all of this is fitting since the movie is about the pain of chasing down a creator and demanding answers. 

That fan frustration is also why it's not all that surprising that the prequel's sequel is dropping the Prometheus from its title entirely. It's now going by the final title of Alien: Covenant -- due in theaters October 6, 2017 -- and this time they insist it will have a direct connection to the original film.

Ridley Scott returns to the universe he created in Alien with Alien: Covenant, the second chapter in a prequel trilogy that began with Prometheus -- and connects directly to Scott’s 1979 seminal work of science fiction. Bound for a remote planet on the far side of the galaxy, the crew of the colony ship Covenant discovers what they think is an uncharted paradise, but is actually a dark, dangerous world -- whose sole inhabitant is the "synthetic" David (Michael Fassbender), survivor of the doomed Prometheus expedition.

That's an intriguing premise for sure, most notably because it turns David into some kind of robo-king of a new planet, which should be fun since he's the best character in the last movie. It also already has us wondering where Noomi Rapace's character is if she's not with him. And it thankfully still leaves us wondering how that "connects directly" to the 1979 movie. The planetoid they land on in that movie is far from an "uncharted paradise." It's actually pretty crummy and by the time they go back to it 57 years later in Aliens, it's still crummy. Who knows, maybe Alien: Covenant will end once again with someone taking off in one of the engineer's U-shaped spaceships and then they finally crash-land it on LV-426.

Not that we need to see that happen -- especially since Prometheus already showed us a sequence of one of their ships crashing -- but the original movie really only has one unanswered question left to explore. Who started the distress signal that sent the Nostromo and Ellen Ripley to LV-426 in the first place? Maybe Alien: Covenant will answer that.

Then again, it's still only the second film in a new trilogy, so, for better or worse, they've still got plenty of time to once again identify fan expectations and then sidestep them.