Parasite
Episode 7 of Resident Evil begins in 2005 up at the Arklay Mountains. Wesker is with his twin brother as it soon becomes apparent that this lot are all clones. Albert Wesker, complete with sunglasses and a black coat, shows up and demands to know how his research is going. Only, Umbrella guards show up, prompting Wesker to make swift work of them before Bert and Albert are left to Evelyn, who appears and takes them both in. In 2036, Jade is wracked with guilt over what she’s done. Unfortunately, it turns out the Zero head actually has a tracker inside and that’s how Umbrella have found them. Jade apologizes to Arjun for what she’s done, especially as Amrita has been killed because of her stupidity. Umbrella have taken control of the vessel and they want to organize a meeting. Arjun is confident they could strike a deal, but as Jade learns that Evelyn is the one asking for the meeting, she’s not so sure. Jade wants to “press the button” but Arjun is quick to point out that Bea needs her mother, not a martyr. Anyway, Saqim goes ahead with meeting Evelyn instead, pointing out he has a hard drive with incriminating details on. She shrugs it off though, calling his bluff. Jade eventually decides to meet Evelyn at her little base of operations. It turns out Billie is actually controlling Evelyn now and she also planted the tracker too. Billie is also not sick anymore, thanks to using Jade’s blood to stave off the infection. Anyway, it turns out Billie’s plan here is to try and make the world a better place. She wants to collect up all the paintings and artifacts at the university – the place Jade was originally visiting. She also intends to seize the ship too. However, Jade smashes a vial on the floor which happens to include a scent that draws in the zombies. The gang have actually set them up completely, and with fighting down on the docks, the ship is released from shore but it turns out they’ve actually captured a giant crocodile underneath the boat too, because sure, why not that might as well happen! In 2022, Albert is tied up and questioned over why he killed Angel. However, his cloned twin is unstable and manages to kill several of his guards and breaks free. It’s Bert who shows up to take Billie and Jade out of school, racing off to get something to eat. At the restaurant, Billie and Jade immediately suspect something is up and try to work out what. At the same time, we cut across to Simon and his mum. Evelyn shows up and the gang have a family reunion. Evelyn slips a couple of Joy pills to her wife, while urging Simon to message Jade. Back at the restaurant, Bert breaks the truth to the girls, pointing out that he’s a clone and essentially like their Uncle. He’s completely unstable though. The girls do eventually run out the back, but of course Umbrella catch up with them. Bert can more than handle himself, killing several guards before they’re all eventually captured. Evelyn brings them into the lab, where their father is on the floor, having a seizure. It turns out that these clones’ cells rapidly accelerate and in order to stave that off, they need regular injections to slow the process (Explaining Wesker’s dependence on these syringes.) The cure is actually through the girls’ blood, explaining why they’ve been having blood taken from them since they were little. Wesker saves himself, but it leaves everything wide open for the finale to follow.
The Episode Review
The further along this series goes, the more removed from the games this becomes. It’s almost like someone watched the later Resident Evil movies with Milla Jovovich and thought “yep, that’s a good idea” and threw everything into this teen drama soup. The writing is poor across the board, the setting is uninspired and everywhere in 2036 uses the same bland, boring locations but propped up using the Resident Evil name. Ordinarily, this drama would probably be about a 4/10 maybe a 5/10 given its ideas and concept, but honestly, these later episodes have been so poor and it’s almost like the writers are dosed up on acid while they’ve been writing. This is unfortunately another assassinated IP, distorted and changed for modern audiences but sucking out all the life from what Resident Evil was actually about. Will the finale improve? It seems highly doubtful but hey, I’ve been proven wrong many times before!
