Every Colonial Marine From Aliens: Past Bug Hunts & Bios

By Janno Vares, Founder & Editor, covering Alien vs. Predator since 2001
August 02, 2026

The Aliens drop from the USS Sulaco to LV-426 put 12 Colonial Marines on the ground (not including Bishop). The film gave them a few sharp lines and a hive ambush; novels, comics, and games later filled in enlistment histories, earlier bug hunts, and even what happened after Hadley's Hope. The bios below cover film roles first, then expanded material from Aliens: Bug Hunt, Aliens: Vasquez, and other sources, ordered by rank from lieutenant down to private grunts (no offense).

Lieutenant Scott Gorman

Lieutenant Scott Gorman commanded the Sulaco drop with almost no combat time behind him. In the film he admits to 38 simulated drops and only two combat drops, including LV-426; the earlier combat drop is never named. He sat in the APC while Apone led the ground sweep, froze when the hive ambush started, and lost radio contact as the squad collapsed. Ellen Ripley took the wheel into the hive; as the APC tore through, a cargo box slammed into Gorman and knocked him out, and that head wound kept him out of the later defense of operations. When Private Vasquez was wounded and cut off in the air vents, he went back for her, and the two of them detonated an M40 grenade rather than let the hive take them alive.

Beyond the film, Gorman has little personal backstory. The Aliens: Colonial Marines Technical Manual states that Carter Burke of Weyland-Yutani arranged for the inexperienced lieutenant to command the mission, wanting an officer who would not override a company agenda to recover live Xenomorph specimens. Gorman was not in on that plan; he was the green officer Burke could work around until the hive fight stripped him of command.

Sergeant Al Apone

Sergeant Alexander "Al" Apone was the platoon sergeant who ran the unit day to day, cigar in his teeth and Hudson on a short leash. He woke the squad from hypersleep, handled the briefing, and led the sweep through the empty colony until the Atmosphere Processing Plant hive turned the mission into a massacre. When a living colonist birthed a chestburster, Apone grabbed an incinerator and burned it, earning the only clear Xenomorph kill among the ground team before the ambush swallowed them. Minutes later, still trying to hear Gorman's fall-back order over a bad headset, he was dragged into the dark and taken as a host.

In Alan Dean Foster's novelization Apone handed the confiscated magazines back once the ambush started and was killed outright instead of abducted. Aliens: Bug Hunt put him on earlier deployments with the same people: in Blowback the squad cleared indigenous life on a toxic world, and in Broken he and Hudson tended a damaged Bishop after another mission went wrong. Aliens: Bishop later brought in his younger brother, Captain Marcel Apone, hunting the Patna for the rebuilt Bishop after Fury 161. Across those appearances the unit followed Apone more readily than their lieutenant long before LV-426.

Corporal Dwayne Hicks

Corporal Dwayne Hicks started LV-426 as a fireteam leader and became de facto commander after Apone vanished and Gorman went down. He calmed Hudson, worked with Ripley on the sentry plan, saved Newt from Drake's smartgun in the ducts, and got the survivors aboard the second dropship before acid and the Queen left him burned for cryosleep. In theatrical continuity he died with Newt when the EEV hit Fury 161 at the start of Alien 3.

Bug Hunt's Reclamation, by Yvonne Navarro, is Hicks' dedicated prequel. It gave him a wife, fellow Colonial Marine Rachel Miller-Hicks: they married weeks after she pinned a groper's hand to a bar table with her combat knife. A year later her unit checked a derelict on an empty moon; her last video to Hicks showed the squad overrun by what the story treats as Xenomorphs, and she died there with the rest of her team. Five years on, a paperwork error sent Hicks back to that same moon, where he found Rachel's body aboard the wrecked USS Paradox and faced the same kind of creature. Of the Sulaco squad, he came closest to fighting Xenomorphs before LV-426. The story is also the usual in-universe reading of the red heart and padlock on his chest armor, a memorial for Rachel even though the padlock itself started as James Remar's armor customization before Michael Biehn took the role.

More stories kept Hicks alive after the film than anyone else from the squad. In Aliens: Colonial Marines, Weyland-Yutani pulled him from cryosleep and dropped another man, Turk, into his tube; Turk died in the EEV crash while Hicks survived and later fought the company alongside the USS Sephora marines. The original Dark Horse Earth Hive comics kept him and Newt alive into an Earth infestation before Fox renamed them Wilks and Billie to dodge Alien 3 continuity. William Gibson's unused Alien 3 drafts put him on Anchorpoint with Bishop against the U.P.P., and later comics and novelizations of those scripts expanded that path again. Those alternate fates for Hicks and Newt are the longest trail any Sulaco marine left after the film.

Corporal Colette Ferro

Corporal Colette Ferro flew the UD-4L Cheyenne callsigned Bug Stomper, the unit's dropship for the LV-426 insertion. She stayed on station while the ground team swept Hadley's Hope, then answered the emergency extract after the hive ambush. A stowaway Warrior killed Spunkmeyer in the cargo bay, reached the cockpit, and tore Ferro apart at the controls. The crash destroyed the squad's ride home and locked the survivors on the surface.

Bug Hunt's Blowback put Ferro and the Sulaco air crew on the same toxic-world pest mission as Apone's ground team before Aliens. Once Bug Stomper went down in the film, nuking the site from orbit was off the table.

Corporal Cynthia Dietrich

Corporal Cynthia Dietrich was the squad Corpsman, the medic who checked Newt after the colony sweep, found only malnutrition, and stayed close to Apone inside the hive. She was the first marine taken when a Warrior peeled off the wall beside her. In the scramble she fired her M240 Incinerator, lit Frost and his bag of magazines, and was dragged up into the hive to be cocooned as a host. Survivors later confirmed she had not been killed outright in the ambush.

Dietrich carried a first-aid kit, a nurse's caduceus on her helmet, and the words Blue Angel written across the back, a nod Cynthia Scott chose after the Marlene Dietrich film. Bug Hunt gave her two prequel stories: in Blowback she and the squad cleared indigenous life on a toxic world, and in Exterminators she and Frost were surrounded by insectoid aliens while on leave on a backwater planet. For some reason those stories largely forget she was a Corpsman and treat her more like a regular rifleman. Cameron's original treatment kept her alive deeper into the story, with a later death at the APC, before the finished film made her the first marine lost in the hive.

Private First Class Jenette Vasquez

Private First Class Jenette Vasquez was one of the unit's two smartgun operators, paired with Drake through training, downtime, and the hive fight. She mocked Ripley in the briefing, smuggled smartgun batteries after Gorman ordered the guns cold near the reactor, and held corridors with pulse fire and grenades after Drake went down. Cornered and wounded in the air vents, she shared a grenade suicide with Gorman rather than become another cocoon.

Aliens: Vasquez filled in the years before the Sulaco. Vasquez and Drake met in juvenile prison after her crimes escalated, then enlisted together under the Service or Jail act and requested the same unit after boot camp. Their smartgun instructor called them "the sweethearts," which both denied. The novel also gave her twin children, Leticia and Ramón, whom she had to abandon to stay in the Corps; her sister Roseanna raised them after Jenette signed away parental rights. The same expanded universe gave her a younger sister, Carmen Vasquez, another Colonial Marine who served in the Aliens: Colonial Marines comic series aboard the USS Melville with Lieutenant Henry's bad-attitude detachment and died at the end of that story. Bug Hunt also put Jenette on earlier squad operations before Hadley's Hope.

Private First Class Mark Drake

Private First Class Mark Drake ran Second Squad's gun team with Hicks and matched Vasquez as the other M56 smartgunner. He woke up complaining, joked Hudson into Bishop's knife trick, and nearly shot Newt in the ducts before Hicks shoved his muzzle aside. In the hive he burned through ammo covering the retreat, switched to a flamethrower when the smartgun ran dry, and died meters from the APC when Warrior acid washed over him.

Drake's expanded past tracked Vasquez's: a murder conviction as a teenager, juvenile lockup, then USCM under Service or Jail with the same request to stay in one unit. Aliens: Vasquez kept that shared history at the center of both characters, including the close, possibly romantic bond their instructors noticed and they denied. Later comics sometimes brought Sulaco marines back for new bug hunts, but Drake's film death stayed the acid splash short of the APC.

Private First Class William Hudson

Private First Class William L. Hudson was the unit's combat technician: loud, wired, and better on gear than he looked in the first firefight. After the dropship crash he delivered the squad's most famous panic line, then steadied enough to place sentry guns, cut through Warriors with his M41A Pulse Rifle, and hold ops until a Warrior dragged him under the floor.

Film continuity left him dying in the hive when the processor detonated, or as a host. Aliens: Colonial Marines found his cocooned body under the colony with a chestburster exit wound. Bug Hunt's Broken showed him helping Apone reactivate a damaged Bishop on an earlier mission, and other Bug Hunt stories kept him on the same pest deployments as the rest of the squad. By the time the Sephora marines reached Hadley's Hope, Hudson's story had already ended under the floor and in the game over line that outlived him.

Private First Class Ricco Frost

Private First Class Ricco Frost was a rifleman in Apone's squad, often seen hauling ammo bags and covering the sweep of Hadley's Hope. In the hive he stood close when Dietrich was taken; her flamethrower discharge set him and the bag of confiscated magazines alight. The cook-off killed Private Crowe, wounded Wierzbowski, and ended Frost inside the processor.

Bug Hunt gave Frost two clear prequels with Dietrich. In Exterminators the pair were trapped among insectoid aliens on a backwater world while on leave. In Blowback he joined the toxic-world pest-control job with the rest of the Sulaco squad, the same deployment that put Apone, Hudson, Crowe, and the air crew on the books before LV-426. By the time the film opened, Frost already knew Dietrich's medic habits and the squad's working rhythm.

Private First Class Daniel Spunkmeyer

Private First Class Daniel Spunkmeyer was Bug Stomper's crew chief and co-pilot. He loaded racks with a power loader before the drop, rode shotgun with Ferro, and stayed with the ship while the ground team swept the colony. After Hicks called for extract he boarded to check the cargo bay, found acid slime on the ramp, and never reached the cockpit. The Warrior that killed him then killed Ferro, and the Cheyenne went into the dirt.

Bug Hunt's Blowback put Spunkmeyer on the squad's earlier toxic-world mission with Dietrich and Apone. Film continuity stopped him in the Dropship's cargo bay with slime on his gloves. The Aliens: Expanded documentary revealed that Daniel Kash's dialogue for that scene was replaced in post with another actor's, as Kash was not available to record it properly. Once he and Ferro were gone, the survivors had no air support and no clean exit from LV-426.

Private Tim Crowe

Private Tim Crowe was a First Squad rifleman alongside Wierzbowski, one of the quieter Sulaco marines who still cracked jokes with the rest of the unit. On the hangar deck he helped shove cargo with a motorized cart. In the hive he ran toward Frost and Dietrich when the ambush hit, without seeing that Frost's bag of confiscated pulse magazines was already cooking off. The blast threw him into a wall and killed him almost instantly, while Hicks dragged Wierzbowski clear a beat too late for Crowe.

Alan Dean Foster's novelization changed both the armor and the death: Apone forced Crowe to peel a girlfriend's portrait off his plate before the drop, and in that version Crowe was dragged away as a host instead of dying in the explosion. Bug Hunt's Blowback kept him on the squad's earlier toxic-world pest job with Dietrich and the others.

Private Trevor Wierzbowski

Private Trevor Wierzbowski shared First Squad's rifle team with Crowe and received almost no dialogue on screen. When Frost's ammo bag ignited, Hicks yanked him out of the blast, propped him against a hive wall in footage trimmed from many releases, then lost him in the chaos. Wierzbowski's last presence in the finished film was Hicks shouting for him and a scream that implied a Warrior took him moments later.

That shout became a fan argument of its own: a lot of people hear "Where's Bowski?", but the line is Hicks calling "Wierzbowski?", as the subtitles and script have it. Aliens: Newt's Tale had him abducted into the hive rather than killed outright off camera. Bug Hunt's Blowback put him on the same pre-Aliens toxic-world mission as Crowe and the rest of Apone's people. Deleted material also showed Hicks checking him after the cook-off before the finished cut jumped to the shout and the missing marine. He survived the magazine blast only long enough for the hive to finish the job.

Bishop

Bishop, often listed as Lance Bishop, was the Hyperdyne Systems 341-B android assigned as the Sulaco's executive officer and science officer. The marines treated him as part of the unit even while Hudson flinched at the knife trick and Ripley distrusted synthetics after Ash. He stayed productive through the siege, crawled through the conduit under the colony to remote-pilot the second dropship, and was torn apart by the Queen before he still helped Ripley and Newt reach safety.

Bug Hunt's Broken showed Bishop damaged on an earlier mission and repaired with help from Hudson and Apone, already embedded with that squad before LV-426. After Aliens he turned up again on Fury 161 as a wrecked chassis advising Ripley, then asked to be disconnected for good. Michael Bishop recovered those remains aboard the USCSS Patna and, in Aliens: Bishop, transferred Lance Bishop's consciousness into a new, bigger, stronger body to dig Xenomorph data out of his memory. Colonial Marines under Captain Marcel Apone hunted the Patna aboard the Il Conde while company commandos closed in for the same prize. Bishop survived the rebuild, turned on Michael's plan, and kept the Xenomorph secrets from becoming another corporate asset.

Conclusion

The Sulaco squad still sets the template for Colonial Marines: a loud tech, hard smartgunners, a sergeant the unit actually followed, and a lieutenant who learned the cost of the job too late. Most of them died in the atmosphere processor or the dropship wreck in film continuity. Novels and comics added prior missions, enlistment histories, and alternate afterlives the film never had time for. In Kenner's Aliens: Space Marines mini-comics, virtually the whole unit survived Hadley's Hope and kept hunting Xenomorphs together, now headed by Lieutenant Ellen Ripley. Apone, Hicks, Hudson, Vasquez, Drake, and the rest stayed in the fight through toy-line adventures like Terrordome, facing giant Facehuggers and other wild hive variants instead of ending as cocoons under the processor. It was about as close to a happy ending as that squad ever got.