The Ending Of Netflix's Resident Evil Season 1 Explained

Let's address the inevitable right off the bat. Although an encyclopedic knowledge of Capcom's "Resident Evil" game series — or even a relative familiarity with the incomprehensible narrative at play in the IP's film franchise — may help you appreciate a number of the flourishes and references in Netflix's "Resident Evil," such knowledge is neither necessary nor ultimately that helpful when it comes to understanding the meaning behind the just-released reboot. If you're looking to understand how directly the series draws from or relates to its source material, IGN's "Resident Evil: The Story So Far" and Netflix's breakdown are both excellent places to start. If, however, you're attempting to decode the chilling and hyper-relevant commentary embedded in the reimagining's through-line and ending, you're better off directing your attention to the basic theme the story has been addressing, consistently, for just under three decades now.

Created and co-written by Andrew Dabb (of "Supernatural") and starring Lance Reddick ("Bosch," "John Wick") as a very different iteration of Raccoon City's longtime antagonist, Albert Wesker, the series approaches the apocalyptic narrative via two separate timelines. The first takes place in New Raccoon City in 2022, over two decades after the eradication of (old) Raccoon City. The second brings us to 2036, and a post-apocalyptic London overrun by (what else) T-virus-created zombies. That Dabb sets the better part of his story in our current world is of no small consequence. In fact, it tells us everything we need to know about the not-so-subtle message his ending relays.  

Again, you don't need to sift through the chaotic timeline of the "Resident Evil" films to appreciate Netflix's new series, but that doesn't mean its devoid of any and all cinematic reference. Oddly enough, however, the two films that feel like the most predominant influences on 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 lethal and fraudulent role in the opioid epidemic, and 2020's "The Social Dilemma," an exposé on Surveillance Capitalism, growth hacking, and for-profit behavior modification (aka "persuasive tech"), both loom large over the eight-episode series. Through dialogue, imagery, and a litany of not-so-subtle allusions, Dabb's series, and its ending in particular, directly reference the realities laid out in these films, otherwise known as our current, actual reality.

In doing so, Netflix's contribution to the story does something the games, films, and spin-offs have not. Though the underlying antagonist in the "Resident Evil" games has always been a greedy, profits-over-people corporate machine invested in global domination achieved through a monopoly on the mechanisms of modern warfare, it's mostly maintained a kind of facelessness, a 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.

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 follows: "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. Critics say that the company is operating at a dangerous burn rate." 

The allusion to both Purdue and Insys Therapeutics (the now-bankrupt company responsible for Fentanyl, per The Wall Street Journal) is both clear and cutting. Equally clear in their commentary are the opioid withdrawal-mirroring side-effects of JOY™ (aggression, sweating, rapid heartbeat, hallucinations) and the "zombifying" effect that high doses of the drug elicit. When Evelyn callously says, "So, we know what goes on the warning label," the reference to big pharma consistently blaming the user of a drug while ignoring their own irresponsible marketing and prescribing of that drug (via CT Mirror) is blindingly apparent. 

That Umbrella's two different uses for their latest "weapon" involve manipulation and control through dependency (rather than monstrous brute force) marks a major turning point for the narrative — one that's brought into clear relief in the series' final two episodes. But in addition to this fresh and relevant twist on the story, there's an important thematic tie-in to the series' source material.  

In contrast to Evelyn, the Wesker of Netflix's (admittedly polarizing) "Resident Evil" reboot never loses his humanity. This Wesker differs wildly from the one-dimensional villain of the games and movies, but with good reason. 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 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 (whom 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 (in the 2022 timeline, Siena Agudong and Tamara Smart) using the latter's blood to stave off his symptoms. It's a simultaneously nasty and nuanced kind of parental need. Albert does love his daughters (whom Evelyn refers to as his "blood bags") 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 Jade, 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 — openly mirrors society's complicated need for pharmaceutical breakthroughs. Similarly, Umbrella's need to be both the disease and the cure mirrors our current technological conundrum.

You can't, the ending of reminds us, extinguish a fire with more fire. Billie is "alive," but no longer able to act or think beyond her own survival. This addiction-investigating ending is foreshadowed in a scene in the series' penultimate episode. As the girls' father 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, adding, "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 dynamic between an addict and their family, and an addict and their supplier. Purdue may not have literally put heroin needles in the hands of users, but through its lies and greed, it created an uncontrollable outbreak (not unlike a zombie outbreak) of individuals so addicted to over-prescribed opioids that they had little choice but to turn to the less expensive street drug when their dependence overtook their bank account (via CDC). 

Despite the gutting symbolism of Albert's final few moments before he sacrifices himself to free (or, attempt to free) his daughters, the series eventually leaves us with some semblance of hope.

Plot-wise, 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," he tells her, "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.