When it comes to long-running franchises, some timelines are maintained with the careful and efficient eye one would use to perform surgery. Others, however, build chaos on top of nonsense until they collapse in on themselves and the franchise is forced back to the drawing board.
Resident Evilfalls just below Pokémon when it comes to video game franchises with the most on-screen adaptations. Unfortunately, almost every attempt to bring Capcom’s beloved survival horror franchise out of the gaming space hasleft something to be desired. Despite that, the franchise soldiers on, as unkillable as their trademark shambling horrors. The newest attempt comes to the small screen courtesy of Netflix, and has raised a handful of questions from new and old fans. One of the biggest is where exactly it falls within the story’s established timeline.
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Theeight numbered games andcountless spin-offs in theResident Evilfranchise tell several long and winding stories that often contradict or invalidate each other and regularly add up to complete chaos. Fans have drawn lines between the mainline titles in groups of three, but those separate by gameplay and tone more than they do by narrative. The narrative begins with the relatively straightforward first game, in which a group of special agents fights their way through an evil residence that hides a classic mad science lab. The evil Umbrella Corporation hangs over the franchise as its antagonist, loosing larger and deadlier bio-organic weapons to claim some version of world domination. At the company’s heart is Albert Wesker, originally a double agent who betrays the first game’s heroes and gradually becomes a planetary threat through research and self-experimentation.Wesker’s fate is a grim one, but his new appearance in the upcomingResident EvilNetflix series has raised several questions.
Wesker appears with a new face in the film, portrayed byJohn Wickstar Lance Reddick. While this would logically appear to be a case of race-blind casting, and an excellent choice for the role, the showrunner has made it clear that it’s more than just an outside-the-box pick. Wesker dies at the end ofResident Evil 5, blasted with a rocket launcher and destroyed in a volcano by the game’s heroes. Any given fan would assume that the series takes place in an alternate timeline from the games. The sevenResident Evilfilms starring Milla Jovovichborrow characters and concepts from the games, but completely ignore their narratives. This new series, however, has been explicitly stated to canonically follow the games. The games are seen as a backstory to the series, meaning there must be some reason Wesker is alive.
Wesker does not appear inResident Evil 6or7; his death is considered canon after the fifth game. The games, unfortunately, make the mistake of naming which year they take place, adding further confusion. Albert Wesker “died” in 2009.The Umbrella Corporation hadlong since been bankrupted by punitive damages to the victims of Raccoon City. Four years later, in 2013, the President of the United States was publicly infected by a virus in a terrorist attack by Neo-Umbrella.Resident Evil 6sees huge parts of the world annihilated by zombie invasions, millions dead or turned, and Umbrella’s aftershocks resulting in several near-apocalypse scenarios. The lone teaser for the upcoming Netflix series seems to ignore basically every detail of that, and gives strong evidence to the suggestion that its world is completely unrelated to that of the games.
The series takes place across two time periods, 2022 and 2034. In the series' take on the current year, Wesker is still a researcher at Umbrella Corps — and Umbrella Corps still exists. Wesker now has two daughters, both of whom are 14 in 2022. If Wesker conceived those kids after his apparent death, they would be 13 at the oldest, so some other explanation must be in play. The best possible explanation for Wesker’s current state is that he somehow survived, or was rescued from his grim fate and was somehow placed in a new body. Lab-grown clones are common to the franchise, and transferring consciousness isn’t too far as a concept. It’s far harder to explain thestate of the world in 2022when compared to the world of the games.
The series will have a lot of weight on its shoulders when it comes to explaining how Umbrella is still around almost two decades after its demise. Its place in the timeline is a difficult one, placing it after the events of even the most recent game. Clearly, the best possible piece of the timeline that the series could have inhabited is entirely outside it. TheResident Eviltimeline is a tangled messat best. The best games in the canon are the ones that establish themselves outside it, separated by decades or continents. Hopefully, theResident Evilseries can stay entertaining, regardless of whether hardcore fans can follow every beat.
