The dangers of big pharma.
Sisters at war.
A surprising message from an unlikely source.
This is the ending of Netflix's new horror series, "Resident Evil," explained.
Since the "Dawn of the Dead," the zombie apocalypse has been used by artists across a variety
of mediums to act as a cautionary tale regarding the dangers of an era's current path.
While George Romero's movie exposed the willful ignorance of the Reagan era, Capcom's "Resident
Evil," released in 1996, spoke to a society grappling with the consequences of the "Greed
is Good" '80s and an increasing awareness of the not-always-benevolent nature of big
pharma.
Elizabeth Wurtzel's "Prozac Nation" had come out just two years prior, and a newly-public
company called America Online had just leapt, in the course of a year, from 1 million to
5 million members.
The disillusionment of the '60s and '70s had returned, but in the form of a general malaise
and cynicism, aided by a boom in technology that was evolving rapidly.
The malevolent entity at the center of "Resident Evil," the Umbrella Corporation, brilliantly
encapsulated the era's dependence on, and wariness of, profit-hungry corporations, while
the game's various monsters made tangible the worst-case-scenario fears of an increasingly
skeptical generation.
While the game evolved with each of its numerous iterations and spin-offs, this thematic core
remained the same.
And while the "Resident Evil" films get a lot wrong about the games, and have an otherwise
convoluted and confusing storyline, even they've been unwavering in keeping up this subtext,
at least a little bit.
Netflix's reimagining of the now well-worn zombie yarn does this as well, but with one
very important tweak.
You don't need to sift through the chaotic timeline of the "Resident Evil'' films to
appreciate Netflix's new series.
The two films that feel like the most predominant influences on series creator Andrew Dabb's
take have nothing whatsoever to do with the IP, or, for that matter, with zombies, though
they're no less horrifying for it.
The revelations provided in 2021's "The Crime of the Century," a two-part documentary detailing
Purdue Pharma's role in the opioid epidemic, and 2020's "The Social Dilemma," an exposé
on surveillance capitalism and for-profit behavior modification, both loom large over
the eight-episode series.
Dabb's series, and its ending in particular, directly reference the realities laid out
in these films.
Though the antagonist in the "Resident Evil" games has always been a greedy corporate machine
invested in global domination, it's mostly maintained a kind of faceless, vagueness that
allowed it to serve more as a template than a direct commentary.
Netflix's "Resident Evil," on the other hand, imbues its central villain with a clear and
unnervingly recognizable specificity.
"Resident Evil" is not a portrait of a dystopian future, but a reflection on an increasingly
dystopian present.
The notorious T-virus still kicks-off the zombie apocalypse, but Umbrella's path to
power and domination has evolved along with our world.
Forget unleashing unkillable mutants on other countries.
In 2022, the ability to control a population via medications and devices upon which its
people are wholly dependent is a much more efficient, unstoppable weapon.
In "The Social Dilemma," big tech turncoat Tristan Harris explains the result of persuasive
tech: "two billion people," he says, "will have thoughts that they didn't intend to have
because [of a] designer at Google."
This is happening to each and every one of us every time we reach for our smartphones,
and it's echoed directly by Paola Nuñez's [POW-el-uh NOON-yez] Evelyn [EV-uh-lin] Marcus,
who wants to use the company's new T-virus-laced antidepressant, JOY, to take this real world
mind control to a whole new level.
"F--- Google.
F--- Zuckerburg.
They deliver eyeballs.
Umbrella will deliver minds."
Despite Wesker insisting that the T-virus element in JOY is still too unstable to bring
the drug to market, Evelyn demands he make it happen within the next six months, so that
she might successfully bring the flailing company back to life.
At one point, a reporter explains Umbrella's past and present as:
"A company besieged by legal scandal, and falling stock prices, is now trying to reinvent
itself with a major push into direct-to-consumer drugs."
The allusion to both Purdue and Insys Therapeutics (the now-bankrupt company responsible for
fentanyl) is both clear and cutting.
Equally clear in their commentary are the opioid withdrawal-mirroring side-effects of
JOY and the "zombifying" effect that high doses of the drug elicit.
"So, we know what goes on the warning label."
This line from Evelyn is a biting reference to big pharma consistently blaming the user
of a drug while ignoring their own irresponsible marketing of that drug is blindingly apparent.
That fact that Umbrella's latest weapon is manipulation and control through dependency,
rather than monstrous brute force, marks a major turning point for the narrative.
But in addition to this fresh twist on the story, there's an important thematic tie-in
to the series' source material.
Netflix's "Resident Evil" also highlights the gaslighting tactics used by some of today's
tech and pharma giants.
"It's for your own good," Umbrella insists, as do our real world ads, apps, and pharmaceutical
companies.
Combine this sales tactic with the initially good intentions that spark so many advances
in science and tech, and you create a dynamic wherein both seller and buyer are locked in
a one-way "road to hell."
This idea is most thoroughly shown in the last two episodes of "Resident Evil," when
we learn that for all her flippant disregard of JOY users, and for all her power-hungry
ambition, Evelyn might genuinely believe that her creation could change the world, as she
says several times, for the better.
There's more than a few shades of the tragic tale of Theranos in Evelyn's repeated use
of that phrase, but in having the Umbrella CEO allow her ambition to overtake her regard
for human life and autonomy, "Resident Evil" is once again presenting us with a cautionary
tale.
In the penultimate episode, we learn that Evelyn has been drugging her wife with JOY,
in order to keep her compliant.
This marks the point of no return for the wife and mother, who'll later continue her
mission despite the loss of her son.
In contrast to Evelyn, the Wesker of Netflix's "Resident Evil" never loses his humanity,
differing wildly from the one-dimensional villain of the games and movies.
The hard-working dad with whom we're presented for the majority of the series is not, we
learn in the end, the actual Albert Wesker.
When the original Wesker needed a team of scientists to help him advance the virus,
he created a handful of Wesker clones.
Only two of these clones survive — Bert, who Evelyn keeps locked up, and Albert, the
dad we believe is Wesker for most of the show, but they have serious health problems as a
result of aging instantaneously.
In order to stay alive, Albert created his two daughters, Billie and Jade and uses their
blood to stave off his symptoms.
It's a simultaneously nasty and nuanced kind of parental need.
Albert does love his daughters, as evidenced by his willingness to do anything to protect
them.
Here, again, the series is highlighting the not-so-straightforward nature of our push-pull
relationship with scientific progress.
Yes, Wesker is using the girls, but he has no choice in the matter if he wants to live.
He does, however, have a choice as to whether or not he'll sacrifice himself for her.
This gap in what he can and can't control — his human weakness vs his human strengths
— mirrors society's complicated need for pharmaceutical breakthroughs.
In the end, we learn that adult Billie has joined Umbrella, eventually finding a way
to control even Evelyn.
Jade has gone in a different direction, working for a rebel university and studying the behavior
of the zombies that now encompass the planet.
Sister is pitted against sister as it's revealed that Billie, like her clone dad before her,
needs Jade's blood in order to survive.
In one of the most important final scenes of the series, we witness Billie turning to
Evelyn for help.
"If I am sick, can you help me?"
It's not hard to see this cause-of-the-sickness, owner-of-the-cure dynamic in the call for
companies like Facebook to fix the monster they created.
Unfortunately, as data scientist Cathy O'Neil points out in "The Social Dilemma," this is
a misguided ask.
"We are allowing the technologists to frame this as a problem that they're equipped to
solve.
That is – that's a lie."
Evelyn and Umbrella may be able to keep Billie alive, but they do so at the cost of her very
humanity.
In the end, Billie's decision to rely on the corporation leads to her willingness to shoot
her sister in the stomach and kidnap her niece to mine for blood.
As Albert struggles to reject Evelyn's control in the build-up to the outbreak, she reminds
him that willpower has nothing to do with his current situation.
"You need your medicine," she says.
"In about an hour, maybe less, the pain will become unbearable, and you'll give in."
Later, as he lays dying on the floor, begging his daughters for forgiveness, Evelyn leans
over him and places a syringe of Jade's blood in his hand.
It's a heartbreaking scene, and one that directly reflects the dynamics between an addict, their
family, and their supplier.
Despite the gutting symbolism of Albert's final moments before he sacrifices himself
to free his daughters, the series eventually leaves us with some semblance of hope.
When adult Jade unleashes a mountain-sized, mutated Crocodile on Umbrella's basecamp,
it's not simply a reptilian display of gamer fan service.
The confrontation of past and future, of nature and technology, and of history and progress,
are all brought to the foreground in the series' final moments.
The fact that Umbrella's technology is able to tear at the body of a creature that pre-dates
our existence is of obvious symbolic importance.
What's more, Jade aligning herself with the university — aka, the preserver of "the
past" — is meant to stand in direct contrast to her sister's alignment with Umbrella.
In their final exchange, Billie literally says,
"I'm the future."
The series stops short of implying the past is wholly superior.
Yes, this future is heartless, bleak, infected, and driven by a manufactured dependence on
a malevolent corporation.
Yes, we got here by allowing our complex need for progress to make us reliant on such a
corporation, but this doesn't mean science and progress are, in and of themselves, a
bad thing.
The crocodile doesn't attack Jade's daughter, and though we've yet to learn why, it's implied
that Jade used some form of science or technology to protect her offspring.
It's a series finale that leaves us with more questions than answers.
We don't know if Jade survives.
We don't know if Billie will harm her own niece (though it certainly looks that way).
We don't know what's special about Jade's daughter, and we don't know much about Billie's
plans for Umbrella.
We also don't know what will become of Evelyn, the university, or the world's remaining humans.
Thematically speaking, however, the series finale ends on a fairly conclusive note — one
that's simultaneously chilling and motivating.
By setting the onset of the apocalypse in our current year — and by focusing on two
very real, very powerful yet complicated threats to our society — "Resident Evil" gives us
the most terrifying apocalypse of the entire IP.
This is happening now, it says.
We carry this threat, this loss of independence through dependence, around in our pockets,
charge it and feed it and feed off of it, even as it feeds off us; even as it feeds,
more specifically, off our brains.
Nevertheless, beneath the doom and gloom of the series' finale, there's some hope to be
gleaned from Bert's guileless speech to a young and still-mostly human Billie.
"No one's really okay.
We're all just doing our best.
In a world where it's way too easy to do your worst."
In the end, this most recent installment of "Resident Evil" simply reminds us that while
corporations aren't people, people still are.
At least, for now.
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