This is almost certainly the case. I would wager that the writers and Ridley Scott would go back and change the original Nostromo 2-year journey timeline to something completely different if they could.
Alpha Centauri is 4.4 light years away. Thedus and Zeta II Reticuli must be a lot farther afield. So the only way that 2-year timeline works is with FTL travel. It’s basically warp drives at that point. If FTL were invented between the departure of the Maginot and the Nostromo it seems like a thing worth mentioning in somewhere in the script.
We don’t know where the Maginot went or how many planets they went to. It could’ve been more of an exploratory mission, checking a ton of planets that might have life but not have anything. It’s also likely that the capital-X Xenomorph was found on the last planet they went to, probably on the return trip to Earth, otherwise it would’ve broken out and killed them a lot earlier.
When the Maginot retrieved the Xeno eggs they must have used a Synth. Using a human would have caused them to hatch and attack. It’s possible that when the Synth was working he might have encountered David from the prequels (since David was trying to recreate them) and then David could have swapped bodies with them.
Both David and Morrow use the phrase “don’t let the bed bugs bite” which is the possible hint for that.
It seems like Morrow can approach the eggs without them hatching, but he’s not a Synth. Teng seems like a Synth on the Maginot but that’s never confirmed.
Who knows, but I thought it could be an interesting way to bring the prequel lore into this show.
It was an interesting twist, in the first episode it implied that Morrow was as cold and complicit in the destruction as Ash from Alien but he was really more of the lone survivor in a sudden clusterfuck of corruption and incompetence from just about everyone else in the crew.
I thought just resource guarding: Xeno would steal the body it was using to lay eggs. Once Xeno killed that body then it went after Xeno … but Xeno’s eyes, such as they are, ain’t ideal spaces.
I think Eyeball just wanted a new host. It’s not some kind of blood feud.
What I found interesting about this episode is instead of the audience yelling at the screen that the crew was stupid; their stupidity was kind of the point. They were disengaged and overworked and did everything half assed (except the Engineer. Every team has the one person that is competent and keeps stuff going). Especially the scientist lady. She was absolutely the Worst.
I’m not sure if it was distracting her to help the tick, or trying to call her attention to it. It seemed more like the latter to me. I think it considers the other creatures as competition for the limited exploitable resources.