Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City (2021) Explained

Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City is the 2021 reboot of the live-action films, written and directed by Johannes Roberts. Unlike the Milla Jovovich series, it uses the game characters and tries to stay close to the games, folding the Spencer Mansion story of Resident Evil and the police station story of Resident Evil 2 into a single night in 1998. It came out in November 2021 in the US and December 2021 in the UK. This page covers the whole film, so it has full spoilers. (Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City)

Before the story begins#

Raccoon City in this version is a dying company town. Umbrella Corporation built it up and is now moving out, and the people left behind are getting sick. The film opens in the 1980s at the Raccoon City Orphanage, where young Claire Redfield and her older brother Chris live. Claire befriends Lisa Trevor, a disfigured girl experimented on by Umbrella scientist Dr. William Birkin, and eventually escapes the orphanage. Chris stays in town and joins the police's special unit, S.T.A.R.S. (Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City)

Claire comes home#

In 1998 Claire hitches a ride back into Raccoon City with a trucker. On the way the truck hits a woman in the road, and the driver's dog licks up her blood and starts acting strangely. Across town, rookie officer Leon Kennedy, late on his first day, stops at a diner and notices the owner bleeding from her eyes. (Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City)

Claire finds Chris and tells him that Umbrella has been poisoning the town. Her source is a journalist, Ben Bertolucci, who's been digging into the company. Chris doesn't want to hear it. (Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City)

The Spencer Mansion#

The S.T.A.R.S. Bravo team has gone missing in the forest outside town, so Chief Brian Irons sends the Alpha team after them: Chris, Jill Valentine, Richard Aiken, Brad Vickers and their captain, Albert Wesker. They find the Spencer Mansion and, inside it, zombies eating what's left of Bravo team. Brad is bitten and crashes the helicopter. Richard is killed. (Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City)

Wesker plays a tune on the mansion's piano to open a hidden passage, the film's nod to the piano puzzle in the 1996 game. He has his own reason for being there. He's secretly working for an unnamed party and has orders to steal Birkin's virus, and the mission is cover. Chris and Jill get out through the passage into the tunnels that lead to Umbrella's lab. (Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City; Resident Evil)

The police station falls#

Back in the city, the infected trucker crashes his rig outside the Raccoon City Police Department. Irons tries to leave town and finds Umbrella guards blocking the way out, so he's forced back. Leon and Claire find Ben Bertolucci locked in a cell, but a zombie inmate bites him as the station is overrun. (Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City)

Leon, Claire and Irons get out and head for the orphanage, hoping to use an underground tunnel to reach the lab. A Licker kills Irons and goes for Leon, and Lisa Trevor saves him. Lisa recognises Claire and gives them the keys to the tunnel. (Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City)

The lab under the city#

Wesker gets to Umbrella's underground lab and confronts William, his wife Annette and their daughter Sherry. In the shootout Wesker kills Annette. Jill shoots Wesker, who seems to be dying and tells her to escape by the underground train before Umbrella destroys the city. William injects himself with the G-virus and starts to mutate into a monster. (Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City)

Chris, Jill, Claire and Leon find each other underground with Sherry, and learn the worst news of the night: Umbrella is about to destroy Raccoon City to bury what happened there. (Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City)

The ending explained#

The five survivors board an underground train out of the city. Raccoon City is destroyed behind them and the blast derails the train. The mutated William is still coming, and in the wreck Leon kills him with a rocket launcher. All five walk away: Chris, Jill, Claire, Leon and Sherry. (Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City)

The ending is Resident Evil 2's finale, with the train escape and the Birkin monster, merged with Resident Evil 3's end of the city. The one big change is who's on the train. In the games Chris and Jill were nowhere near it. Here the whole main cast gets out together, which gave the film a ready-made team for a sequel. (Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City; Resident Evil 2; Resident Evil 3: Nemesis)

The mid-credits scene sets that sequel up. Wesker wakes in a body bag, unable to see. A woman introduces herself as Ada Wong and hands him a pair of sunglasses, the look he wears in the games from here on. It points towards Wesker as the villain and Ada as his partner, as they are in the games. The film made about $42 million worldwide, and no sequel was made. Sony and Constantin rebooted again with Zach Cregger's Resident Evil in 2026. (Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City; Resident Evil (2026))

How it changes the games#

The film keeps the names, places and many of the set pieces, then rearranges almost everything to fit one night.

• Two games at once. In the games the mansion incident came first, in July 1998, and the city fell two months later. The film runs them on the same night. (Resident Evil; Resident Evil 2)
• Leon and Claire. In Resident Evil 2 they were strangers who met on the road into town. Here Claire is a Raccoon City native who grew up in Umbrella's orphanage. (Resident Evil 2; Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City)
• Lisa Trevor. In the games she was a prisoner of the mansion grounds, introduced in the 2002 remake, and she has nothing to do with Claire. The film moves her into the orphanage and makes her an ally. (Resident Evil; Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City)
• Wesker. His double-cross is kept, but in the 1996 game he was Umbrella's man, using his own team to test its weapons, and seemed to die when the Tyrant he woke in the mansion's lab ran him through. Here he goes down in Birkin's lab, shot by Jill. (Resident Evil; Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City)
• Chief Irons. In the games a G-embryo bursts out of him: under the police station in the 1998 original, and at the orphanage in the 2019 remake. Here a Licker kills him at the orphanage. (Resident Evil 2; Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City)
• The Birkins. In Resident Evil 2, Umbrella's own soldiers shot William to take the G-virus. Here it's Wesker, and Annette dies in the same fight instead of later in the lab. (Resident Evil 2; Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City)
• Missing pieces. There's no Tyrant, no Nemesis and no Rebecca Chambers or Barry Burton. The T-virus is behind the town's sickness but is rarely named. (Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City)

Where it fits#

Welcome to Raccoon City sits on its own. It doesn't follow the Milla Jovovich films and doesn't lead into the 2026 film. For the games' version of these events, read the Resident Evil story, the Resident Evil 2 story and the Resident Evil 3 story, or the full timeline. Every film, live action and CG, is in order in our Resident Evil movies guide. (Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City; Resident Evil (2026))