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Amanda is the main protagonist of Alien: Isolation. Approximately twenty-five years of age, Amanda is an engineer in the employ of the Weyland-Yutani Corporation. She is resourceful and tough of character, although emotionally scarred by the disappearance of her mother, Ellen Ripley.
Early Years[]
Amanda was ten years old as of 2122 when her mother was assigned to the USCSS Nostromo for a trip to run a spaceborne mobile refinery platform from Thedus to Earth. Her mother promised that she would return for Amanda's eleventh birthday.
After departing Thedus, the vessel, her cargo and crew disappeared without trace, leaving Amanda motherless.
Samuels and The Mission[]
Amanda grew up to become a Company employee, working jobs on starships and space facilities as an engineer. In 2137, Company executive Christopher Samuels visited her on site with the news that a commercial starship, the Anesidora, had recovered the flight recorder of the Nostromo at Zeta Reticula and had taken it to Sevastopol Station. Citing the fact that Amanda had been working in the region of space where the Nostromo disappeared, Samuels suggested that she was still seeking closure on her mother's disappearance.
Samuels then offered her a place on the mission to Sevastopol as a chance to finally find that closure. Though reluctant, Amanda signed on.
Her Mother's Terror Returns[]
Upon arrival at Sevastopol aboard The Torrens, Amanda was separated from Samuels, Nina Taylor and their vessel by an explosion. Amanda explored the station, encountering the scattered and paranoid remnants of the station's population, one of whom was killed by a mysterious beast that struck from the shadows.
Shortly after finding the Nostromo's flight recorder emptied of data, she encountered the creature herself, commencing a cat-and-mouse journey throughout the station as she sought both answers and escape. She discovered that the station's governing artificial intelligence had instituted a quarantine lock-down due to the creature's presence and was enforcing a communications blackout through its complement of Working Joes, killing any humans who attempted to interfere.
After narrowly escaping Marshal Waits' plan to jettison the creature from the station in a detachable module, Amanda finds the station's Working Joe androids have started killing everyone they can find per quarantine regulations. She makes her way to the core of the APOLLO AI and queries it about the ongoing lockdown. APOLLO tells her two things:
- The station was no longer owned by Seegson. Weyland-Yutani Corporation bought it from them shortly after the Torrens departed for the station; the extreme lockdown was per a special Company order to preserve the creature and shut all communications down.
- The lockdown was still in effect due to strange readings from the station's engineering decks.
Heading to reactor maintenance, Amanda discovered that the creature had been breeding more of itself in a nest below the fusion reactors. She initiated a purge that would destroy the nest, but several more creatures escaped just before the reactors completed the purge sequence. APOLLO announced that as a result, the quarantine remained in place.
In desperation, Marlow, the captain of the Anesidora, kidnapped Taylor and returned to his vessel hoping to detonate the engines and destroy himself, Sevastopol and all the alien lifeforms on board. Amanda followed in a shuttle. On the ship, Marlow let her access a fragment of the Nostromo's log. It was a personal addendum to her mother's final ship's log entry, a voice letter from Ellen to Amanda explaining her own encounter with the alien species.
Nina overcame Marlow and Amanda guided her through the process to shut the reactor off, but the overload was too far gone to save the Anesidora and Nina was killed by an explosion in the reactor room.
The Anesidora's explosion destabilized Sevastopol's gravity moorings, causing the station to be pulled down toward the gas giant KG348. Amanda restored communication with the Torrens and made to escape but an Alien caught her in the airlock. She awoke webbed into a new nest.
Amanda escaped confinement before a parasite could attach itself to her, returned to the airlock and suited up to manually release the docking claw holding the Torrens in place. Narrowly escaping three more creatures by triggering the claw's release override, Ripley boarded The Torrens as Sevastopol Station plunged into KG348's clouds, exploding and killing any lifeforms remaining on board.
However, Amanda discovered that one last creature had also boarded The Torrens somehow, presumably killing its crew. It pursued her into one of the ship's airlocks, which she triggered.
Amanda is left drifting in a spacesuit, alone in the void - until a light passes over her...
Survival and Death?[]
- "Amanda Ripley-McLaren - married name, I guess - age sixty-six. And that was at the time of her death."
- Carter Burke, 2179
When Ellen Ripley is retrieved from her hypersleep aboard the shuttle Narcissus in 2179, she seeks the fate of her abandoned daughter. Company executive Carter Burke presents Ellen with an image of her daughter as an old woman, and informs her that Amanda died without bearing children two years prior to Ellen's awakening. Burke says Amanda's remains were cremated and interred at Westlake Repository in Little Chute, Wisconsin.
Whether the narrative Burke presented is an accurate retelling of Amanda's life after the Sevastopol incident or a fabrication as part of the Company's ongoing efforts to cover the existence of the alien species up remains open to speculation.
Whether Amanda found the closure she sought for fifteen years also remains unknown.
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Characters | |
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Female | Amanda Ripley * Catherine Foster * Diane Verlaine * Ellen Ripley * Julia Jones * Dr. Lingard * Nina Taylor |
Male | Axel * Henry Marlow * Heyst * Marshal Waits * Meeks * Ransome * Ricardo * William Connor |
AI | APOLLO Central A.I. * Artificial Life * Ash * Christopher Samuels * Working Joe |
Other | Alien * Alien Egg * Alien Nest * Facehugger * Human Enemies * Xenomorph |