Corporal Dwayne Hicks was a United States Colonial Marine of the USS Sulaco unit in Aliens, service number A27/TQ4.0.48215E9. He started the LV-426 mission as a fireteam leader, took command after Apone and Gorman went down, survived acid burns on the way out, and got Ellen Ripley, Newt, and a wrecked Bishop off the colony. In theatrical continuity he died when the EEV hit Fury 161 at the start of Alien 3. Expanded stories give him a life before the Sulaco and more survival paths after it than any other marine from that squad.
Early Life And Rachel
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.
Drop On LV-426
The Sulaco unit dropped on LV-426 to investigate the lost colony at Hadley's Hope. Hicks went in with the rest of the unit under Sergeant Apone, while Lieutenant Gorman held overall command from the APC. The colony was empty at first glance: barricades, spent casings, motion readings that led into the atmosphere processor instead of living colonists. Inside the processor the floor opened into a resin hive, and the sweep went in under Apone while Gorman stayed on the radio from the vehicle.
Pulse Rifle And Shotgun
Hicks carried a standard M41A Pulse Rifle and kept a pump-action shotgun on his back for close work. He liked the shotgun handy for close encounters: rifle at range, shotgun when the walls got tight. Unlike Vasquez and Drake on the smartguns, that pair stayed his kit for the rest of the mission.
Hicks In The Hive Ambush
The resin walls were full of cocooned colonists before the Warriors hit. Hicks held the retreat while Apone and most of the fireteams were dragged alive into the hive. Drake died covering the pullback. Ripley drove the APC into the chaos, hauled survivors aboard, and got them out while Hicks and Vasquez sealed the door against Warriors still pressing the hull. The first dropship never made it cleanly home either. Ferro and Spunkmeyer died when a stowaway Warrior hit the cockpit, and the crash stranded what was left of the squad on the surface with the processor already counting down toward overload. Hicks ordered salvage from the wrecks, then moved the survivors into the operations wing. With Apone gone and Gorman still out cold, the unit had to dig in and wait for another dropship while the processor ran down.
Taking Command
With Apone gone and Gorman knocked cold in the APC wreck, Hicks became the ranking Marine who was still conscious and making decisions. He did not grandstand about it. He calmed Hudson, worked the plan with Ripley, and treated the mission as extract-and-survive instead of another push into the hive. Nuke the site from orbit was the clean answer once the processor timeline was clear. Until then the survivors had to hold the operations block.
Hicks helped seal corridors, set the sentry guns, and turned the colony's own defenses into a temporary wall between the hive and the remaining humans. He taught Ripley the M41A Pulse Rifle so she was not waiting empty-handed for the next breach. The holdout bought Bishop time to remote-pilot another dropship in. It also forced Hicks into the role Aliens remembers him for: the corporal who keeps people moving after the chain of command is already dead.
Relationship With Ripley
Hicks and Ripley started as strangers on a company mission and ended as the pair calling the holdout together. He listened when the other marines still treated her as a civilian with a bad story. She listened when he took command without theatrics. Handing her a pulse rifle was the practical version of that trust: she needed a weapon, and he needed someone who would not freeze when the next breach came. They protected Newt the same way, as partners instead of a corporal and a consultant fighting separate wars. By the time the dropship was inbound, the bond was personal enough that first names replaced ranks, even if the film never got to show what would have come after cryosleep.
Operations Battle
The ops holdout ended when the sentry guns burned through their ammo and the Warriors came in through the ceiling and the floor. Hicks fought the breach with whatever rifle and shotgun rounds were left, covering doors and corridors while the room came apart around the survivors. A Warrior dragged Hudson under the grating. Vasquez and Gorman sealed themselves into a dead end and detonated rather than be taken alive. Newt fell through a collapsed panel into the ducts and vanished toward the hive. Hicks got Ripley and the last walking survivors moving for Bishop's incoming dropship before operations became another resin room.
Injury And Escape
The run for the dropship after operations cost Hicks more than the squad. After Newt was taken into the hive, he forced Ripley to keep moving toward Bishop's incoming craft. In the elevator a Warrior forced the doors. Hicks killed it at close range and caught a spray of acid blood across his armor, chest, and the side of his face. Ripley tore the melting plates off him while the burns were still spreading. He stayed on his feet long enough to reach the dropship, where Bishop sedated him and started dressing the wounds.
That injury left Hicks bandaged and half-conscious for the final stretch on the Sulaco instead of clearing the Queen with Ripley. Before she went back down for Newt, they traded first names. He was Dwayne. She was Ellen. Then he went under, and Ripley finished the rescue alone. When the Queen followed them onto the Sulaco, Hicks was already too far gone from the burns and the meds to fight. Ripley and the loader did that work. Hicks still left LV-426 as the only Sulaco Marine to get off the rock alive.
Film Fate
After LV-426, Hicks entered cryosleep on the Sulaco with Ripley, Newt, and Bishop. Theatrical Alien 3 kills that ending in the opening: a fire on the Sulaco triggers the EEV, the craft crashes at Fury 161, Newt drowns, and Hicks is impaled through the face and chest by a safety beam. The film stages him mainly as a body after that crash, then moves on to the cremation. Later comics, games, and unmade scripts kept bringing him back anyway.
Alternate Fates
More stories kept Hicks alive after Aliens than anyone else from the Sulaco 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, fought company mercenaries, reached Fury 161 too late to stop Ripley's fall, and later linked up with marines from the USS Sephora. Newt stays dead in that version. The game briefly sold the retcon as canon, then the wider franchise mostly ignored it.
The original Dark Horse Earth Hive comics kept Hicks 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 Hicks on Anchorpoint with Bishop against the U.P.P., later adapted as comics, a novel, and the Alien III audio drama with Biehn returning to the role while Ripley spent much of the story sidelined. Neill Blomkamp's unmade Alien 5 would have brought Hicks back with Ripley and Newt decades after Aliens, acid scars and all, and ignored Alien 3 entirely.
Cpl. Hicks As A Space Marine
Kenner's 1990s Aliens toy line, Aliens: Space Marines, shipped small Dark Horse comics with the figures. Hicks' pack came with Showdown, set shortly after Aliens on Earth Colony Terraform 3 and outside the Earth Hive continuity. This version of Hicks has no acid scarring and reads as straight kid-line action. In the comic he takes down a bull Alien with a rocket launcher, and Apone and Drake are back in the fight with no explanation. Newt never appears. The strip assumes she got a quiet life somewhere else while Hicks stayed in the bright, plastic Space Marine war.
Behind The Scenes
James Remar was cast as Hicks first and shot early Aliens material at Pinewood before the production replaced him. The public line at the time was artistic differences with James Cameron. Remar later said the real break was a London drug arrest during a period when he was deep in addiction, and the production could not keep him on a UK shoot after that. Accounts around the same stretch also mention a prop-gun mishap that put a hole in a neighboring Little Shop of Horrors set wall, which did not help his standing on the lot. Remar's early take was darker and more abrasive than the calm corporal the finished film sold.
Michael Biehn came in late as the replacement, already known to Cameron from The Terminator as Kyle Reese. He had little time to customize kit the way the rest of the squad had, so Remar's red heart and padlock stayed on the chest plate and became part of Hicks' screen look. Reshoots and careful cutting covered most of the swap, but Remar is still in the finished movie for at least one long shot of the marines entering the hive, seen from behind in the same armor (with a white flower on the helmet, which Biehn removed). Biehn's steadier read is what locked Hicks as the Marine who keeps people alive instead of the one who looks ready to crack first.
Merchandise
Hicks turns up in Colonial Marine figure lines as often as anyone from the Sulaco squad. McFarlane Toys made him a landmark early release: their Hicks was effectively the first major Colonial Marine action figure push for a lot of collectors, and it locked in the look of the M3 armor and weapons for later toy runs. NECA returned to the character across multiple scales and packouts, including a Hicks and Hudson two-pack that pairs the mission's calm corporal with its loudest private. Both lines usually ship him with the headset, chest armor, pulse rifle, and shotgun.
Conclusion
Dwayne Hicks is the Colonial Marine who stepped up when command failed on LV-426, kept Ripley and Newt alive long enough to leave the colony, and then became the franchise's favorite character to resurrect after Alien 3 killed him cold. Bug Hunt gave him a past with Rachel. Aliens gave him the pulse rifle, the shotgun, the acid burns, and the squad that died around him. Everything after that is an argument about whether the EEV crash should have been the last word.
Appearances
- Aliens (1986)
- Alien 3 (1992) - death
- Aliens: Bug Hunt - Reclamation (2017)
- Dark Horse Earth Hive comics (later Wilks / Billie)
- William Gibson Alien 3 adaptations (comic, novel, Alien III audio drama)
- Aliens: Colonial Marines - Stasis Interrupted (2013)
- Kenner Aliens: Space Marines comics
Tag Categories: Alien Universe Characters | Colonial Marine Lore | Alien Lore | Xenomorph Encounter Survivors
