WARNING: The following contains major spoilers for Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City, in theaters now.
With 25 years of video game history to draw from the Resident Evil franchise is not without source material to craft a potential sequel to the live-action film Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City. And with plenty of its fan-favorite main characters left alive and an intriguing mid-credits scene, Welcome to Raccoon City leaves more than enough plot threads for follow-ups to explore, either inspired by the video games or forging its own new ground as a cinematic reboot of the survival horror franchise. Here's where Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City leaves its characters by the curtain call and where the story could possibly take them next.
Adapting the first two Resident Evil games, Welcome to Raccoon City also negates the possibility for a faithful adaptation of Resident Evil 3: Nemesis to be adapted, given that Jill Valentine escapes from Raccoon City alongside the Redfield siblings, Leon S. Kennedy and Sherry Birkin. The 1999 video game saw Jill instead finding her own way out of Raccoon City moments before it was completely obliterated by a tactical nuclear strike to contain the horrifying T-virus, linking up with a new ally in Carlos Olivera and evading the unstoppable Nemesis T-Type. And with the survivors vowing to take on the Umbrella Corporation and publicly expose its villainous activities, a potential sequel to Welcome to Raccoon City could instead tie into the mid-credits sequence's own sequel setup.
Welcome to Raccoon City's mid-credits scene has the traitorous Albert Wesker being resurrected by Ada Wong after he was previously gunned down by Jill after revealing his allegiance to Umbrella and menacing Sherry. With Ada and Wesker evidently working for Umbrella after the destruction of Raccoon City, this puts both of them on a collision course with the survivors of the Raccoon City incident in keeping Umbrella's dark secrets under wraps. And for inspiration straight from the games themselves, the setup for a tentative sequel may not be Resident Evil 3 but rather 2000's Resident Evil Code: Veronica and 2005's Resident Evil 4.
Following the events of Raccoon City in the video games, Chris and Claire Redfield were both next seen in Code: Veronica, investigating Umbrella's activities in Europe and Antarctica. This led to a heated rematch between Chris and Wesker, with Chris barely surviving the encounter before Wesker fled to parts unknown. A picture of the Ashford twins is briefly glimpsed in Welcome to Raccoon City, with the siblings playing a major antagonistic role in Code: Veronica and connected to Umbrella's genetic experiments.
Similarly, with Leon and Ada both introduced over the course of Welcome to Raccoon City, the two characters could finally meet in Europe as they had in Resident Evil 4. While Welcome to Raccoon City eliminated Leon and Ada's first meeting in the Raccoon City Police Department's headquarters as depicted in 1998's Resident Evil 2 in order to streamline the story, the two cross paths years later in Resident Evil 4, with Ada secretly helping Leon rescue the President's daughter as she continues to work for Wesker. If the Redfields are set to investigate Umbrella's activities in Europe in a potential sequel, echoing Code: Veronica, Leon could follow suit with his own investigation, mirroring his arc in Resident Evil 4 and setting him up for a cinematic meeting with Ada.
Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City only scratches the surface of the Resident Evil video game source material, leaving plenty of room and directions for the franchise to go next should the film receive a sequel. From investigations on the other side of the world to Umbrella's continuing villainy, there is definitely plenty of plot threads to follow up on. But perhaps the biggest mystery remaining by the end of Welcome to Raccoon City to be explored in a sequel is who exactly are Albert Wesker and Ada Wong working for within Umbrella now that William Birkin is gone.
To see the Resident Evil franchise expand, Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City is in theaters now.
0 Comments