Walter One

A reformed synthetic android in the Alien franchise.

Walter One, or just Walter, is a fictional android from the Alien series. Michael Fassbender plays him, as well as his counterpart, the android David 8. Walter appears in the 2017 film Alien: Covenant and its novelization and short films.

Quick Facts

Series

Alien

First

Meet Walter (2017)

Last

Alien: Covenant (2017)

Creator

Jon Spaihts
Damon Lindelof
Ridley Scott

Portrayed by

Michael Fassbender

Species

Android

Affiliation

Covenant crew

Gender

Male

Facts from the source article.

Background

Walter was portrayed by Michael Fassbender, who also played the antagonistic android David. Unlike preceding androids in the Alien franchise, who were named in ascending alphabetical order, director Ridley Scott named Walter after Alien producer Walter Hill. The character was given an American accent to differentiate him from the British-accented David. A promotional feature stylized as an advertisement for Weyland-Yutani was released, including a link to "MeetWalter.com" providing in-universe information.

Fictional character biography

Walter One is a synthetic designed as an improvement over the David 8 model, which was considered too human. Marketing materials state he uses AMD's Ryzen and Radeon Instinct technology, enabling customization for each owner. His job is to watch over the colony ship Covenant, which carries sleeping couples to Origae-6. When a neutrino-burst damages the vessel, Walter wakes up his 14 human crew members. They answer a distress signal from a nearer planet, where several are attacked by neomorphs and saved by David 8. Inside an Engineer temple, Walter finds Elizabeth Shaw's dissected body, which David used for his creature experiments. David attacks Walter, pulling out his spine, but Walter's superior systems let him recover. He finds David assaulting Daniels; the two synthetics fight, and David wins, taking Walter's identity.

Reception

Michael Fassbender earned widespread acclaim for playing both Walter and David. According to Gregory Wakeman of Cinema Blend, the actor steals the show in these dual roles, with the androids' interactions described as genuinely bizarre. Aaron Couch of The Hollywood Reporter pointed to those exchanges as possibly homoerotic. Matt Zoller Seitz of RogerEbert.com noted that this dynamic sets Alien: Covenant apart from every other film in the series.