Resident Evil Requiem Characters: Every Major Character Explained

The main characters in Resident Evil Requiem are its two playable leads, the FBI analyst Grace Ashcroft and the veteran agent Leon S. Kennedy, and the two men hunting the secret Grace is supposed to hold, Victor Gideon and Zeno. Around them are Sherry Birkin, a blind girl called Emily, Grace's murdered mother Alyssa Ashcroft and the voice of Oswell E. Spencer on an old recording. Requiem has two endings, and several of these characters live or die depending on which one you get, so this page splits those facts by ending. Full spoilers throughout. (Resident Evil Requiem)

The two leads#

Requiem splits its story between a new heroine with no combat training and the series' most experienced survivor. Their chapters cross at Rhodes Hill, in Raccoon City and in ARK. (Resident Evil Requiem)

Grace Ashcroft#

Grace Ashcroft is an FBI intelligence analyst, a desk worker rather than a field agent. Her supervisor sends her to look at a body found at the derelict Wrenwood Hotel, the place her mother was murdered eight years earlier, and Gideon takes her there. Gideon and Zeno believe she is the one success of Spencer's experiments to move his mind into a new body. She isn't. Her mother's disc shows she was a foundling Spencer took in as a baby and entrusted to Alyssa, who raised her. Angela Sant'Albano plays her. (Resident Evil Requiem)

• Release Elpis ending: Grace opens Elpis with the word "Hope", cures Leon, later cures and adopts Emily, and goes back to her FBI desk. (Resident Evil Requiem)
• Destroy Elpis ending: Grace escapes ARK alone after Leon stays behind to hold off Zeno. (Resident Evil Requiem)

Leon S. Kennedy#

Leon S. Kennedy survived the fall of Raccoon City in 1998 as a rookie police officer in Resident Evil 2. By 2026 he's a field agent for the government's Division of Security Operations, and he's sick: like other survivors of 1998, he has Raccoon City Syndrome, dormant t-Virus that is now killing him. He chases Gideon from Wrenwood to Rhodes Hill, beats a Tyrant at the ruined police station and fights his way into ARK. Nick Apostolides voices him. (Resident Evil Requiem; Resident Evil 2)

• Release Elpis ending: Grace cures him with Elpis, and he kills the mutated Gideon. (Resident Evil Requiem)
• Destroy Elpis ending: Zeno kills him as the two fall into the depths of ARK. (Resident Evil Requiem)

The villains#

Both villains are after Elpis, and both are wrong about what it is. (Resident Evil Requiem)

Victor Gideon#

Victor Gideon is a former Umbrella researcher who once worked on the t-Virus and still worships Spencer. He runs the Rhodes Hill Chronic Care Center as cover for his experiments, kidnaps Grace at Wrenwood, sets off a t-Virus outbreak to escape Leon and later comes after Leon on the road into Raccoon City, where Leon leaves him for dead. He believes Elpis is a mind-control virus. Antony Byrne plays him. (Resident Evil Requiem)

• Release Elpis ending: he returns alive in ARK, beheads Zeno, sets the lab to self-destruct and mutates into a monster modelled on Nemesis. Leon kills him. (Resident Evil Requiem)
• Destroy Elpis ending: he never reappears. (Resident Evil Requiem)

Zeno#

Zeno speaks for the Connections, the syndicate that made Eveline in Resident Evil 7. He bankrolls Gideon, has superhuman speed and strength, and looks a lot like Albert Wesker, though the game never says how or whether they're connected. After Rhodes Hill he takes Grace to Raccoon City, tells her his version of what Elpis is, and brings her to the terminal in ARK. Craig Burnatowski plays him. (Resident Evil Requiem; Resident Evil 7: Biohazard)

• Release Elpis ending: he injects himself with Elpis, loses his powers and is beheaded by Gideon. (Resident Evil Requiem)
• Destroy Elpis ending: he kills Leon. (Resident Evil Requiem)

Supporting characters#

These are the people who shape Grace's and Leon's stories without being playable leads. (Resident Evil Requiem)

Sherry Birkin#

Sherry Birkin is the girl Leon and Claire got out of Raccoon City in 1998. Now a Division of Security Operations agent, she works as Leon's handler, tracking Gideon for him from Wrenwood to Rhodes Hill and on to Raccoon City. She has Raccoon City Syndrome too. Eden Riegel voices her. (Resident Evil Requiem; Resident Evil 2)

• Release Elpis ending: the epilogue shows she has been cured. (Resident Evil Requiem)
• Destroy Elpis ending: the game doesn't show what happens to her. (Resident Evil Requiem)

Emily#

Emily is a pale, blind girl Grace finds locked in the guard office cells at Rhodes Hill, where she has been held and experimented on. The two get each other through the building, with Emily reading the braille Grace can't. She is badly hurt in a failed helicopter escape, starts to mutate, and Leon shoots her. Later Zeno tells Grace that Emily was one of many clones of her. Emma Rose Creaner plays her. (Resident Evil Requiem)

• Release Elpis ending: Emily is found alive at Rhodes Hill as the cocoon around her comes apart. Grace cures her with Elpis and adopts her. (Resident Evil Requiem)
• Destroy Elpis ending: there is no such reveal, and her fate isn't revisited. (Resident Evil Requiem)

Alyssa Ashcroft#

Alyssa Ashcroft is Grace's mother and the link to the older games. She was one of the eight playable survivors of Resident Evil Outbreak, a Raccoon City reporter in 1998. Requiem shows her in a flashback to 2018, when she was murdered at the Wrenwood Hotel. Years after Umbrella fell she recorded interviews with an elderly, regretful Spencer, and that disc is what tells Grace who she really is and how to answer the Elpis terminal. Jane Perry plays her. (Resident Evil Outbreak; Resident Evil Requiem)

Oswell E. Spencer#

Oswell E. Spencer, the founder of Umbrella, died long before Requiem, but he appears on Alyssa's recordings. On them he regrets what his work did to the world, and he is revealed as the man who took in the baby Grace and made Elpis as an antiviral. James Clyde voices him. (Resident Evil Requiem)

Chris Redfield#

Chris Redfield only appears briefly. In the ending where Elpis is released, he sends the BSAA's Hound Wolf unit into ARK to rescue Leon and Grace. (Resident Evil Requiem)

Other characters#

A handful of smaller roles round out the cast. (Resident Evil Requiem)

• Nathan Dempsey is Grace's supervisor at the FBI. He knows she's still haunted by her mother's death but gives her the case anyway, which sends her back to Wrenwood. (Resident Evil Requiem)
• Harry Reed is the pilot who offers Grace and Emily a way out of Rhodes Hill by helicopter if Grace can find the key. The escape goes wrong. (Resident Evil Requiem)
• The Girl is the giant mutant that hunts Grace through Rhodes Hill and can only be held off with light. Grace kills her by flooding her with daylight through a roof hatch. (Resident Evil Requiem)
• The Hooded Man is Alyssa's killer in the 2018 flashback at the Wrenwood Hotel. (Resident Evil Requiem)

In the post-credits scene of the Release Elpis ending, soldiers from an unidentified faction kill the BSAA troops left in ARK and take what they came for. Who they are isn't revealed. (Resident Evil Requiem)