Resident Evil is a horror television series based upon Capcom's long running survival horror game series. The cast features Lance Reddick as Albert Wesker and Ella Balinska and Adeline Rudolph as his daughters. The first season premiered on Netflix on July 14, 2022.
The plot is centered both on a global Zombie Apocalypse caused by the mysterious Umbrella Corporation, and the events leading up to it. The Wesker family is deeply involved in these events.
The series was cancelled on August 26, 2022 after one season.
The series is not set in the same continuity as Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City, which was released a few months prior.
Previews: Teaser 1
, Teaser 2, Trailer, Clip 1, Clip 2
Tropes:
- Action Girl: Jade Wesker, who fights against people and monsters with all her might. She's nowhere near a trained soldier in the likes of Alice, but Jade is no slouch in the surviving department.
- Adaptational Heroism: Albert Wesker in the original games was The Sociopath who wanted to wipe out the world barring a few survivors he would lord over. This Wesker does in fact love his daughters despite the strained relationship, and tries to delay the release of Joy because he knows that it'll either lead to the apocalypse or Umbrella taking over the world. Subverted when we find out he's not actually the Wesker we're familiar with.
- Adaptational Ugliness: The Lickers (See the page image), while certainly not the prettiest thing in the games, look downright repulsive here, looking closer to their remake counterparts, and even then, they somehow managed to look even worse. Here, their exposed brains are replaced by mounds of deformed flesh, they're soaked in blood, their teeth are more pronounced and predatory looking, and their whole bodies are emaciated and skeletal.
- Affably Evil: Baxter is a total scumbag, but he carries himself with a friendly, playful personality.
- The Anti-Nihilist: Bert believes that the world is just a series of tragic mistakes, but also that people can still choose to do the right thing.
- Asshole Victim:
- Tammy, a student at Billie and Jade's school, insults Billie (first for her being the product of artificial insemination, then for her veganism), then beats her up.
- "Parasite" reveals that Evelyn has been turned into essentially a living puppet under Billie's control.
- Beauty Is Never Tarnished: In the middle of a horrorscape, surrounded by zombies among other things, being forced to run for her life, and getting knocked unconscious, Jade maintains shaped eyebrows, clean nails and an elaborate hairstyle that remains unscathed throughout.
- Beware the Silly Ones:
- Richard Baxter is introduced as a fat corporate Card-Carrying Jerkass who acts more like a source of comic relief with lots of snark though he is more than willing to get his hands dirty, he usually hides behind a small army of Umbrella Soldiers to do his dirty work for him. That changes in episode 4, where he effectively solos both an entire horde of undead and Brotherhood militiamen without breaking a sweat.
- Bert Wesker, one of the three clones of the original Albert Wesker, is introduced to be a Brilliant, but Lazy ditz whose upbeat personality suggests he's far too affable to even hurt a fly. Bert then proceeds to slaughter several Umbrella guards armed with nothing but a shaving razor and escapes his confinement.
- Big Bad: Evelyn Marcus in the present and Billie in the future.
- Bottomless Magazines: It is unclear what caliber is fired by the drones or how the ammunition is stored, but it is clear that they never run out. In addition, most of the Umbrella officers only stop their full-auto firing when they're dead.
- Brain with a Manual Control: With a drug cocktail and some implanted electrodes, Billie has a touchscreen remote control for Evelyn Marcus, introducing Jade to this fact by making Evelyn perform an actual song-and-dance routine.
- Bratty Teenage Daughter: Jade Wesker is a selfish, ungrateful, and highly volatile teenager who is a total Jerkass to nearly everybody she meets with the exception of her sister Billie, who Jade is extremely protective of.
- Broad Strokes:
- Whilst set in its own continuity, the series shares a similar history to the video games. As such, Albert Wesker's previous involvement with Umbrella as well as their controversy is mentioned in the trailer.
- In the series, it is mentioned time and again there is no cure for the T-Virus. In the games' history, there is not one, but three different cures to the T-Virus: Daylight, AT1521, and t-Vaccine.
- Bullying a Dragon: An already beaten Angel at Umbrella's mercy whispers in Albert's ear that he knows Jade and Billie. All this does is enrage Al and make him pick up one of the torture tools Evelyn set up for him, which he initially didn't want to use. Cue Angel pleading for him not to do so.
- Cain and Abel: Billie and Jade in the future are on opposite sides, with Billie having gone to Umbrella and taken it over at some point after them leaving New Racoon City.
- Canon Foreigner: The giant, mutant caterpillar, although it is similar to Grave Digger in Resident Evil 3.
- Celebrity Paradox: Jade mentions Rick and Morty at one point. Their father's actor, Lance Reddick, voiced Alan Rails of the Vindicators.
- Chekhov's Skill: Early on it's mentioned that Wesker is a fan of escape rooms. Billie and Jade find escape room style clues he set up for them to decipher if anything happens to him.
- Clone Degeneration: Wesker's clones were rapidly aged to physical prime by the original because he didn't feel like waiting for them to naturally age. As a result, they suffer severe health problems that the main clone Wesker partially solved by engineering his daughters as a living stop-gap.
- Continuity Nod: The playing of Moonlight Sonata on a piano solves a puzzle in the video games, and accomplishes the same goal in the show.
- Corrupt Corporate Executive: In a meeting, Evelyn brushes off warnings that their new miracle drug could create monsters at a high enough dosage with a quip about putting it on the warning label.
- Crazy Cat Lady: Melinda seems to have somewhere around 15 cats in her flat, so many she struggles to keep their names straight.
- Dead All Along: The real Albert Wesker died in 2009 inside a volcano.
- Devoured by the Horde: Baxter suffers this in the fourth episode.
- Didn't Think This Through:
- In order to get a bully to back off from her sister and help regain her social standing, Jade puts on a mascot mask and assaults the bully while they're in the bathroom before hiding the disguise in Billie's locker to make it look like she did it. All this does is get Billie called into the principal's office where she would've been expelled and potentially facing juvie if it wasn't for Albert stepping in.
- Billie, upon finding out that Umbrella has been testing on animals, convinces Jade to help her break into their R&D facility so she can take some pictures to expose the corp on the net. But instead of simply taking the pictures and leaving, Billie decides to unlock one of the heavily secured animal cages to see what's inside. This ends up releasing a Cerberus that bites Billie and kickstarts the series of events that inevitably cause a zombie outbreak in New Raccoon City.
- The Dragon: Roth is Evelyn's top subordinate who handles all of the more hands-on and brutal things she needs done.
- Equal-Opportunity Evil: Umbrella is hideously corrupt, as is tradition, but at the very least it's not bigoted. A black man is an invaluable scientist and their CEO is a woman married to another woman.
- Even Evil Has Standards: Roth might be happy with what he is ordered to do on Umbrella's behalf, but even he is visibly disgusted at Evelyn killing her own son when Billie infects him with a bite.
- Evil-Detecting Dog: Dogs seem able to detect a change in people infected with the virus and react negatively. Billie's own dog tries to attack and escape her when she takes it for a walk, making a neighbor suspicious that its even her dog when trying to return it to her.
- Evil, Inc.: Business as usual for the Umbrella Corporation. This version of Umbrella has already been beset by multiple scandals, and had to nuke Racoon City to stop an outbreak of the T-Virus. They make a point that they are trying to reform their image. However, they're still using a T-Virus derivative in their new miracle drug despite what it can do, and brush off the potential consequences.
- Fake Defector: Billie helps Jade escape Umbrella custody, claiming to be their reluctant pawn. Later, Jade discovers a secondary geo-tracker and realizes she's led Umbrella right to them as the helicopters arrive and they board the ship. Turns out Billie is not a pawn, but is puppeteering a drugged-up Evelyn as the faux front of the organization.
- Fatal Flaw: Jade's is impulsiveness. Even when she has the best of intentions, she goes for it at full speed. This gives her tunnel vision, and she often fails to account for how things can go wrong.
- For Want Of A Nail: The series seems to follow a similar history to the games, except for one thing: the Umbrella corporation's dirty dealings were never brought to light in this continuity, allowing them to remain in business to 2022 and beyond.
- Fling a Light into the Future: The University is a collective of scientists and scholars seeking to not just find a counter to the Zombie Apocalypse but also to preserve as much of pre-apocalypse culture as possible so that things can be rebuilt when things are finally over.
- Getting Smilies Painted on Your Soul: The Joy pill's intended use is as a souped-up anti-depressant. In practice, users become almost mindlessly happy and numb to pain, as demonstrated by Evelyn's wife. And that's before the potential for zombification.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Albert cobbles together a makesgift bomb out of lab chemicals, sacrificing himself so Bert, Billie and Jade can escape.
- Hollywood Hacking: Simon, the implied romantic interest of Jade and son of one of the Big Bads, also is the go-to techie for accessing things through Umbrella's firewall and looping cameras for the sisters."I've never seen security like this in Umbrella's networks. Hold, please." Types for one second. "Alright, you can fire up the laptop."
- Hypocrite: Future Billie accuses Jade of making everything about her, despite all the pain and suffering she's caused to get whatever she wants.
- I Did What I Had to Do: Evelyn invokes this to justify putting Joy in her wife's drink to keep her from leaving to Simon.
- In Name Only: A number of reviewers and fans have noted that, due to the new main characters, focus on family drama, partial post-apocalyptic setting and changes to creature design, this series only bears a passing resemblance to the games on which it is based.
- Large Ham: Paola Núñez takes every chance she can to chew the scenery as much as possible. There are enough wild outbursts, intense eye bulging, insane facial expressions, and just overall bizarre behavior that Nicolas Cage must be proud somewhere.
- Left Hanging: Because the series was cancelled after one season, we never find out how Jade and Billie fell out, or how Billie took over Umbrella and turned Evelyn into her puppet.
- Never My Fault: Two examples in "Revelations":
- Evelyn claims that Albert killed her son, despite the fact that she shot Simon in the head rather than take Albert's offer of trying to cure him in exchange for the girls' safety.
- Adult Billie claims Jade is responsible for everything that's gone wrong - despite the fact that it was Billie's idea to free the animals in Umbrella's lab, and thus she is the reason she was even bitten in the first place.
- Never Smile at a Crocodile: A gigantic mutant crocodile is kept in Forced Sleep by the University as a weapon of last resort. When unleashed, it shrugs off gunfire and has to be shot with several missiles to kill it.
- New Kid Stigma: Jade and Billie are both ostracized at their new school, with Billie facing online harassment after becoming the victim of a bully. This treatment only stops after Albert uses his influence to threaten the bully’s father.
- New Neo City: After the scandal associated with the events in Raccoon City, USA, the Umbrella Corporation has set up shop in South Africa and established "New Raccoon City".
- No-Sell: Bert gets tasered and is barely affected.
- Not the Fall That Kills You…: Jade runs and jumps from several stories up and escapes serious injury by landing on a van instead of the ground.
- Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist: Evelyn talks a big game about helping people with Joy, but its clear she's more interested in power and money given her lack of care about the drug potentially turning people into zombies and her plan to use it for some light mind control.
- Not Using the "Z" Word: Zombies are referred to as "zeroes" in-universe.
- Parental Neglect:
- This seems to be part of why Jade and Billie have a poor relationship with their father, as the demands of his work often come before the needs of his family.
- Jade goes on solo expeditions for extended periods of time, missing out on her daughter growing up. She leaves in the middle of her daughter's piano recital for work. Worse yet, she seems content to risk her life and leave her daughter motherless.
- Poor Communication Kills: Really, the lack of communication between the members of the Wesker household ends up killing the world.
- Punch-Clock Villain: We eventually find that Richard Baxter is this in a frank conversation about raising a family and paying bills.
- Psycho Serum: The revolutionary anti-depressant Evelyn wants rolled out is derived from the T-Virus. When the effects on the dog and rat are shown, performance-enhancing qualities like increased strength and and reduced pain are implied, but also some less-than-desirable effects like turning into a murderous abomination.
- Race Lift: In the video games and other media Albert Wesker is depicted as Caucasian, whereas he is played by African-American actor Lance Reddick in the series.
- Schizo Continuity: It's been said that the series is not canon to the games; however, the games (up to 5) are canon to the series. The Broad Strokes used to paint the lore and background meant there were many inconsistencies between the series and the games that were canon to it. This has led to the conclusion that the series is better labelled as Resident Evil In Name Only.
- Screw the Rules, I Have Connections!: When Billie is facing expulsion for attacking another student (it was actually Jade), Albert points out that the other girl's dad, a server admin, has a job that could easily be done by thousands of people, while Albert is irreplaceable. One call to Umbrella and they would ruin him. He quickly withdraws his complaints and orders his daughter to apologize for previously attacking Billie.
- Shout-Out:
- In the premiere episode, Jade tries to scandalize her Umbrella handler by off-handedly suggesting that she "mostly just reads Zootopia porn."
- During a video call, Jade seems shocked her daughter is no longer reading A Wrinkle in Time.
- There is a reference to Deca-Dence in Episode 2.
- Baxter states he was a fan of Spongebob Squarepants and claims the University has the show in their preservations.
- Jade makes an allusion to Rick and Morty when talking about the parentage of her and her sister.
- Evelyn is shown to be without scruples and is dressed in white-and-black outfits on multiple occasions. Jade refers to her as "Some Cruella de Vil bitch".
- Sinister Surveillance: In the present timeline with drones and armed guards, and suggested in flashbacks with the automated door and filtering certain Internet content for the town.
- Stepford Suburbia: New Racoon City is an offputtingly serene town with public Yoga sessions and all-white buildings built around an Umbrella facility.
- Stupid Evil: After causing a highly-publicized zombie outbreak that had to be pacified with a nuclear bomb, the Umbrella Corporation strived to fix this PR nightmare by going back to recreational pharmaceuticals... using the T-Virus as a secret ingredient. Naturally, this results in The End of the World as We Know It.
- Super-Fun Happy Thing of Doom: "Joy" is Umbrella's miracle drug that will make everyone in the world feel better. This trope is driven home with their "Joy for Kids!" mascot development and merchandising.
- Swiss-Cheese Security: Billie and Jade are able to beat Umbrella's state-of-the-art security system using bright headlamps to blind the facial recognition system and a recording of their father's voice to beat the voice recognition system. They're able to wander around Umbrella's offices and labs without so much as a security guard to stop them, eventually releasing a dangerous test subject and triggering an alarm. Between then and the time a security team is dispatched to the site, Wesker reaches the building and scrambles the computer system with a virus to eliminate any evidence of their presence.
- Tomato in the Mirror: It's eventually revealed that Albert Wesker is a clone of the original Albert Wesker.
- Too Dumb to Live: Plenty of Darwin Award nominees here:
- To start, Umbrella's still trying to profit off of the T-Virus even after seeing firsthand what it did to the first Raccoon City. And when Albert brings in a rat infected with it from the Joy, Evelyn just gives some halfhearted countermeasures.
- Billie gets infected in the first place because she opens a locked box in a laboratory containing something growling and angry even after they had gotten plenty of photos to prove Umbrella's animal testing. Sure enough, it contains a Cerberus.
- Angel's Bullying a Dragon moment where he pushes the buttons of Albert, who has him completely at his mercy and didn't want to torture him until now.
- To test a possible solution to the apocalypse in that they need to dock the ship and test it on some Zeroes, Jade gets impatient and decides to bring a Zero onboard the ship where her family and friends are. While it initially seems to work, Bea, who Jade let into the room, saying something causes the Zero to go berserk, break its restraints, and kill Jade's pregnant friend.
- Two-Keyed Lock: When the University needs to hit the "Red button" Which releases a mind controlled T-Virus Infected crocodile they require two people to turn seprate keys which unlocks a large button a third person can press.
- The Unreveal: The first season ultimately leaves open the question of how the Zombie Apocalypse began, though it's implied that the zombified Angel Rubio started it.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Jade is a walking ball of Nice Job Breaking It, Hero. She nearly gets Billie expelled by framing her as the one that beat up her school bully. It's her attempts to find information on the T-Virus queen that leads to several deaths and a fair amount of carnage in her wake. Besides Umbrella doing Obviously Evil things and Billie getting herself infected with the T-Virus because of her own stupidity, almost everything immediately bad in the season can be traced to a long-term result of Jade's decisions.
- Vorpal Pillow: Bert Wesker uses a pillow on a guard to kill them. Of course, the fact he'd been slashed open by a razor blade several times made the pillow somewhat academic.
- Wham Shot: In the final flashback scene of "Revelations", the Tyrant's claw is seen breaking through the rubble of the destroyed lab.
- Zombie Apocalypse: When not depicting a peaceful slice of Americana hiding dark secrets, the trailers present a dark future full of undead monsters, many of them recognizable from the games (Cerberuses and Lickers, to name a few).
