Is Jones, the cat from Alien, actually a Flerken? If you are unfamiliar with Jones (aka Jonesy), he’s the cat aboard the Nostromo who survives along with Ripley in the original Alien movie. A Flerken is an alien creature from the Marvel universe. They resemble cats, but they aren’t cats. Their mouths contain pocket dimensions that can hold a seemingly unlimited volume of matter, much like a chipmunk or me when there are Cheez-Its in the house. A Flerken named Goose (known in the comics as Chewie) was introduced to the moviegoing public in Captain Marvel.
Since Disney now owns Fox Studios, it owns all its content, which includes Alien and Marvel. So, they are potentially in the same universe. But that’s not enough. Fun fact: The majority of orange cats are male. Because the ginger gene in cats (and Flerkens, I bet) is in the X chromosome, a male cat has a better chance of being orange. A female cat needs the gene from both parents, while a male cat only needs it from one. Goose and Jones both happen to be males. That doesn’t prove anything, you say? Maybe not. But it suggests that Jones and Goose (and Chewie, also orange) could be the same species and cat! Er, Flerken.
Flerkens have a mass of tentacles that can protrude from the maw within their mouths. They can use them to consume threats. We saw Goose do it in Captain Marvel. Why didn’t Jones just consume the Xenomorph threatening the crew of the Nostromo? Very simple, my friend. Cats are not dogs. Cats and Flerkens are one-person animals. If you’ve ever owned a cat (or a Flerken), you know they are usually aloof sorts of creatures who tend to show affection toward one person in the house (or on the ship). Jones didn’t care about the crew. He only loved Ripley, believe it or not.
When Harry Dean Stanton’s character Brett encounters the fully formed Xenomorph for the first time, Jones hisses, but there’s no reason to consume the alien. Jones isn’t threatened—Brett is. And the Xenomorph is sentient enough to recognize that Jones could easily do him in. He takes off with his prey and doesn’t mess with the Flerken. It’s instinctual. The Xenomorphs on planetoid LV-426 have encountered Flerkens before. Flerken eggs even look eerily similar to the Xenomorph eggs that Facehuggers emerge from. They may have even shared a nest on LV-426.
Let’s discuss some of the experiential similarities between Jones and Goose. Both are comfortable and at home on a spaceship. Both find affinity with a bad-ass heroine. Both only exist in scenes in which they are called for, save for an initial establishing shot for both of them. Oh, look, there’s a cat in the scene! This humanizes everyone else. But both Jones and Goose have mysterious origins in film.
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How did they come to choose their respective human-woman friend? Why isn’t Jones in one of the freezing chambers? Ripley puts him into a stasis chamber at the end of the movie, but he doesn’t come out of one in the beginning. He just sort of appears. The same way Goose just appears. There’s no “Oh, that’s my cat. I rescued him” moment. They’re just there. They are using their interspatial and interdimensional abilities to appear.
The Alien franchise exists across time into a distant future, but it’s also connected to our time. With Alien vs Predator, we’ve already merged their universes. Predator happened in the ’80s, and a scene in Predator 2 shows a Predator’s trophy wall. There, you’ll see a couple of human skulls, a Xenomorph skull, and a few random or unidentified skulls belonging to creatures of extra-terrestrial origins. What’s missing from the wall? A Flerken skull. Do you want to know why? Because a Predator can’t possibly bag a Flerken. That’s the real reason the Predators returned to Earth in the ‘80s. They were looking for Goose, who just happened to be there at the same time.
Is that an Easter egg…er, Flerken egg? We may never know. Perhaps soon, you’ll find them everywhere, and every orange cat in entertainment history will be bought up by Disney and retconned into a Flerken. What if Disney is actually a Flerken bent on consuming all matter into the universe they carry in their gaping maw? Goose is a cinematic Easter egg hidden as a metaphoric warning. From now on, Disney will lay Flerken eggs. They will get their tentacles on everything.
If Jonesy was a flerken Alien would have been a very short movie.
That is unless Weyland-Yutani sent Jonesy there to oversee the operation.
No, Jones’y was just a cat.
There’s no need to cross-pollinate stuff from the long-past-its-prime, dying MCU cliche / epoch onto a timeless classic like Alien.
And I say that as someone w/ nearly 10,000 comics, most Marvel, collected since the early ’80s.
Cheers!