Resident Evil Netflix

As diehard fans will know, Resident Evil's timeline is pretty complicated. Mainline games exist alongside CGI films in canon, while there are several ...

Wesker arriving in New Raccoon City in 2022 comes 13 years after his supposed death in Resident Evil 5. If you’re new to the series and keen to see how that played out, be sure to play the Resident Evil 2 and Resident Evil 3 Remakes. The Resident Evil Netflix series takes place both in 2022 and 2036.

Capcom's survival horror granddaddy of a series Resident Evil is hitting the small screen at last today, with the arrival of Netflix's TV adaptation.

Its showrunner, Supernatural’s Andrew Dabb, has gone on record with Netflix’s winkingly named Tudum site to sell the connections to the Resident Evil games. He’s long-time series antagonist Albert Wesker, so of course he’s tinkering with Umbrella bioweapons that have something to do with the downfall of the world in the future. The Resident Evil show follows twins Jade Wesker (Tamara Smart) and Billie Wesker (Siena Agudong) across two timelines: present-day New Raccoon City and all over post-apocalyptic Earth in 2036.

This gory, cliffhanger-packed video game adaptation is eight hours of mindless, blood-soaked zombie fun – just what you need to forget about 2022.

The end of every episode is a bigger cliffhanger. In 2036, Billie is a field researcher who studies the evolution of the virus. But – and here’s the thing, the blessed, precious thing – none of it matters. Maybe it has something to do with the mysterious circumstances of your birth and/or the injections your father gave you throughout your childhood? That is the guarantee of the video-game-based action series adaptation. If you are, too, then hurry yourself along to Netflix’s iteration of Resident Evil and have yourself a mindlessly fantastic eight hours.

After a popular game and seven live-action movies (including a reboot last year), "Resident Evil" makes the seemingly inevitable migration to Netflix as a ...

Not that there's much reason to sweat the details or worry too much about the longevity of anyone other than her. That might be true strictly for Netflix's purposes in terms of connecting with fans. Balinska is a solid enough lead taking into account the confining nature of the writing, as Milla Jovovich could probably attest after her half-dozen action-laden outings.

Netflix's "Resident Evil" takes on the video game franchise, but many of the human characters lack bite.

Since half the show is future-set, there are some twists later on — mostly “Who is still alive in 2036 and how did they survive?” — but the disparate zombie parts do not make a cohesive zombie whole. The “Resident Evil” franchise has been around for more than 25 years, launching as a horror game in the mid ’90s that terrified players with its grotesque monsters and haunting world. Netflix’s “ Resident Evil” series is no different, infusing its take on the undead with multiple timelines, teen drama and a sci-fi pharmaceutical company bent on world domination.

Netflix's new Resident Evil series is a Wesker family drama that ditches the horror. Why?

The show does a lot of work building on the story of the games and laying the foundation for future seasons should the show get picked up again. This Resident Evil is a family drama first and foremost, which is sure to turn off fans with certain, well-warranted expectations of the franchise. Some of the teen drama the girls grapple with at school feels a little aimless as well, but thank goodness Smart, Agudong, and Reddick are terrific together and elevate some of the weaker moments just enough to pull us through. Again, this is a show made for fans by fans, and to experience the story in full effect, the viewer should at this point be asking themselves, “Wait…didn’t he die in a volcano?” And yet, this is precisely how we meet him in the show, which should raise the eyebrows of longtime fans and mean, well, absolutely nothing to newcomers. But as you get deeper into the season, it becomes clear that the show is a direct continuation of the Resident Evil saga, centered on none other than Albert Wesker.

Resident Evil adaptations have been around for years thanks to the action franchise of films, but the latest spin on the survival horror games comes in the ...

Although it sounds like there won't be full timeline centered around the events of the late 1990s, it is pretty exciting to hear that fans may get to see more of those moments and perhaps even see some other iconic characters pop up in this world. I don’t know that we’re looking to introduce a full third timeline - two is probably enough - but I think little pops and flashes here and there can be really fun and can present moments from the game which are obviously part of our lore to the audience in a way that informs the current story that’s going on. It's clear that everything that happened in the early games have shaped this world, but a lot of the details are left to the imagination and new fans would be able to follow along even if they have no idea what happened back around 1998.

The second is the “current” timeline pre-disaster in 2022 where a young Jade and Billie Wesker (played by Tamara Smart and Siena Agudong) deal with the secrets ...

Family dynamics are another key focus of the show with the Wesker family, present and future, integral to the shape of the world as it unfolds. The second is the “current” timeline pre-disaster in 2022 where a young Jade and Billie Wesker (played by Tamara Smart and Siena Agudong) deal with the secrets that their father Albert Wesker (Lance Reddick) has kept from them their entire lives. The first timeline is set in the bleak landscape of 2036, opening with an adult Jade Wesker (played by Ella Balinska) on her own as she tries to study the zombies shambling around much of the world.

Netflix's Resident Evil streaming series considers all entries in the video game franchise to be canon, which raises some questions about Albert Wesker.

But the Albert Wesker on our show is the Albert Wesker after that. "Everything in the games is the backstory for the show. Resident Evil is available to stream on Netflix from Thursday 14th July 2022. That explanation does not include that he happened to be wearing volcano and rocket launcher-proof clothes." Everything that happened in the games exists in this world. On this point, Dabb told SFX Magazine: "In game five, Wesker was blown up by a rocket launcher inside of a volcano.

A still from the Netflix series "Resident Evil." He might seem like a nice-guy dad, but Albert Wesker is a mad scientist to the core. Credit: Netflix ...

But remember: The show already goes out of its way to build a story that's faithful to the events of the past. In all the ways that matter, though, the Netflix series is mindful of the world-building that preceded its arrival. It's important to remember, too: The last time gamers had any contact at all with Albert Wesker was in 2009's Resident Evil 5, which was set in the same year it came out. There's also a masked, chainsaw-wielding baddie who bears a striking resemblance to one of the threats players encounter in Resident Evil 4, but he serves a different purpose here and it's clearly not meant to be the same character. None of this is to say that the Netflix story is fully set within the same universe as all the games. There's even a "master of unlocking" gag, which plays with a widely mocked moment from the original Resident Evil. Totally different context on the show, but that's what makes it fun. But it's not subtle about referencing a fictional history that seems to tie in with the events of the games. The very first Resident Evil game is set in the fictional Midwestern town of Raccoon City, and the first Zero outbreak happened there in 1998. The giant centipede Zero that appears in the opening episode is almost identical to one that appears in a boss fight from the game Resident Evil 0. What I would say is there's nothing in the show's story so far making it utterly clear that Game Wesker and TV Wesker are separate people. The 2022 timeline introduces us to Albert, Jade, and Billie just as they're settling into New Raccoon City, a well-appointed company town established in South Africa, not too far from the capital city of Cape Town. But against all odds, the eight-episode live-action series from Andrew Dabb, a veteran of The CW's Supernatural story team, tells a riveting story about shady corporate maneuvering, the end of the world, and none other than Albert Wesker himself.

Netflix's furious reimagining of the veteran Resident Evil franchise makes it bones with terrific casting, dexterous pacing across two timelines, ...

Sleeper Star: Turlough Convery (Sanditon, Killing Eve) is a delight here as Baxter, a survivor of the T-Virus pandemic’s first wave and, just like in the Resident Evil video games, the leader of a squad of UC shock troops. But of course, the real connectivity here is in the casting, which is across the board brilliant. The scavengers have sold her out to the Umbrella Corporation for the bounty on her head, and Richard Baxter (Turlough Convery) is arriving to collect her with a chopper full of shooters. And that connects the world of 2036 back to 2022, where the dangers of the T-Virus are compared more than once to COVID in a savvy narrative update to our real world pandemic experience. “Stay the fuck away from me,” she tells them, and leaps from the compound’s wall. What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Netflix also features Resident Evil: Infinite Darkness, a CGI-animated miniseries set between the storylines of the fourth and fifth video games in the series. Rescued from the mutated caterpillar by a passing team of scavengers, the Jade of 2036 travels with them to their roughshod compound in Brighton, which is surrounded on all sides by endless packs of zeroes. “If they’re hiding this, what else are they hiding?” But as it turns out, the answer to that question is far more nefarious than either of them imagined. But he’s preoccupied with work, where Paola is pressuring him to authorize the launch of “Joy,” a direct-to-consumer panacea infused with the T-Virus. Its side effects are volatile, and decidedly not stabilized. “Eli Lilly made three billion a year off Prozac,” a marketing flack tells Albert. “We can double that in the first month.” Firing up a satellite-linked tablet, Jade visits with partner Arjun (Ahad Raza Mir) and her adorable daughter Bea, whose reading list has expanded from Wrinkle in Time to Shakespeare. But the distance is a grind, and especially because mortal danger is always one wrong step away. Based on all of the game action through Resident Evil: Village, the series puts two timelines to work, before and after the T-Virus global fail, and features many familiar characters, human and otherwise.