Clones, crocodiles, conspiracies:
Resident Evil has them all.
And unpicking all those mysteries
may require some help.
We're here to fill in the gaps
and explain the implications of hidden details,
as we answer the biggest questions
raised by the show's ending.
We're about to inject a whole dose of spoilers
straight into your veins,
so make sure you've watched Resident Evil first.
At the end of the series,
we see Jade and Billie fleeing New Raccoon City
in 2022,
and an older Billie kidnapping Jade's daughter
in 2036.
The trickiest part of Resident Evil
is juggling those two timelines,
with Jade and Billie pre-apocalypse adventures
in 2022,
and Jade fighting for her life,
14 years later.
What we don't see in the 2022 flashbacks
is how 2036 went to the dogs,
zombified or otherwise,
and why Billie turned on Jade.
But throughout the show,
we're given hints to fill in some gaps.
When 2036 Jade is caught in episode one,
the bounty hunters spot her identity number
from New Raccoon City…
She's a survivor.
…and confirm this is where the zombie outbreak began.
Your ink.
You were in the New Raccoon when the outbreak started.
As to why Billie shoots Jade in 2036,
we do see some conflict between the sisters in 2022,
but the real indicator hides in Billie's speech.
She mentions events that have yet
to happen in the show.
You ever notice how everyone around you somehow…
dies?
Simon.
Bert.
Kim, Hiroki… Dad.
Their dad blew up destroying Umbrella's lab,
and Simon is killed by his mum
after being bitten by Billie.
#World'sWorstMother.
But in the 2022 timeline, Bert is still alive
and drives off with the girls.
And we've yet to meet characters
called Kim and Hiroki -
a clear sign that the sisters' journey
from strained siblings to sworn enemies
has plenty of secrets yet to be revealed.
Stay the fuck away from her.
At the end of the season, we see something gnarly
doing his best Carrie impersonation.
The claw belongs to this nasty-looking chap,
previously contained in Umbrella's laboratory,
until Albert blows it up.
And while we don't see what triggers
the zombie outbreak in 2022,
we'd bet a yearly supply of Joy pills
on it having something to do with this guy.
To understand why,
we need to quickly talk about the T-Virus.
It's mentioned at several points in the show,
and has a long history
in the wider Resident Evil universe.
But the drug contains a derivative of the T-Virus,
a pathogen we originally developed
for the American military.
That project was… ill-fated.
The T-Virus was a mutagenic plague
engineered by the Umbrella Corporation in the 1970s.
This isn't a pharmaceutical company we see in the show,
but a gang of mad scientists mutating people
into monsters for military purposes.
They create the T-Virus,
and the Resident Evil games, all set before the show,
are about heroes fighting the creatures
that escape as a result.
Evelyn Marcus does hint at this dark past.
The old Umbrella, my father made his share of mistakes,
but this is not that company.
And she would know.
In the games,
there is a character called James Marcus, her dad.
In the 2022 timeline, the T-Virus still exists,
albeit as a strain in Umbrella's Joy pills.
And this explains the weird and wonderful creatures
seen throughout the show.
T-Virus does different things
to different subjects.
People mostly become zombies,
but it can also mutate them into Lickers,
the guys with the horrible tongues
living in the Channel Tunnel.
Wouldn't happen on the Eurostar.
If the virus gets into animals,
it increases their size,
explaining the giant spiders,
Jade's caterpillar friend,
and the scariest crocodile this side of Peter Pan.
As for our friend in the rubble,
he resembles the ultimate form
the virus takes in the games:
the tyrant,
an unstoppable killing machine with massive claws.
Which is why releasing him from his tank
is likely to be very bad news
for the people in 2022.
We learn in the series that Jade and Billie's dad,
Albert Wesker, is not Father of the Year material.
He is, in fact, a clone of another Albert Wesker.
Let's call him "OG" Wesker,
a former Umbrella scientist who made copies of himself
to work on secret science projects.
We meet three clones in the show:
Albert, Bert and Alby.
Alby dies when Umbrella soldiers
storm OG Wesker's lab…
…leaving Bert,
who was the unhinged breadstick-loving clone…
More breadsticks.
…and Albert, father to Jade and Billie.
We learn that this Albert
genetically modified his daughters
so that their blood could keep him alive.
As a clone, his body wasn't built to endure.
At the end of the season, Albert sacrifices himself
and leaves the teens to escape with Bert.
The use of clones also explains
how Albert Wesker, or a version of him,
is alive in 2022.
In the Resident Evil universe, OG Wesker,
the mastermind with the cool glasses and leather coat,
fell into some lava in 2009 -
a fact the show does reference.
He was killed by the original Albert Wesker,
our creator.
Creator?
We were part of a research and development team
he put together to help him.
He died in a volcano.
It's okay though. He wasn't very nice.
Yeah, it was a whole thing.
If you're familiar with the wider
Resident Evil universe,
it does explain a few moments in the season.
We see OG Wesker in a flashback to 2005,
set in a place called the Arklay Mountains.
This is the location of the very first
Resident Evil game,
where Umbrella made the T-Virus.
It's also OG Wesker we see and hear
in a tape the sisters find in their dad's hidden room.
The video shows Wesker
injecting a mutated woman named Lisa.
Again, she's a character from the first game,
Lisa Trevor,
who appears in this horrific, monstrous form.
Oh, and if you're wondering where dad Albert
gets his weird approach to home security,
the tune the girls play on the piano to unlock his room
is Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata",
which you played on a piano
in the original Resident Evil game
to unlock a different secret room.
In fact, the whole fifth episode,
"Family Movies",
feels like a love letter to Resident Evil puzzles.
Blowing a dog whistle to grab a key
from a dog's collar
is another conundrum from the game.
You chipped fuzzy baby.
One final mystery from the ending:
before his explosive resignation,
Albert writes the name of a helpful contact on a note.
In the final shots of the show,
this is revealed to read "Ada Wong".
Like OG Wesker,
she's another key character
in the Resident Evil universe,
a spy whose shifting alliances
could never be pinned down.
That she works outside of Umbrella,
or at least did in her video-game past,
would suggest she's a wise person to turn to,
given their current situation.
In the wider universe, Ada first appeared in 1998
during a zombie outbreak
in the original Raccoon City.
This is the event referenced throughout the show.
The girls find reference to it
in their dad's 1998 files,
and they learn that things didn't end well there.
Do you know what happened to the first Racoon City?
Some kind of gas leak, a big fire or something.
No, no, no, it was destroyed by a nuclear blast.
But hey, if Ada survived one zombie apocalypse,
maybe she can survive another.
Intriguingly, her address is listed as Tokyo.
Does this hint at more globetrotting to come?
A trip to Japan would explain
how Jade and Billie could meet a Hiroko,
one of the mystery characters Billie says
Jade has killed between 2022 and 2036.
Only time will tell.
And so we've reached the end of Resident Evil,
a world with as many brainteasers
as it has brain-munchers.
Why not share your own theories in the comments?
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