The only Alien-Predator timeline explainer you need before Predator: Badlands, in depth

Not many movie franchises have managed to infiltrate pop culture as thoroughly as Alien and Predator. Ridley Scott released Alien in 1979, and since then, everyone has probably been afraid of dark corridors and gooey eggs. Then Predator came along in 1987, turning sweaty jungle paranoia into an art form. After that, you’ve got prequels, sequels, crossovers, a stack of comics, and even some video games. It’s like a never-ending sci-fi monster mash, mixing terror, alien guts, and humanity’s place among the stars.

What makes this franchise compelling is that it just refuses to color inside the lines. We’re talking about overlapping mythologies, tangled timelines, and multiple creative teams. By July 2025, this thing has ballooned, and there’s a whole buffet of new spin-offs—and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Yet with prequels (Prometheus, Prey), parallel story arcs (the AVP duology), and fresh expansions (Alien: Romulus, Predator: Killer of Killers), it’s like a choose-your-own-adventure book with no map. Even diehard fans need a flowchart to sort out which movie goes where.

Hence, we’ve pulled together the freshest, most legit timeline out there, breaking down not just what happens when, but why each event lands where it does. Think of this as your one-stop shop before you jump into whatever Predator: Badlands is cooking up next. If you want to flex your franchise knowledge, this is the guide you need.

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Why timeline order matters: Franchise structure and narrative cohesion

Alien and Predator both started as their own sci-fi horror playgrounds, but once they mashed them together (first in comics, then those AVP flicks), things got chaotic. Forget just watching these movies by the year they dropped. If you actually want the story to land—the big reveals, the tech getting crazier—you have to go chronological, because it just hits differently.

You see the Predator (or, Yautja) show up on Earth for the first time in Prey. There’s this slow drip of Xenomorph lore, from ancient hints to full-blown chaos on distant colonies. You start to notice just how deep the Weyland-Yutani rabbit hole goes, and it all builds up if you watch in order.

Plus, you get to see the origin stories for both monsters, and it’s crazy how much humanity gets tossed around by these alien run-ins. Every movie, every reveal, fits together better this way.

This guide isn’t just a list of “watch this, then that.” It’s all about why this order makes sense—the reveals, the little Easter eggs, and the creative breadcrumbs the writers and directors left behind.

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The chronological order: Master timeline up to Predator: Badlands

Predator: Killer of Killers

Predator: Killer of Killers is a legit animated flick in the Predator universe. Dropped on June 6, 2025, it has an anthology style with three separate stories, each tossed into a different era: Vikings, feudal Japan, and WWII. In every story, some human warrior gets stalked by one of those alien hunters until everything crashes together for a showdown.

Timeline-wise, it jumps way back. Each story sits in its historical pocket, way before almost all the other Predator or Alien movies. These are the oldest Predator hunts we’ve seen—unless you count Prey from 1719, which barely squeaks in earlier.

A quick snapshot of the segments:

The Shield features the Viking Age, probably somewhere between the late 800s and 1000s.

The Sword drops us into feudal Japan, which usually means somewhere between the 1300s and 1600s.

The Bullet lands in World War II—so, 1939 to 1945, give or take.

Every single part of this movie happens before any of the other Predator or Alien movies that came out before it. Prey (set in 1719) used to be the first time we saw a Predator on Earth, but now Killer of Killers blows that out of the water. Turns out, Yautja have been hunting us way longer than we thought.

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Prey (2022)

Set in 1719, Prey throws us right into the wild with Naru, a young Comanche warrior who is the first person ever to get a real close-up look at a Predator. It goes back to the beginning, way before all the high-tech gadgets and city explosions. Pretty much everyone agrees this is ground zero for the Predator’s Earth shenanigans.

The alien’s tech is clunky compared to what we see later, which makes the whole thing feel way more intense.

What we love is how this movie doesn’t just lay the groundwork for future human-vs-alien fights—it taps into Native American storytelling, which gives it a different flavor from the usual bullet-fest.

Plus, you get this cool sense of escalation as you know the Predator is going to level up his gear in future movies, but here, he’s just a wild hunter.

Prey ditches the over-the-top tech and reminds us that the Predator started as a pure, primal hunter. It’s the mythos before the mythos, if that makes sense.

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Predator (1987) and Predator 2 (1990)

Now, you’ve got Predator in 1987 and Predator 2 in 1997. These are the first times these alien hunters (Yautja) go toe-to-toe with humans who have some firepower and aren’t just cannon fodder.

The first one’s all jungle action in Central America, and the second jumps to the chaos of LA, which is a vibe shift. Both movies are obsessed with this idea: aliens with crazy tech showing up to see if humanity has got anyone strong enough to give them a real fight.

But Predator 2 drops a Xenomorph skull in the Predator’s trophy room. That single shot started all the speculation about Alien vs. Predator movies, years before anyone made one.

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Alien vs. Predator (2004) and AVP: Requiem (2007)

AVP and its sequel merge the Alien and Predator universes—first in Antarctica and then in small-town Colorado. People have argued forever about whether these movies should count as “canon” or if they’re just fan fiction. But the in-universe timeline always sticks them in 2004, since the movies spell it out in the dialogue. So, like it or not, that’s where they land.

Why do these flicks matter? First, they show why Predators are obsessed with Xenomorphs—turns out, it’s all about hunting games and proving themselves.

Also, Charles Bishop Weyland shows up, dragging his fancy tech and shady Weyland biz into the mix. That stuff doesn’t just vanish, as it pops up again in Prometheus and all those later Alien movies, so AVP plants some important seeds.

And then there’s the Predalien in AVP: Requiem, which throws a gnarly hybrid at us—part Predator, part Xenomorph. It’s a teaser for the oddball biology in Prometheus.

So, these movies wedge themselves right here into the timeline.

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Predators (2010) and The Predator (2018)

Predators takes place somewhere in the early 2000s. Nobody has whipped out a calendar, so the exact year is a mystery. The gist is a bunch of unlucky humans getting dumped onto some wild alien hunting ground—a Yautja safari. Later movies don’t name-drop this flick, but you can see how the Predator society keeps tweaking their playbook of tormenting humans.

Then there’s The Predator, which lands us in 2018. This one is more about the military scrambling around, trying to deal with Predators showing up on Earth way more often.

Some people argue about whether this should even count, but they’re all about new Yautja tricks and gear. Plus, you get to watch the government and shady corporations’ responses to extraterrestrial contact. The whole vibe is laying breadcrumbs for a future where everything’s way more gun-happy.

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Prometheus (2012) and Alien: Covenant (2017)

Fast-forward to the tail end of the 21st century, and you have movies where Weyland Corp pokes around the universe for the meaning of life somewhere between 2093 and 2104. And all this ends up in the creation of the first true Xenomorphs by the synthetic David.

If you’re trying to wrap your head around Prometheus and Alien: Covenant, they’re a must-watch. Here’s why:

They dig deep into religion, culture, why the universe hates us, and why the Xenomorphs are such a nightmare.

They chart the rise of AI, showing how robots go from being handy little gadgets to trying to kill us.

Humanity’s arrogance is on full display, and it backfires every single time.

You see the origin story for all the big names and places—Weyland-Yutani, LV-426, all that alien tech—that set up the dominoes for the first Alien film in 1979 and Alien: Romulus in 2024.

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Alien: Earth

Alien: Earth premieres on August 12, 2025. The plot is set in the year 2120, just a couple of years before the Nostromo in the OG Alien film. Out of nowhere, some creepy spaceship just crash-lands on Earth.

There’s this young woman and a bunch of tactical soldiers poking around the wreck. The ship’s a monster zoo, packed with nightmare fuel—Xenomorphs. And things go downhill fast.

Now they’re stuck fighting for their lives, and every move they make counts. This one could flip the script on how humanity deals with these horrors.

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Alien (1979)

Ripley’s story kicks off in 2122 on the Nostromo. That’s humanity’s first real moment with a Xenomorph out in the middle of nowhere. If you’ve watched those prequels, all the sneaky company stuff and freaky body horror hit way harder. The feeling of being trapped, lied to by the suits, and just terrified out of your mind—it all lands differently after you’ve seen where it started.

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Alien: Romulus (2024)

It’s 2142, twenty years since the Nostromo disaster went down. People still haven’t learned a thing, apparently. So now, a fresh batch of explorers stumbles right into the same Xenomorphs. The story stitches a link between the OG Alien and Aliens, elevating the suspense and tossing new faces into the mix, while still giving a nod to classic corporations and gadgets fans love. It’s a fresh nightmare built on old mistakes, proving history always finds a way to repeat itself.

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Aliens (1986) and Alien 3 (1992)

Both movies pick up right where the last left off, literally days apart in 2179. Aliens drops us back with Ripley landing on LV-426, and the nightmare just multiplies. We go from one creepy Xenomorph to a full-blown infestation.

Then Alien 3 hits, and it’s way more introspective. Ripley ends up on Fiorina 161, a grim, isolated prison planet, and the story just digs into sacrifice and loss, really wrapping up her arc on a heavy note.

The order they happen in seriously matters. You get to watch Ripley unravel and rebuild, see what happens to the few familiar faces who survive each round, and it just makes the whole Xenomorph situation even scarier.

All that fancy tech and firepower doesn’t do squat against nature’s ultimate killing machine. It makes you wonder—are we ever really in control, or just pretending?

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Alien: Resurrection (1997)

It’s the year 2379, two whole centuries after Ripley kicked the bucket (or… so we thought), and now she’s back, thanks to cloning. The movie leans hard into big ideas—humans playing god, not knowing when to quit, and, of course, those same old nightmares clawing their way back up for another round. It pretty much completes the saga’s original arc, but you know Hollywood can’t resist teasing more sequels and spin-offs.

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Predator: Badlands (2025)

Predator: Badlands is dropping November 7, 2025, and they’re taking the Predator into some far-off future planet, tossing in rogue Yautja. Apparently, there’s gonna be a bunch of descendants from those Weyland-Yutani science experiments running around.

The early leaks are hinting at all sorts of crossover madness—alien societies, Predator misfits, and an android-versus-human drama. It’s like they’re trying to mash every loose thread together.