The Ripley Family: Husbands, Fathers & Distant Relatives

By Janno Vares, Founder & Editor, covering Alien vs. Predator since 2001
August 13, 2026

The Ripley family is best known through Warrant Officer Ellen Ripley, the Nostromo survivor who lost decades of her daughter's life to hypersleep, and through Amanda Ripley, who later walked into her own Xenomorph outbreak. Expanded stories also fill in the husbands and fathers around them, a 1950s ancestor named Daniel Ripley, and the clone Ripley 8. This article lists every known relative, including Daniel's unnamed wife, their daughter Alicia, and later descendant Alan Decker.

Ellen Ripley

Ellen Louise Ripley was born on 7 January 2092 in the Olympia colony on Luna. She served as warrant officer on the Nostromo, survived the derelict incident on LV-426, and spent about 57 years in hypersleep before a salvage crew brought her to Gateway Station in 2179. By then Amanda had already lived a full adult life. Ripley later returned to LV-426 during Aliens, then died on Fury 161 rather than let Weyland-Yutani take the Queen embryo inside her.

Amanda Ripley

Amanda Ripley-McClaren was Ellen's daughter. Ellen expected to be home for Amanda's eleventh birthday, then vanished with the Nostromo. In 2137, Amanda took a consultant slot to recover the Nostromo flight recorder from Sevastopol Station and became the lead survivor of Alien: Isolation. She later fought Weyland-Yutani's bio-weapons work with Colonial Marine Zula Hendricks in the Aliens: Resistance and Aliens: Rescue comics.

Alex

Some materials name Amanda's biological father as Alex, Ellen's first husband. He was present for her home birth, then left when she was three and had no further contact. The Alien: Isolation novel leaves that father unnamed and says he walked out, then centers the later marriage to Paul Carter. Company family-planning rules had required notice before the pregnancy. Weyland-Yutani issued a waiver instead of firing Ellen.

Paul Carter

Ellen later married Paul Carter, who stayed in Amanda's life as a stepfather after the divorce. The Isolation novel describes him as a poor provider who drank, lost jobs, and racked up debts. After Ellen disappeared, he gave Amanda a place to live and little else, while the company paid for counseling, parts of her schooling, and bail at least once. Amanda ran away from that house more than once and was on her own by eighteen.

Chad McLaren

Amanda later married Chad McLaren and took the hyphenated name Ripley-McClaren. In the Aliens special edition, Carter Burke showed Ellen a file that said Amanda died on 23 December 2178 at age 66, without children, and was cremated two years before Ellen reached Gateway. Alien: Colony War later treated that death as a cover story. Chad helped hide Amanda in cryosleep while they waited for a cancer cure, which is why some later books still treat the Ripley bloodline as open.

Daniel Ripley

In John Byrne's 1994 Dark Horse one-shot Aliens: Earth Angel, doctor Daniel Ripley practiced in a 1950s American suburb. Locals brought him a crashed ship's alien pilot with a facehugger already attached. After he pulled the dead hugger off, a chestburster tore out, fled into the woods, and grew into a Queen that nested among outlaw bikers. Daniel's family tried to flee, killed that Queen when their burning car exploded, then incinerated the hive with help from the surviving biker gang. The last panel reveals his surname as Ripley, marking him as Ellen's distant ancestor in that Earth infestation.

Daniel Ripley's Wife

Daniel Ripley's unnamed wife as the Queen smashes through the car windshield in Aliens: Earth Angel

Aliens: Earth Angel never gives Daniel Ripley's wife a first name. She lived with him and their daughter Alicia in the same suburb, then fled with them toward her mother's house once the Queen was loose. The escape panels also draw her with a baby bump, so Alicia was likely not the last child in that household. She survived the car attack and the later hive fire, and the family reached that mother-in-law's house exhausted after the bikers helped burn the remaining eggs and hosts. The comic treats her as part of the escape, not as a named lead.

Alicia Ripley

Alicia Ripley was Daniel's daughter, the only named child in the Earth Angel household. When the Queen smashed into the family car, she called for her father from the back seat while the creature tried to reach her through the windshield. Daniel pulled her out before the burning vehicle exploded and killed the Queen. Alicia reached her grandmother's house with both parents after the hive was destroyed.

Alan Decker

Alien: Sea of Sorrows, set centuries after Resurrection on terraformed LV-178 (New Galveston), follows empath Alan Decker, father of Bethany, Ella, and Joshua. Weyland-Yutani used him to locate living Xenomorphs under the Sea of Sorrows, soft ground and silicon growth that had blocked further city construction. The hive read Ripley's bloodline as the Destroyer for the Queens Ellen had killed, and hunted Decker for those "sins of the past" even though he had never met a Xenomorph before. One version of the book treats him as a descendant of Ellen and Amanda. Later material tied that bloodline to Ripley 8 instead, because the Aliens file said Amanda died without children.

Ripley 8

Ripley 8 was the eighth successful clone of Ellen Ripley, grown aboard the USM Auriga in 2381 for Alien: Resurrection. United Systems Military scientists wanted the Queen embryo that had been inside Ellen on Fury 161. The clone inherited memory fragments plus acidic blood, strength, and an empathic pull toward the creatures bred from her. She escaped with the crew of the Betty, killed the Newborn that had imprinted on her as its mother, and later appeared in Aliens: Original Sin and Aliens versus Predator versus The Terminator, where she died destroying a final hybrid threat. She was not a biological child or cousin, but she was the genetic continuation of the Ripley line after Ellen's death.

Conclusion

The Ripley family tree is short on screen and much messier in print. Films give Ellen, the photograph of Amanda, and the clone Ripley 8. Novels and comics add the husbands Alex, Paul Carter, and Chad McLaren, the 1950s ancestor Daniel, his unnamed wife, their daughter Alicia, and later descendant Alan Decker. Those extra names do not always agree on who fathered Amanda or whether her bloodline stopped in 2178, which is why the same family can look like a dead end in Aliens and an open line in Sea of Sorrows.