The fate of Netflix’s live-action Resident Evil TV series has been revealed.
Will there be a season 2 of Resident Evil?
Netflix has canceled the zombie apocalypse series after just one season. The cancellation news comes a month and a half after the show made its premiere last July 14th.
Why was Resident Evil canceled?
According to Deadline, the action-horror series did not have a particularly strong showing on Netflix’s Top 10, which prevented it from meeting the streamer’s cost vs. viewing renewal criterion.
Released in the same time frame as the second volume of Stranger Things season 4, Resident Evil debuted at No. 2 on Netflix’s Top 10 with an okay 72.7 million hours viewed for its opening weekend. It, however, failed to deliver the big Week 2 bump that the streamer was expecting, only raking in 73.3 million hours viewed in its second week for a No. 3 finish. After that, the series dropped precipitously on the ranking and ultimately fell out of the Top 10 list after only three weeks.
The eight-episode season 1 of the show also has an underwhelming 55% approval ratings from critics on Rotten Tomatoes and an embarrassing 27% audience score.
What is the Resident Evil TV series about?
Loosely based on the video game series of the same name by Capcom, Resident Evil follows two different timelines: 2022 and 2036, with a gap of some 14 years.
The 2022 timeline centers on the struggles of 14-year-old fraternal twins Billie and Jade, the children of Dr. Albert Wesker, conceived through suspicious circumstances. After Albert was awarded an executive position at the struggling Umbrella Corporation, the most powerful organization left on Earth, he and the twins moved to New Raccoon City. While the twins stumble onto the dark secrets behind their origins and Umbrella’s dark legacy, Albert coordinates a response to the outbreak of a retroviral bioweapon called T-virus.
In the 2036 timeline, the T-virus has reduced human civilization to 300 million refugees living in walled city-states and other settlements, surrounded by the six billion man-eating humans known as Zeroes who contracted the disease. Backed by its military arsenal, the Umbrella Corporation conducts a global manhunt for Jade.
The freshman run of Resident Evil ended by name-dropping another iconic character from the video game franchise, suggesting that they would appear in the then-possible second season.
Resident Evil TV series cast
The show stars Ella Balinska and Tamara Smart as Jade Wesker, Adeline Rudolph and Siena Agudong as Billie Wesker, and Lance Reddick in the roles of Al Wesker, Bert Wesker, Alby Wesker, and Albert Wesker.
Recurring cast members include Anthony Oseyemi as Roth, Connor Gosatti as Simon Marcus, Raza Mir as Arjun Batra, Pedro de Tavira Egurrola as Angel Rubio, Ella Zieglmeier as Bea, Turlough Convery as Richard Baxter, and Emily Child as Diana Marcus.
Resident Evil: Infinite Darkness
The recently canceled Resident Evil live-action series shouldn’t be confused with Resident Evil: Infinite Darkness. Though both are streaming on Netflix, the latter is an animated series that stars Resident Evil 2 video game characters Leon S. Kennedy and Claire Redfield.
Set between the events of the video games Resident Evil 4 and Resident Evil 5, the series takes place in 2006 after a hacking incident is uncovered at the White House. Leon S. Kennedy is ordered to investigate the incident, but he encounters zombies when the White House is targeted in a mysterious attack. He later meets Claire Redfield, who has been investigating a strange drawing made by a child refugee while working on a TerraSave-led mission to oversee the construction of a welfare facility.
Released in July 2021, the series is described as a miniseries, so a second season is highly unlikely.
