In today’s discussion, I’d like to talk about what I feel would have been an awesome storyline as part of the Resident Evil video game series, and it’s something that would have been a massive twist hidden in plain sight for many years.
And maybe, just maybe, as a theory, it could still become a reality.
The theory all surrounds the youngest and newest member of the STARS Bravo team that went into the Spencer Mansion in the first game.
Rebecca, if you don’t recall, was the secondary character that you’d play as if you played as Chris Redfield. She was the only member of Bravo team to survive the mansion incident, and later she would be the star of the prequel game Resident Evil Zero.
The Resident Evil franchise is twenty-five plus years old now, and the unfortunate thing with video games as a medium is that there are often different people in charge, and so getting a flowing and cohesive story isn’t always easy.
But over the years, I’ve always found it strange that despite being the third playable character in the first game, that her story basically ended with the first game.
And yes, I know, after years of Rebecca radio silence, she did eventually reemerge in one of the CGI animated movies Resident Evil Vendetta and Resident Evil Death Island. It’s my understanding that these movies are canonical to the story of the game series, which we’ll explore more later.
But if you did see the films you’ll know that Rebecca retired as a police officer at some point after Resident Evil and ended up becoming a university professor who studies viruses. Makes sense, right? After her experiences in the mansion, I’d want to know more about how to stop the T-Virus rather than just shooting infected people before they bit me.
But…it took Capcom from 1996 to 2017 when Resident Evil Vendetta came out to answer what happened to Rebecca next…and she’s just a university professor? That’s boring AF.
In today’s discussion, I’d like to present you with an alternative theory based on what we know from the games. To be clear, this is a theory/a what if/this could still be possible if Capcom actually wanted to make the story of Resident Evil more interesting and connected than it currently is.
What do we know about Rebecca? We know she’s the youngest member of the STARS team, and therefore the least experienced. But she was also the sole survivor of the events of Resident Evil Zero and Resident Evil 1. That feels a bit unlikely doesn’t it?
This brings me to the only thing we learned about Rebecca after the first game up until the CGI movie came out. The evil former leader of the STARS team, Albert Wesker, had a roll of film with a photo of her on his desk in Resident Evil 2.
That’s a detail that was always weird to me. Not only was the very existence of the photograph very odd, but the fact that it was a hidden Easter egg and a secret that you’d only discover if you searched the desk 50 times.
I mean, there has to be some significance, right?
I believe there is potentially a much bigger story behind this, and the explanation for it is a story that could have been in play at one stage, but perhaps got lost to time as different producers and directors took over the direction of the franchise.
What do we know? We know Wesker had this photo of Rebecca, and we know that she was wearing her basketball or netball uniform. Why does Wesker have this? Was there a thing going on between them? The easiest explanation is that Wesker maybe fancied her.
But then we can consider that this photo was on the desk of Wesker, who we know was the villain who was working for the evil Umbrella Corporation, and who betrayed his team to send them into the mansion as test subjects to fight the zombies, spiders, hunters and tyrant.
And we also know that Rebecca is the only one to survive both the train and mansion incidents. This got me thinking. What if the reason she could survive all this despite being the least experienced is the same reason Wesker had a photo of her hidden on his desk. Because Rebecca is special.
We know that Umbrella aren’t against children being experimented on as we found was the case with Lisa Trevor in the remake of Resident Evil. Sherry was then left with the G-Virus in the second game. But most prominently is Emily and Grace and all the clones in Resident Evil Requiem. Perhaps if Lisa was a failed experiment, another girl may have been the perfected subject apart from Grace and the Emily clones.
There has to be a reason why a photograph of Rebecca was included on the desk of Wesker in Resident Evil 2. The fact that they still brought this back and continued to make a thing of it in Requiem solidifies my thinking here, because truthfully, I had written most of this exploration before I even played Requiem.
You see the desks of the other characters like Chris, and Barry, and a photograph of the whole of the STARS team, which interestingly is missing showing Rebecca, but Rebecca is the only original character to be individually featured in Resident Evil 2.
Could it be that Rebecca wasn’t in the group STARS photo because she only just joined the team? Yes. That is the explanation. But isn’t it interesting that Wesker would take such an interest in her and send her on her first mission to investigate the mansion. Almost feels deliberate on the part of Wesker.
Was it that he wanted the STARS team to be the test subjects to gather data on how the bio weapons would fare against them? Or was it that Wesker actually wanted the data on how the monsters would fare against Rebecca?
This sounds ridiculous right? Maybe. But we do know that by the time of Resident Evil 5, Wesker would gain control of Jill Valentine and use her as a mind-controlled weapon. We also know that as early as Resident Evil 1, Wesker was himself able to survive an attack from the Tyrant because he had been altered.
Whereas all the hunters and lickers were mindless monsters, perhaps Rebecca was the first of the subjects that included himself, Jill and Alexia Ashford that were normal looking, and physically more capable than their appearance would suggest.
How else can we explain how a first day rookie can survive whilst grizzled veterans like Stars Bravo leader Enrico and Forest and Richard et al, would not be able to survive?
Whilst Joseph didn’t make it past the opening scene and chicken legs flew away from the mansion, and the rest of the Alpha team barely made it through what happened at the mansion, not only did Rebecca survive the mansion, but she also had survived a zombie infested train, giant scorpions, evil monkeys and leech men just to make it to the mansion.
So, let’s assume that from our knowledge of Rebecca arriving at the mansion first being part of Bravo team, and Wesker having a photo of her hidden on his desk could mean something…surely the events documented in Resident Evil Zero would contradict all this right?
Not really. It’s possible that Rebecca did all she did and was mind controlled like Jill is in Resident Evil 5. Or perhaps she’ll be special like Alice was in the Resident Evil film series.
But that’s a stretch. I get it. But this is just a fun theory after all. But at the time of writing this, a remake of Resident Evil Zero hasn’t been released. And there are continual rumours of a second remake of the first game in the series. So, what does this mean?
In terms of potential, if Capcom are watching this, you could play with what I’ve discussed here to add some shocking revelations to the franchise.
We’ve had remakes of Resident Evil 2, 3 and 4 in the modern era and these sit alongside Resident Evil 7, Village and Requiem in this era. And these remakes do contradict some of what we know from the earlier iteration of the series.
So, I guess what I’m saying is more than just a fun theory, and is something of a proposal to Capcom.
Shock the world and make Rebecca a secret sleeper agent who has been a villain hidden in plain sight for thirty years.
Technically, this wouldn’t even need to be a retcon for what is established in the games and movies we have had. It may be that she does later become a professor who works on the viruses, but what if in the scenes we weren’t shown, show her to be working with Wesker and Umbrella, and not against it.
Imagine if a remake of Zero and a second remake of Resident Evil one was made and upon completion there is a hidden Revelations mode where you play the game from Rebecca’s perspective, and you see how she was working with Wesker and manipulating Chris the entire game. Maybe she’s the one who helps Wesker escape at the end…because that’s never been explained either.
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