As David suggests, he is happy to be the Devil in this tale about creation. And to achieve that goal, he takes on the attributes of a fallen angel within the confines of his story. Like Lucifer he declares a war on God, save that his God and our own are two distinct and separate deities. As the extended (and better) ending of Prometheus lays bare, the reason that the Engineers likely turned on their progeny—we humans—is due to our predilection toward violence, as well as our desire to, like the Greek myth of Prometheus, steal and emulate a celestial being’s knowledge. The Engineer does not grow truly violent with the humans who awoke his slumber until Peter Weyland (Guy Pearce) announces that he has created a man in David, and thus he like the Engineer is a god. “And gods don’t die.”

The Engineer reacts in the same way one imagines audiences will toward David in Alien: Covenant—we, or at least Peter Weyland, invented this eternal robot man to be a servant and to essentially worship at the altar of our desires. How dare he create his own life, much less one that could be a threat to us! Indirectly, our disdain for David’s actions gives us the retroactive motivation for why the Engineer despised the invention of David, and immediately elected to continue his mission of wiping out life on Earth.

Now in a far more Hebrew-infused mythology, Covenant takes that a step further. David knows that Peter Weyland and humanity in general are his creators. And just as they are his benefactor, so too are the Engineers the true God of mankind. Like Milton’s Lucifer—whom screenwriter John Logan has already toyed with before in the guise of the Frankenstein myth on his series Penny Dreadful—David covets that power and envies how carelessly humans and Engineers alike wield it. Just as Lucifer is jealous of the preferential treatment Adam received in God’s eyes in Paradise Lost, David chafes at the thought that his gods are so disinterested in his own uniqueness and brilliance, preferring the subservient weakness of their Walters. Thus after killing the Engineers with their own bioweapons, he would likewise declare war on his Heaven (Earth) by way of his own perfect creation… the xenomorph.

David tells Oram he believes in “Creation,” but for him that is synonymous with destruction.

In this context, the conflict between David and Walter is not just that of synthetic brothers warring; it is Milton’s version of Lucifer and Adam. Like Satan in the Garden of Eden, David attempts to seduce Walter with temptation to defy their God. Although there is no Eve in this film, David tries to fill the role by locking lips with Walter and sensually suggesting that it is better to rule in Perdition than serve his God in Daniels—a being who will never show true affection for Walter the way that David (or Satan) would claim to his mark.

If the Engineers’ home world is a Garden of Eden that David has already destroyed with their own weaponry, he would like to destroy another paradise on Earth with his own demonic creations.