Resident Evil season 1, episode 3 recap: The Light

We’re three episodes deep into Resident Evil season 1 and it’s time to see if that bite from the funny-looking dog ever amounts to anything. What exactly is the T-virus capable of?

Resident Evil Season 1 Episode 3 recap – 2022

When we last left Billie, she was punching out a random jogger, seeming to be feeling the effects of the T-virus, even though she doesn’t know it yet. As proof that she doesn’t know what’s going on, Billie starts out the next day deciding that the best course of action is to pretend that everything’s normal.

Her father and sister aren’t so sure, and they both independently conclude that Billie has three days before whatever is infecting her takes over. (Jade’s conclusion comes from the information about the Tijuana incident, and Albert’s conclusion comes from the fact that he’s responsible for the virus.)

Billie’s symptoms get worse throughout the day which include random outbursts of violence and hallucinations, including hallucinating the giant dog that bit her. Albert is having a pretty rough day as well.

Not only is he failing to find a cure for the virus in his daughter, he goes to a board meeting to try and convince Umbrella to delay the launch of Joy since it involves the T-virus. However, he’s shot down.

Evelyn convinces the board to move forward with the launch of Joy using the subtle negotiation tactic of promising trillions of dollars in profit. Comparatively, Jade has a pretty normal day, with the biggest incident happening to her is Umbrella updating their internet security.

This means her new friend, Simon, can’t access any more information about the Tijuana incident anymore. Also, we find out that Simon is Evelyn’s son, but that’s more important information to us, the audience, than it is for the characters at the moment.

Once Jade gets home, she finds Billie no longer pretending that everything is fine. She confesses that she’s having trouble dealing with bright lights, and loud noises, confirming to Jade that whatever is happening to her sister is linked to the incident that she’s been reading about in Tijuana.

Resident Evil Season 1 Episode 3 recap – 2036

Back in the future, we last saw Jade running away from a drone ruining her plans of escape. She takes cover in a shipping container where she runs into a little boy named Liam, who is also hiding out.

The shipping container is enough to fool Umbrella, and after they’ve left, Jade meets Liam’s parents. The adults decide to form a temporary alliance to get everyone out of there.

They board a refugee convoy but are attacked by lickers. These are a different type of zombie creature than the standard Zeroes we’ve seen so far.

The lickers hunt by sound so everybody in the convoy is quiet, which would have been fine, except that was the exact moment that Baxter and the rest of the Umbrella goon squad show up. Their sirens cause a lot of deaths for both the refugees and the Umbrella foot soldiers.

Jade escapes with her new friends down a service tunnel but discovers that Liam was infected three days ago and is showing signs of the T-virus taking over. His parents have been trying to get him to The Brotherhood where they heard there were rumors of a cure.

Jade says that there is no cure and that it’s time to leave the boy behind. His parents understandably disagree.

The argument is interrupted by a fifty-foot spider that attacks and kills the one remaining guide as well as Liam’s Dad. Jade barely escapes with Liam and his mother by dropping a door on the giant spider, Rancor style.

Even though Liam has succumbed to the T-Virus, his mother can’t bring herself to leave him, so Jade continues alone finally escaping from the tunnels only to come face to face with Baxter who had been waiting for her. It seems like Umbrella has Jade at last until a new group of people pop out of the bushes, shoot Baxter and knock Jade unconscious, bringing the episode to a close.

Resident Evil Season 1 Episode 3 recap – In Conclusion

Just like episode’s one and two, it feels like we can have something interesting happen in the past section or the future section, but we can’t have both. For episode three, the future section feels like it’s the only one worth delving into.

Maybe it’s because the time between the bite and becoming a zombie is always the most tedious part of a zombie story, and we’ve had that for two episodes now. The sequence with the Lickers attacking is probably the most visually interesting set piece in the show so far.

For the first time, it actually feels like there are monsters that are out there. They feel much more dangerous than any of the zombie moments in the first two episodes.

It also plays out somewhat like a video game, with the limited visibility of the scene and the clear progression that needed to be made by the heroes to get to safety. It’s a lot to hang the quality of the entire show so far on that one sequence.

But it’s really the first time that the show has justified trying to feel like something that would work as a Resident Evil property and is hopefully a sign of things to come in future episodes.

Is Baxter dead? Who are these new people who seemingly saved Jade?

Let us know you thought of Resident Evil season 1 episode 3 in the comments below!

You can watch Resident Evil season 1, only on Netflix!