How Did Leon and Chris Redfield Meet?

Leon S. Kennedy and Chris Redfield met through Claire Redfield. Claire is Chris's sister and survived Raccoon City with Leon, and a Resident Evil 6 file says she introduced the two men face to face some years later. Before that they knew each other only through her, starting with a message Leon passed to Chris in 1998. (Resident Evil 6; Resident Evil CODE: Veronica)

Why they missed each other in Raccoon City#

Chris left Raccoon City after the Spencer Mansion disaster in July 1998, set on bringing Umbrella down in Europe, and he didn't tell Claire where he was going. So when she rode into town in late September looking for him, she found the outbreak and Leon instead. The two fought their way out together. (Resident Evil 2 (1998); Resident Evil 6)

The Resident Evil 6 file is clear about what each man meant to her. She loves and respects her brother, and she considers Leon a trusted friend. (Resident Evil 6)

First contact: Claire's message#

In December 1998 Claire was caught raiding an Umbrella lab in Paris and shipped to the prison on Rockfort Island. When the island was attacked, she used a terminal to send a message to Leon asking for help. Leon passed it on to Chris, and Chris flew to Rockfort to find her. (Resident Evil CODE: Veronica)

So Leon and Chris were connected from the start, but at second hand. Neither appears with the other in Code: Veronica. (Resident Evil CODE: Veronica)

The handshake#

The meeting itself is told in a single file in Resident Evil 6, called "Chris and Leon". It points out that the two worked for different organisations, Chris for the BSAA and Leon for the US government, and had no reason to deal with each other. Claire was the link, and with her as a mutual contact, the file says, it was only a matter of time. (Resident Evil 6)

When they did meet, contact between their organisations was tightly restricted and the conversation itself is classified. What survives is an excerpt from a report by Ingrid Hunnigan, Leon's government contact, to Adam Benford. She writes that Claire, by then a TerraSave member, introduced them, and that they shook hands firmly and smiled. It looked to her "almost like they were two friends who hadn't seen each other in 10 years." They didn't say much, but she believed they understood each other's battles against bioterrorism. (Resident Evil 6)

Hunnigan ends on the politics. She calls the meeting "an important step in breaking down the barrier between the U.S. government and the BSAA." (Resident Evil 6)

The file gives no date. Some fan timelines put it in 2010, but that year isn't in the file. All it shows is that the meeting came after Claire joined TerraSave and before the events of Resident Evil 6. (Resident Evil 6)

Their first scene together#

The games finally put them in the same room in Resident Evil 6, in Lanshiang in 2013. Chris has cornered a woman he believes is Ada Wong, whom he blames for the deaths of his men. Leon steps in and says Derek Simmons is the real enemy, and for a moment the two point guns at each other while she slips away. Chris calms down and goes after her, and Leon goes after Simmons. The woman turns out to be Carla Radames, Ada's double. (Resident Evil 6)

It's a tense first meeting on screen, and it fits what the file says: two men who respect each other, with very different ideas about how to fight. (Resident Evil 6)

Friends and partners#

After that they work together properly. In 2014 Chris and Rebecca Chambers find Leon drinking and worn down by guilt and pull him into the hunt for Glenn Arias in New York. A year later Leon is sent to Alcatraz after a kidnapped scientist and finds Chris, Jill Valentine, Claire and Rebecca caught up in the same outbreak. (Resident Evil: Vendetta; Resident Evil: Death Island)

Chris isn't on screen in Resident Evil Requiem, but in the ending where Elpis is released, a Hound Wolf Squad team he sent pulls Leon and Grace Ashcroft out of the collapsing lab under Raccoon City and passes on a message from him to Leon. (Resident Evil Requiem)

Read more#

Leon S. Kennedy and Chris Redfield have both men's full histories, and the CG films guide covers Vendetta and Death Island. (Resident Evil 6; Resident Evil: Vendetta)