Resident Evil season 1, episode 8 recap: Revelations

The final episode of this season of Resident Evil starts with a very quick flashback to let you know that The University has developed a way to sedate lizards. That’s very important information because of the giant crocodile later in the episode.

Not to give too much away at the start, but there’s going to be a giant crocodile in this one.

Resident Evil Season 1 Episode 8 recap – Jade and Billie’s showdown with Umbrella

We last left the present day version of Billie and Jade captured by Evelyn along with their father and Bert the clone. Billie and Jade are brought back to their house to gather some things.

They try to make a break for it, but only Jade escapes, leaving Billie getting caught and taken back to the lab. Jade shows up on Simon’s doorstep to ask for help breaking into Umbrella.

She explains to him the plot of Resident Evil the TV show, and he’s not convinced. But he quickly realizes that Evelyn is drugging his mother with Joy and joins Jade in her quest to take down Umbrella.

Meanwhile, Evelyn takes Bert back to his room at the lab and asks him to start working on a mysterious project. We get to see the mysterious project’s fingernails so that we know it’s a Tyrant (ask your friend who played the games).

As for Billie, she’s brought back to Umbrella where a doctor runs a few tests on her. We can see that she’s still infected by the T-Virus, but for some reason it’s not causing the usual mutation in her.

In an effort to understand why Billie is affected differently than expected, the doctor gives her a shot of adrenalin. This causes her to break free, and have a breakdown, flashing back to the dog attack as well as other traumatic hallucinations.

She’s pulled out of the attack by Bert who seemingly was walking by. Billie says that she’s going to escape again, leaving her father behind.

Bert talks to her and helps her to realize that while Albert may be flawed as a father, to put it mildly, he does genuinely love and care for her and Jade. Billie heads back to rescue Albert and arrives at the same time as Jade and Simon.

With the gang all back together, they begin to make their way towards the exit. Unfortunately, Simon’s hacking skills to get him and Jade into the facility only worked for ten minutes.

The ten minutes are up and the whole building goes on lockdown with flashing red lights, which brings back Billie’s hallucinations. When Simon tries to pull her towards escape, she ends up biting him on the arm.

Evelyn catches up to the gang and sees that Simon’s bite has immediately started to show signs of the T-virus infection. She resorts to killing her own son.

In the commotion, the rest of the gang escapes into a lab, as the two clones start making a bomb to blow up the building. Albert stays behind, sacrificing himself to destroy Umbrella, while the two sisters head off with Bert to track down a mysterious name that Albert gave to Jade before dying.

In our final moments of the present storyline, we see Evelyn being removed from the remains of the building. She survived the explosion, and a familiar looking hand/claw pushes through the rubble, suggesting that The Tyrant is now free.

Resident Evil Season 1 Episode 8 recap – Our final time in the future timeline.

Last episode ended with adult Jade and Billie standing on a hill looking at a massive swarm of Zeroes coming to kill them. Billie takes control of Umbrella’s drones to start mowing down the oncoming horde giving Jade a chance to escape.

We’ll assume that Jade’s special anti-zero pheromone is still in effect since she runs past several Zeroes during her escape and none of them seem to care about attacking her. She makes it back to the ship when The University unleashes their ultimate weapon; a giant mutant zombie crocodile that had been sedated by their lizard controlling powers from the flashback.

The crocodile is unleashed upon the land chasing Billie as she tries to escape by helicopter. Back on the boat Jade realizes that her daughter, Bea, has gone missing having taken a small boat to shore.

As a result, she heads back into danger to rescue her daughter. On land it seems for a moment that Bea is about to be killed by the monster crocodile that was released on Jade’s orders.

But in an unexpected twist, the crocodile lays down peacefully next to her. This gives Billie the opportunity to kill the croc with a barrage of rockets from the helicopter.

Jade finds Bea but before they can get back to safety, Billie shows up with a new interest in her niece given her effect on the mutant crocodile. In fact, with Bea as a possible new specimen for Umbrella, they no longer need Jade.

Billie shoots her in the stomach before leaving with Bea, now a captive of the Umbrella corporation. Even though Jade is left for dead in the wasteland, she determinedly stands up, holding her gunshot wound to go after her daughter as the show closes on this cliffhanger for the next season…

Resident Evil Season 1 Episode 8 review – In conclusion

…Except that’s it. It was announced a few days ago that there would be no second season as Netflix has decided to cancel the show.

This the final review of the series as a whole. It’s a little hard to be critical of the series for spending so much time setting up plotlines that will never be paid off.

But it can be annoying to watch so many teases knowing that they’re ultimately leading to questions that will be forever unanswered. In a way it helps to highlight one of the more frustrating elements of the show that’s been present the entire season.

The show’s split timeline has put all of the action either before the zombie apocalypse had started, or well after it’s over, and humanity is the loser. Sure, there is plenty of zombie action in the 2036 storyline, but that still leaves half of your zombie show set in a time period where there are no zombies.

It’s clear that had there been a second season, the 2022 timeline would have continued. It’s likely the idea was that over the course of multiple seasons we would watch the outbreak take place.

The release of The Tyrant at the end of the episode suggested as much. But even if we had gotten a second season, that still leaves the present half of this entire season feeling like a very long, drawn out prologue.

We had a zombie bite in the first episode, and it wasn’t until the final episode that there was a second bite. It seems like the expectation was that the two halves of the show would compliment one another.

With the future storyline more than making up for the amount of zombie action. In practice, we got two storylines that seemed too far apart from one another competing for show time.

It made one storyline more frustrating, simply because it wasn’t the other storyline. And ultimately, that frustration exists in the entire show.

Throughout eight episodes, Resident Evil hints at being a part of a much bigger world. There’s a fourteen-year time gap that we know would be interesting to explore.

There are multiple hints dropped about the original Raccoon City, and the events that already happened twenty years before the show started. The original Albert Wesker and the whole clone storyline feels like it’s only scratching the surface of that character.

There is talk of how humanity is surviving in the zombie apocalypse but that’s only explored enough to move Jade’s story along. Umbrella in the future is supposed to be one of the most dominating forces of what remains of society.

Yet we only get hints of what their reach might be. There is so much throughout the show to suggest how big this world is, but it ends up highlighting how empty it ends up feeling as well.

Maybe that was an intentional artistic choice, and maybe that was a byproduct of having to make the show under COVID restrictions. The show always felt like a piece was missing or like it was choosing to focus on the wrong thing.

It’s interesting that the series is based on a video game that inherently allows players to explore the world, and one of the biggest frustrations watching the show is how much remains unexplored. In the end it is a shame that the show won’t get to continue the way the creators had envisioned.

For all the problems that the first season had, there is a richness to the Resident Evil franchise that has helped it last for over thirty years at this point. It’s possible that future seasons could have delved into what makes Resident Evil connect with people had they been given the opportunity.

What we’re left with is a clear set up for a forever unfinished story. But Resident Evil has been a video game series, a movie franchise, and even an anime at this point.

We don’t think this will be the last time that somebody tries to bring you a TV show.

What did you think of the Resident Evil series finale? Do you agree with the show’s cancellation?

Let us know your thoughts of Resident Evil season 1 episode 8 in the comments below!

You can watch Resident Evil season 1 on Netflix.