Warning: SPOILERS Ahead For Netflix's Resident Evil
Netflix's Resident Evil TV series and the 2021 movie reboot Welcome To Raccoon City end with the same sequel hook, teasing the arrival of a fan favorite game character. The Milla Jovovich Resident Evil movies were many things, including being the highest-grossing film franchise based on a video game. One thing they were not, however, is popular with followers of the game series. The movies may have borrowed characters, monsters and settings from their interactive source material, but their storylines and outlandish action had little to do with the survival horror tone of the games.
Resident Evil: Welcome To Raccoon City was the seventh live-action movie and arrived in 2021, serving as a total reboot. It attempted to address the most common fan complaints, including putting the focus on horror and staying faithful to the story of the games. Even with those good intentions, the film was another letdown, trying to cram far too many characters and subplots into a slim runtime. Its poor visual effects and underwhelming horror were also issues and unlike the Jovovich saga, Welcome To Raccoon City - which had many game easter eggs - was a box-office dud. While it ended with a sequel hook, a follow-up looks doubtful.
The latest live-action outing for the property is Netflix's Resident Evil series. The showrunners have proclaimed the show is faithful to the backstory from the games, but its focus on two original characters - Jade and Billie Wesker - and bizarre tonal mix of teen drama and post-apocalyptic action has not gone down well with critics and audiences. The Netflix Resident Evil does appear to have been a success for the platform, but its IMDb and Rotten Tomatoes scores show it's not an unqualified success either. The end of Netflix's Resident Evil teases that young Jade and Billie will be meeting Ada Wong in season 2, which - oddly - is essentially how Resident Evil: Welcome To Raccoon City ended too.
Ada Wong Is A Sequel Hook For Both The Show And Movie
For full context, the final episode of Netflix's Resident Evil saw Albert Wesker (Lance Reddick) give his daughters a note for someone he wants them to contact when they escape. After Wesker dies in an explosion, they look at the note to see Ada Wong's name. In the game saga, Wong is a spy introduced in 1998's Resident Evil 2. She poses as a civilian and tags along with rookie cop Leon but is revealed to be seeking a sample of Umbrella's G-Virus. At the end of Resident Evil: Welcome To Raccoon City, Wesker (Tom Hopper) awakens from a body bag after seemingly dying earlier in the story. Confused about his sudden non-death, he's approached from the shadows by none other than Ada (Lily Gao).
She reveals that Wesker was resurrected and generally speaks cryptically, all to set up a Resident Evil: Welcome To Raccoon City sequel. What's strange is despite the fact Netflix's Resident Evil and Welcome To Raccoon City had different creative teams and have no canon links to each other, they repeat the same sequel tease. Both end with the hook of Ada Wong being a major player who will connect the characters into the wider world of the franchise, without really offering any story details. Time will tell if Netflix's Resident Evil gets a season 2, but despite Ada being a popular character, the series might face an uphill struggle to overcome season 1's reception.