Resident Evil: Infinite Darkness and the 2022 Netflix Series Explained

Netflix has made two Resident Evil series, and they couldn't be more different. Resident Evil: Infinite Darkness (July 2021) is a four-episode CG show made with Capcom, starring Leon S. Kennedy and Claire Redfield, and it's part of the game story. Resident Evil (July 2022) is a live-action series about the twin daughters of an Albert Wesker clone, split between 2022 and a ruined world in 2036. This page covers both, with full spoilers. (Resident Evil: Infinite Darkness; Resident Evil (TV series))

Before you watch#

Both shows assume you know the basics. Umbrella Corporation made the T-virus, lost control of it in Raccoon City in 1998, and the city was destroyed. Leon and Claire survived that night together, as told in the Resident Evil 2 story. By 2006 Leon works for the US government and Claire for an aid group, TerraSave. (Resident Evil 2; Resident Evil: Degeneration)

Resident Evil: Infinite Darkness (2021)#

Where it fits: 2006, between Resident Evil 4 and Resident Evil 5, and a year after the CG film Degeneration. (Resident Evil: Infinite Darkness)

The story opens in 2000, in the war-torn South Asian nation of Penamstan. A US helicopter has been shot down, and an American unit nicknamed the Mad Dogs goes in to rescue the crew. Something happens to them out there that nobody talks about. (Resident Evil: Infinite Darkness)

Six years later, someone hacks the White House, and soon after there's an outbreak of zombies in the building. Leon is called in to deal with it. Claire is in Washington too, chasing a lead from her TerraSave work: a drawing by a child refugee from Penamstan that seems to show monsters, which makes her suspect bioweapons were used there. The two meet briefly at the White House. (Resident Evil: Infinite Darkness)

Leon is sent with two operatives, Jason and Shen May, to investigate on a submarine heading for Chinese waters. Infected rats overrun the crew and the three get off before the sub is destroyed. Back home, Defense Secretary Wilson blames China, pushing the two countries towards war. In Shanghai it comes out that Jason, one of the Mad Dogs, and Shen May have been working together to expose Wilson. They ask Leon to join them. He won't, and Jason is apparently killed while Shen May escapes. (Resident Evil: Infinite Darkness)

Claire tracks down the last Mad Dogs survivor and finds he's killed himself. Piece by piece the truth comes out. The Mad Dogs were infected in Penamstan in 2000. Wilson kept them going with drugs that held the virus back, and used them to breed supersoldiers, a bioweapon programme that would give America an edge in any war. Leon follows Shen May and gets hold of evidence, but Wilson's people capture Claire. (Resident Evil: Infinite Darkness)

In the finale Claire wakes in Wilson's lab as President Graham, the same president whose daughter Leon rescued in Resident Evil 4, gets ready to sign a peace deal with Penamstan. Jason comes back, now mutated into a monster, infects Wilson and kills Shen May. Leon rescues Claire and they destroy the lab. The peace deal goes ahead. Wilson survives, and Leon chooses not to make the evidence public. Instead he holds on to it to stop anyone using bioweapons like this again, a decision Claire doesn't like. (Resident Evil: Infinite Darkness; Resident Evil 4)

That ending splits the two leads. Claire believes the truth should come out. Leon has come to see it as something to hold over people in power, which is a long way from the rookie who arrived in Raccoon City. (Resident Evil: Infinite Darkness; Resident Evil 2)

Resident Evil (2022 Netflix series)#

Where it fits: its own continuity. It uses the games as history, so Raccoon City happened and Albert Wesker died in 2009, the year of Resident Evil 5. Everything after that is new. (Resident Evil (TV series); Resident Evil 5)

In 2022, 14-year-old twins Jade and Billie Wesker move with their father, Albert, called Al, to New Raccoon City, a company town Umbrella has built in South Africa. Umbrella is about to launch Joy, a new antidepressant made from the T-virus. Sneaking into Umbrella's labs, the girls let loose an infected dog that bites Billie, and she starts to change. (Resident Evil (TV series))

The twins start pulling at their father's story. Raccoon City, where their records say they were born, was destroyed years before. Al finally tells them the truth. He's one of three clones made by the original Albert Wesker, and he has a condition that needs regular blood transfusions. Jade and Billie were made from his genetic material to be a permanent supply of compatible blood. There's another clone, Bert, and like Al he came into Umbrella's hands after the original Wesker died in 2009. A third, Alby, is already dead. (Resident Evil (TV series))

The 2036 storyline runs alongside. Fourteen years on, about six billion infected, called Zeroes, cover the world, and the few humans left live behind walls. Jade is a scientist studying the Zeroes, with a husband, Arjun, and a daughter, Bea. Umbrella hunts her across Europe. When she's captured, she learns that Billie is alive and working for Umbrella's CEO, Evelyn Marcus. (Resident Evil (TV series))

How the series ends#

In 2022, Billie briefly loses control and attacks Evelyn, and the Weskers get her out of Umbrella HQ. Al and Bert set off a bomb in the lab. Evelyn shoots Al, but she survives the blast, and a Tyrant-like creature from Umbrella's research climbs out of the rubble as the girls and Bert escape. (Resident Evil (TV series))

In 2036, Billie turns out to have been controlling Evelyn all along with a modified form of Joy. She wants Jade as a blood source. When the Zeroes break into the base, Billie sets Umbrella's drones on them and escapes by helicopter. Then she finds out about Bea. With a niece to use instead, she decides she doesn't need Jade and shoots her. Jade survives and makes it back to her people, but Bea has gone missing on a stolen boat, and the season stops there. (Resident Evil (TV series))

Netflix cancelled the show in August 2022, so none of that was resolved. (Resident Evil (TV series))

How they fit with the games#

Infinite Darkness belongs to the main story. It sits in the run of canon CG stories alongside the films covered in our CG films guide, and it leads naturally into Resident Evil 5 and the later games, where governments and companies keep making their own bioweapons after Umbrella's fall. (Resident Evil: Infinite Darkness; Resident Evil 5)

The 2022 series takes the games as given and then goes its own way. Albert Wesker's death fits Resident Evil 5, and the show keeps Spencer Mansion era history in the background, but clones, Joy and a world where almost everyone is infected by 2036 are all its own. Treat it as an alternate future rather than a sequel to the games. (Resident Evil (TV series); Resident Evil; Resident Evil 5)

Where they fit#

For everything else on screen, see the Resident Evil movies in order, the 2021 reboot film Welcome to Raccoon City and Zach Cregger's 2026 film. For the game story these shows lean on, the Resident Evil timeline has every year in order. (Resident Evil: Infinite Darkness; Resident Evil (TV series))