Elpis: Spencer's Last Creation in Resident Evil Requiem

Elpis is the last creation of Oswell E. Spencer, the founder of Umbrella, and the secret at the heart of Resident Evil Requiem. It was sealed in ARK, a lab beneath the ruins of Raccoon City. The people hunting it believed it was the ultimate bioweapon, a virus that could control minds. It is the opposite: an antiviral that neutralises viral weapons, made by Spencer as an act of atonement. (Resident Evil Requiem)

What is Elpis?#

Elpis is an antiviral. Once released, it can neutralise viral weapons, including the t-Virus and the rest of the family of viruses Umbrella built from the Progenitor virus. It works on people already infected: it cures the Raccoon City Syndrome that is killing Leon, and it takes away Zeno's superhuman abilities the moment he injects it. (Resident Evil Requiem)

Spencer made it as his last project and locked it away in ARK, a former Umbrella lab beneath Raccoon City. Recordings that Grace's mother, the journalist Alyssa Ashcroft, made with Spencer late in his life show an old man full of regret about what his work had done to the world. Elpis was his attempt to undo some of it. (Resident Evil Requiem)

The name is the clue. Elpis is the Greek word for hope, and "Hope" is the answer that releases it. (Resident Evil Requiem)

Why did everyone think Elpis was a weapon?#

Because it was Spencer's. The man who founded Umbrella had spent his life chasing control over human evolution, so nobody who heard about a secret final project expected a cure. Zeno told Grace that Elpis was Spencer's ultimate weapon, a contagious virus that would let its user control minds. Gideon, who worshipped Spencer, believed the same. (Resident Evil Requiem)

Zeno also claimed the Connections had lobbied for the 1998 missile strike that destroyed Raccoon City, the end of Resident Evil 2, so they could keep Elpis buried for themselves. What they couldn't do was open it. (Resident Evil Requiem; Resident Evil 2)

Why did Gideon need Grace?#

The terminal guarding Elpis had a fail-safe: give the wrong answer and Elpis would be destroyed. Gideon became convinced that Grace held the answer, because he believed she was the one success of Spencer's experiments to move his own mind into a new body, carrying Spencer's memories, password included. That is why he kidnapped her at the Wrenwood Hotel, and why the Connections backed him. (Resident Evil Requiem)

He was wrong. In ARK, Grace finally played the disc her mother left, and it showed she was no clone and had nothing to do with the experiments. She was a foundling Spencer had taken in as a baby and entrusted to Alyssa. What she did have, from the recordings, was an understanding of what Spencer had come to want. (Resident Evil Requiem)

Release or destroy: what happens to Elpis#

Grace, Leon and Zeno meet at the terminal, which asks one question: what does the creator desire? The answer decides the ending. (Resident Evil Requiem)

Destroy Elpis. Grace enters "Destruction" and ARK begins to destroy itself, taking Elpis with it. Leon stays behind to hold off Zeno, and in this ending Zeno kills him as they fall into the depths of the facility. Grace escapes alone. There's no final boss and no post-credits scene. (Resident Evil Requiem)

Release Elpis. Grace remembers her mother and Spencer's regret and enters "Hope". Zeno, still sure it's a weapon, injects himself first, and it strips his powers away. Grace uses a dose to cure Leon. Gideon then turns up alive. He marvels at Spencer's genius, but sees Elpis as a way to throw the world into chaos, since an antiviral like this would make every viral weapon worthless. He beheads Zeno, mutates and is killed by Leon. (Resident Evil Requiem)

In the epilogue of the release ending, Sherry has been cured of the same syndrome as Leon. Emily, the blind girl Grace protected at Rhodes Hill, turns out to be alive, and Grace cures and adopts her. A post-credits scene shows soldiers from an unidentified faction killing the BSAA troops left in ARK and taking whatever they came for. (Resident Evil Requiem)

What Elpis means for the series#

If Elpis does what Requiem says, the ending changes the rules of Resident Evil. The viruses that drove almost thirty years of games, from the t-Virus to the G-virus and Uroboros, now have a counter. The game itself stops short of showing a world without bioweapons, and the unknown raid on ARK in the post-credits scene leaves open who now holds what was down there. (Resident Evil Requiem)

Not every threat in the series is a virus, either. The Mold behind Eveline and Las Plagas are a fungus and a parasite, and Requiem never says whether Elpis would touch them. (Resident Evil Requiem)