Save Me From My Hyperfixations

I like to think that breakfast is Leon's favorite because it was the first thing he shared with the police officer after his parent's death... OR simply because breakfast meant that he had a valid excuse to eat something sweet (given the hc that he has a sweet tooth).

Leon’s love language being food, he’s a decent enough cook to make his favorite dishes, but I also think it would be funny if he could only make sweet things. Just the imagery of an exhausted Claire going, “No, you can’t eat sweet things for breakfast, lunch, AND dinner.” That being said, Leon never got the chance to cook food for Sherry because the normalcy never happened and they were quickly taken into custody after Claire departed.

RE4r Leon lacks fat and is mostly pure muscle. His body struggles to regulate its temperature and he often ends up with cold limbs. I think his relationship with food deteriorated during his time in military training, both because of the quality (and quantity) of food he was afforded, and due to the environment he was in. The forced conscription and the way Leon is/was treated like a tool to be honed and sharpened definitely messed up his psyche, and his tendency to value the mission above all bleeds into his relationship with food. Leon often forgets to eat during his missions. He might tell himself that he'll grab something to eat after he gets Ashley back... but once Ashley is with him, all he can think of is progressing forward. I think post-RE4r, Leon is better about eating, but between missions and the knowledge that he's contributing to the government coverups, Leon starts to deteriorate again... until the fight with Arias in New York.

I think of Leon in Vendetta choosing to drink in some bar in Colorado vs drinking alone in his room a lot, and I think of Leon hardly living in his (government-issued) apartment to the point where it's like a dusty show-room. The absence of a tangible proof of his existence in the form of a lived-in space... The bed is hardly slept in because Leon is almost always shipped off to some new mission and the kitchen cabinets are empty because even if he does have some off-time, the majority of it is spent exhausted or drinking to numb the emotions away. In a twisted way, Leon might prefer to drink outside, more than just to maintain appearances, but also because if something did happen to him, Hunnigan wouldn't be the first one to find him.

DI Leon is much healthier. He's filled out and grown even more muscle mass to the point where his old shirts don't fit anymore... Hunnigan might joke about Leon dying from clogged arteries before dying from a mission, but she's internally happy that Leon seems better than she's ever seen him. Leon's living space is more lived in now. The fridge and cabinets have food in them and Leon is trying his best to get back into cooking. He might've even gotten married (who knows?) or moved in with someone. His relationship with Sherry might've been a little shaky post-RE6 but by DI, it settled down and Sherry now comes by to eat dinner with him often (Jake might stop by...). She also visits Hunnigan's office for a Dunkin' run every once in a while. If Leon isn't drinking a large-sized Dunkin' macchiato, then it's his coffee with a concerning amount of creamer and sugar.

We Were In A Race To Grow Up

I don’t know if you noticed, but the Leon that we see in Requiem is different.

At 21, Leon starts off as a greenhorn kid whose whole entire life took a turn. He was in the wrong place on the wrong night — the desperate need to do the right thing as an officer accidentally roping him into years of involuntary federal service.

Unlock this cell, and I’ll give you this. Sorry, I can’t do that. I have to talk to the chief first. (RE2make)

At 27, Leon has 6 years of USSTRATCOM training under his belt. He’s weary, slowly climbing the ladder of distrust for those around him, but he isn’t fully there. The RE4make does an incredibly good job at this characterization. Although he’s less trusting of those around him, he still exhibits that “Scouts Honour” moral code.

Major! You’re not thinking straight! You’re still a kid, holding onto fantasies of what’s right and wrong. […] You can’t save her, you can’t save anyone. Give it up, Krauser! (RE4make)

At 49, something’s changed.

During his perspective of pathing through the care center, he comes off as deeply jaded. Not only are his voice lines strikingly apathetic in comparison to the past, but his combat style is brutal and bloody in a way we’ve never seen before.

This place is infested. […] What a fuckin’ shame. (RE9)

This Leon fights and kicks to destroy, in comparison to before, where he only kicks to make space so he can reload.

This Leon sneaks behind zombies to shoot them in the back of the head and looks angry while doing so, in comparison to before, where he only does reactionary takedowns and grapples.

He’s aggressive. The way Leon fights — meticulous, crushing, straight for the kill — feels like he’s running out of time. And he is.

Yesterday, Through Today, Until Tomorrow

Earlier, it was revealed that Leon is fighting an illness, one that has already killed 6 different survivors of the Raccoon City incident. It’s T-Virus — the remnants of the infection initially dormant in the bodies of those exposed to outbreaks. Over time, the virus mutates after building an immunity to natural antibodies.

Leon has embarked on one final personal search for a potential cure. It's likely that he's operating without explicit permission from the DSO, as his usual handler Ingrid Hunnigan is absent. Instead Sherry, having been pulled from field work due to the progression of her own infection, acts as his FOS.

This led him to the Chronic Care Center, which has been run by T-Virus researcher Victor Gideon since the dissolvement and bankruptcy of Umbrella. At the Care Center, Leon doesn’t find the cure he's hoping for.

Instead he finds an inconclusive report, a photograph of Grace, and a redacted file containing the word “Elpis”. With what we’re given at this point in the game, we’re to assume that both Raccoon City and Grace herself have something to do with this mystery word.

Leon, at this point, is in stage 2 of this latent T-Virus infection. The virus has spread to multiple extremities, notably his hands and his neck.

He doesn’t know how long he has left. Stage 3 is next, and it's terminal. So, Leon’s goal naturally shifts. If he can’t find a cure, he’ll go to Raccoon City instead, and try to look for an answer to everything he's just found.

Gathering everything I’ve said just now, we as the players come to the conclusion that Leon is in genuine pain, and bone-tired of his war. He’s fought too hard for too long, and this time, the stakes are too high.

So, he gets in his car, and heads to the center of Raccoon City.

Effective at this exact moment, Leon has gone AWOL to die.

But When The Plant Blew Up/1998, Forever And A Day

Once in Raccoon City, we walk alongside Leon as he works to get to the city center. And once we do, we see the RPD.

At the precinct doors, Leon can barely bring himself to look up and meet the ruins. He has brief flashbacks of the people he met that night, specifically his Lieutenant Marvin Branagh, who died saving him.

This confirms something crucial. In Requiem, the Leon we see is built off this emotional development. He is the one who formed a bond with his lieutenant in his dying moments, and the one who carried that loss forward with him.

In RE4make, Leon bringing Marvin’s knife with him to Spain isn’t just a detail — it establishes a throughline. It confirms we’re following Leon A, someone who has carried the loss of that night for years.

Later, Leon — having run into his welcome banner, and a taunt of 'you can’t save anyone' written on a piece of paper — has little to no reaction to what he’s seeing in front of him.

He pauses to take it all in, plucks the note to read it, and immediately crumples it to toss it aside. This phrase is something that used to be such a core trigger for his character, and now, it’s brushed off almost as quickly as we read it.

We continue on through the West Office, where Leon finds Marvin’s name plate and the party plans they made for his first day as an officer. Here, we get a voice line from Leon – a gruff and clipped:

Hey, Lieutenant Branagh. Kennedy… reporting for duty.

But what strikes me the most about this moment at the nameplate — and the few moments of interaction with key photographs and puzzles scattered around — is that all of these are optional.

These interactable moments don’t lock us in cutscenes. They are things we choose to engage with as the player.

It shows us a lot about Leon’s hesitance. Even when he’s walking through the RPD and directly facing the remnants of his past that are all around him, he’s restrained. He chooses to parse through it all one at a time, not fully ready to face exactly what he will find in front of him.

A Piece of Shrapnel Flew and Slowed That Part of You

However, when we get to the back door of Kendo’s shop just past the RPD, that changes.

Leon loses the choice he had before. Here, he’s forced to pass through a door he’s never walked behind, and forced to confront what happened there 30 years ago.

Leon pauses well before the threshold, and we get another flashback. But it's not of Robert, it’s of Emma. It’s a standalone shot of his daughter.

Notably, this standalone shot lingers longer than it does in the original scene from the RE2make. Here, the memory of Emma in that doorway is not just passing. It’s being dwelled on by Leon.

A beat passes, and hesitantly, Leon opens the door that Robert took Emma behind. The first voice line that rings in his head is heartbreaking.

Terminate? That’s my fucking daughter.

What’s interesting, though, is that this is not the first thing Robert says to Leon in that original scene. This happens midway through the original scene, and is actually a direct response to something that Ada says. She tells Kendo to:

Step aside. We need to terminate her before she turns. (RE2make)

Here, Leon isn’t just remembering Robert and his words — he’s remembering an exchange. The clinical language used to refer to an infected daughter, and the immediate visceral rejection of it from her father.

In these moments, Leon’s entire demeanour shifts. He drops to one knee to face Robert’s bones, the words said that night continuing to ring through his head. And as he looks around the small room, his eyes catch something new — something Requiem introduces to this sequence.

It’s an Umbrella prescription that Robert filled for Emma. It lingers on a single detail.

Relation to Patient: Father.

And where this token of protection lies on the floor, evidence of a father's need to heal and give life, the shotgun Robert used that night is high on a shelf behind him — with Leon caught right in between the two.

It’s only after he reads over the prescription that Leon speaks for the first time.

I am so sorry.

He apologizes, his voice soft and barely held together — caught somewhere in his throat, and his chest. It’s shaken, an involuntary whisper meant for nobody other than the bones of a father before him.

But then, a rupture from outside shakes the ground, and something in him reignites.

Anger, and an anguished vow of never again.

This is strikingly different from how Leon has not only processed the entirety of the RPD, but also different to how he processes this moment in RE2make. There, he initially frames Robert and Emma through his role as an officer.

Helping people like them, that’s why I joined the force. (RE2make)

It’s broad, and principled. It’s rooted in his duty.

But here, that framing is secondary. Leon, at this exact moment in time, is not just seeing another failure as an officer.

His first instinct is to see a daughter, and then her father.

His flashback of Emma alone and Robert’s accompanying voice line, and his reaction to the prescription read less like a memory. It's more like something long repressed finally resurfacing. It’s as if he pushed their familial dynamic aside, like he didn’t fully understand the weight of it at the time. But he has to now, 30 years later. It is inescapable.

We do see more of Marvin after the RPD, but it's not through flashbacks or voice lines. It's through letters left behind scattered all across Raccoon City.

But the letters aren’t left behind by Marvin himself — they’re left behind by his daughter, Meryl.

The letters detail Meryl leaving a safe house and heading deeper into the infected city, all because she wants to see her father again. The second letter appears right after Kendo’s shop, in the windshield of a decrepit car. It's only here that Leon realizes who the author of these letters actually is.

This girl… it can’t be.

They continue through the alleyway behind the shop, where we find Meryl’s shoes, and a charm that she dropped presumably before she died. The charm was initially Marvin’s, and the tooltip describes it as a gift he gave to his daughter.

In the ruins of the city, immediately after these two moments, Leon has one final showdown with the Tyrant — someone that terrorized him that night, a fight that he was unprepared for at the end.

He’s not unprepared now.

Right before shooting out a rocket that Tyrant is holding, Leon says something we’ve heard before.

I couldn’t save them. But I can stop bastards like you.

You'll Go Fight A War

It takes this version of Leon a long time to get here.

And later, when he’s laid bare and actively dying of stage 3 T-Virus infection, the theme comes back full force.

Grace asks him why he’s even in Raccoon City if he was so sick. Leon responds, and he’s incredibly emotional. It sounds like he’s surrendering. He tells her this is where it all began for him, that he couldn’t make a difference in saving people’s lives no matter how hard he tried. So he is here now. He is chasing Elpis — seeking to destroy it before it can be unleashed.

The good ending of this game, in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment, shows us something important. Leon finally has a life outside of his job. He made a vow to his spouse — for better or for worse, in sickness and in health.

But in the grief of his terminal infection, he broke that vow.

He takes his ring off, puts his gloves on, and pre-emptively accepts an unknown outcome. In doing so, he’s trying to shed every emotional reminder to the life that he is actively leaving behind.

But Leon, conducting this mission outside of the DSO, needed an operations support — someone in his life that he trusts with everything he has. And over the course of the game, we see Leon try to push that fact aside. He only speaks when necessary, and he chooses to hide the full scope of his progressing infection from her.

But now, after being forced to reminisce on the fathers and daughters of Raccoon City, after coming face to face with two broken families that are defined by that relationship — he can’t forget anymore.

Leon can walk through the RPD and remain composed, because the loss there is scattered — it's spread across people, across an entire building that we don't even get full access to. He can choose to engage with everything on his own terms.

But at Kendo’s, he can’t. It’s one room, one father, and one daughter.

It forces him to truly remember Emma. And after he does, he reads the letters he sees and understands something that he didn't before. He finally saw what he missed that night, when he had no emotional connection pulling him towards those family dynamics, because he now has a reason to.

Leon has something he didn’t have back when he was a rookie on his own journey through the city.

Leon has Sherry.

Pathing through the city, now as a surrogate father to Sherry, has unconsciously forced Leon to remember the life he was leaving behind. He saw an infected daughter and a girl searching only to face the worst, and the memories of the life he was supposed to have come back — the protector he was supposed to be to Sherry after so long apart.

And what’s tragic is that the breakdown of their dynamic is not for the reasons we’d assume, like their gruelling job, or endless years of war. The true answer is a lot simpler.

It’s because they got infected the day they met.

He realizes now that he is just like Marvin, and he is just like Robert — fathers that are forced to lose their daughters to bioterror.

He makes Grace vow to destroy Elpis if he can’t, and makes her promise that another outbreak like this will never happen again.

Leon will die, and right after him will Sherry — he is hours away from his body fully shutting down. And if it must happen to him, if it must happen to his daughter, he will use his last dying breath to make sure that it doesn’t happen to another family ever again.

I'll Go Missing

Sherry Birkin is the daughter of William Birkin, a long-time Umbrella researcher. During the Raccoon City incident, William injected himself with the G-Virus to save his own life. The G-Virus duplicates by embryo implants to a suitable host.

Sherry shared his genetic makeup by blood, so he started to search for her across the entirety of NEST — a blind rampage spurred by the progression of the virus in his body.

Sherry, at only ten years old, was forced to watch her father die in front of her alone — she had to watch his mind get taken over by his own creation. She tries to hide, but eventually is found by him and implanted with a G-Embryo.

Claire comes across Sherry later, with her infection slowly taking over her body. Claire fought to protect and save her, and eventually Sherry had the DEVIL antigen administered to her.

Claire, Leon and Sherry reunite and escape the city. They vow to work together and stop Umbrella once and for all. In the remake, as they’re walking into the sunset — finally free and hand-in-hand — Sherry says something to the two of them.

Hey! You guys can adopt me! We can get a puppy! (RE2make)

This heartfelt scene cements their found-family dynamic. Sherry, a young girl with parents who spent more of their lives at Umbrella than they did with her, was saved due to the heroic actions of Claire and Leon.

But keeping her protected, administering the antigen to prevent mutations, and ensuring her safe escape from the city — none of that was enough.

The G had taken over the cells in Sherry’s body and mutated alongside her, altering her biology permanently. She was cured of the progression of the disease, but will have it in stasis in her body for the rest of her life. This made her blood a target for research.

In the aftermath of that night, Sherry was taken into protective custody by the US government.

Here, Leon was given an ultimatum – either he joins USSTRATCOM and fights against bioterror, or the government will take Sherry’s blood for their own anti-bioterror program, and she will die due to these experiments.

And Leon chooses to fight to protect her. Sherry is the last survivor of Raccoon City that Leon has the opportunity to save — something he desperately wanted to do to anyone he came across that night, something he failed at over and over again.

A file in RE6 proves this. Leon said he was close to giving up, but he remembered that Sherry needed him. She was his reason to keep fighting this war.

To tell you the truth, I even thought about ending it — several times, actually — with just a quick bullet to the head. But I didn’t give up. Sherry needed me. […] She was our reason for not giving up — especially for Claire. (Leon and the Raccoon City Incident, RE6)

But even though Leon accepted the ultimatum that ensured the safety of Sherry, she was still forced to live her life in federal confinement. One of the official reasons was to keep her safe from bioterrorists — more specifically, to keep her safe from Albert Wesker.

Wesker, after the Raccoon City incident and now in possession of superhuman powers, was on the hunt for viral samples with the intention of his spearheading Spencer’s now defunct vision of a new world order.

The reason the U.S. government took Sherry Birkin into custody is twofold: one, they had hoped to study the G-Virus that remained in her blood, and two, they sought to protect her from Albert Wesker, who wanted to possess a sample of the G-Virus. (A Deal With The United States, RE6)

That Picture On The Wall You're Scared Of

Grace Ashcroft is the daughter of Alyssa Ashcroft, journalist and Resident Evil Outbreak character. Grace, an F.B.I analyst, is persuaded into exploring the Wrenwood Hotel — a federal mission that is revealed to have been helmed by rival company The Connections, and the place where she watched her mother die.

The trauma of her mother's death forced her to become very reclusive. She folded herself inward, and stopped trying to reach out to others. It’s a form of self-protection, a way to parse through her past.

On her federal mission at the hotel, she is kidnapped by Victor Gideon — a key member of The Connections — and taken to the Rhodes Hill Care Center. Here, Grace wakes up upside down and strapped to a medical gurney, and it’s revealed that Victor has set up an IV to drain her blood.

As Grace tries to escape the Care Center, she meets a little girl named Emily who is being kept in a glass room locked away under the center itself.

Although lacking the natural inclination, Grace vows to protect Emily and escape with her. Through this, she is forced to confront her fear of emotion and her fear of touch. And in doing so, she gains something.

She now has someone who she can make sense of this mess with — a reason to keep going.

I wanted it to be clear that when she meets Emily, this is the moment in the story where she is finally connecting to another human being properly. (Angela Sant’Albano, Vice)

It is later revealed that Emily is a clone. The Connections, for decades, have been running a blood-memory program using the mutated T-Virus in order to gain access to the password that locked Elpis. They have been administering it to all of the girls in the care center, including Emily, to dire results.

After suffering excessive blood loss, Grace can do nothing but watch as the T-Virus mutates Emily.

It Looks Just Like You

Leon has lived this before. We have lived this before. A daughter, hunted, stalked, and taken. A girl watching someone change right before her — the shadow of a person she loves, gone like that.

Here, Leon desperately tries to reason with her. Tells her he understands how she feels, but she has to keep going — we have to keep going. To this, Grace throws the Requiem down to the floor, effectively refusing the protection he offered her earlier.

Leon tries to head after her, but is paralyzed by his own body — stuck in place to stare at her refusal, his infection continuing to spread.

This is a crucial moment. Where Sherry was protected by Leon, Grace leaves. And where Leon seeks to reach out, his body fails him.

And Leon is the only one who can see both outcomes at once.

Held Close All The Time

Before getting the chance to do anything drastic, Grace stumbles into Victor again, and he introduces her to someone we’ve seen before — a clone of Albert Wesker, Zeno.

They interject at the perfect time, and subtly pick up the role of 'protectors'. They tell her it’s okay that she feels lost, because she’s right where she needs to be.

Her and Zeno eventually end up at RPD, where he tells her she is one of Spencer’s projects — one that he favoured over the others. Zeno tells Grace that The Connections have used her blood to try to clone her memory to no avail. They reveal here that Elpis, a powerful mind-control virus, is locked behind a password only she must know.

And because she was made by Spencer, her life's purpose is to release it.

She asks about her mother, if everything that happened to Alyssa truly was her fault — if the people she loved were just collateral in a larger plan, pawns in a pre-determined outcome.

Zeno doesn't give her an answer. He dismisses it all — tells her the death of her mother isn’t the focus here, nor are her failures.

Selfishly, he reduces her entire life to one single purpose, and calls it a 'reason'.

To him, Grace's role as a daughter is reduced to something that's measured by usefulness, and not by loss.

It is only when Grace becomes overwhelmed with this realization that Leon, who has overheard everything, interjects to try to take control of the situation.

Knowing I'm Half Of You

Hey Leon, do you still think about what happened there? […] That night, I was just a kid. Scared and confused… I imagine Grace must feel the same right now.

It is here, in this exact moment, that the game presents Grace and Sherry as mirrored outcomes of the same cycle.

Where Sherry had Leon and Claire to guide her through that night — the good guys who swore above everything to keep her safe — Grace does not.

Grace’s ‘protector’ is now Zeno — the spearhead of The Connections, and a clone of the exact man that Leon’s service protected Sherry from.

And it’s here, after he hears the exchange between Zeno and Grace, that it all clicks for Leon.

In real time, he is seeing history repeat itself — a daughter, freshly faced with loss, being hunted for her blood.

And what does Grace say when she sees Leon for the first time since the water treatment plant?

… Mom?

Subtly, we are seeing another outcome of what would have happened to Sherry if Leon had let her go — if he refused the ultimatum that was given to him all those years ago.

And overtly, the game supplements this protective familial dynamic by having Grace mistake Leon for her mother.

Here, they split. Leon, thinking of Sherry, is forced to go to Kendo’s. Grace, thinking of Alyssa, is forced to go to PANDORA. Two mirrors of the same cycle.

But the RPD isn’t the only time this game does this.

In ARK, the game splits Leon and Grace apart again — and it’s here that these parallels become unavoidable.

Suffering The While, To Lie A Time Or Two

In the elevator up to PANDORA, Leon makes one last attempt to talk to Sherry. He knows he’s going to die, but he wants to reach out to his daughter one last time before he does — talk to her, update her, hear her voice before he can’t anymore.

The connection is static. He has lost his chance. The last thing he hears before he collapses due to pain and exhaustion is Sherry.

But on the other hand, Grace comes across somewhere to inject a magnetic disk into, one that her mother left her the night that she died. As Grace puts the disk in, she is met with countless videos that detail interviews her mother did with Ozwell E. Spencer, the founder of Umbrella.

Grace, in her office in the F.B.I, does not have any pictures of Alyssa around. The last time we see her confronting pictures of her mother is incredibly traumatic. This leads us to believe this is the first time in a long time that she’s seeing her mother in motion, hearing her voice again.

Grace is watching a video of her and her mother meeting for the first time, of her mother holding her as an infant. Out of the corner of her eye, she watches Leon collapse.

Leon’s connection is present, but static — Sherry says his name for the last time, and he’s too late. Grace’s connection is clear, suspended in time long past — Alyssa says her name for the first time, and she’s still too late.

Grace rushes to meet Leon at the door, and desperately tries to wake him.

Leon, it’s me, it’s Grace. Please wake up. Hey, you. I was just resting my eyes.

Leon’s lines, in their surrender, are incredibly dismissive. It’s something he says to downplay the severity of the situation — to turn the attention away from himself.

The girl he wants to protect, the one who reminds him of his daughter, is now the one protecting him. She’s pulling him up to his feet, helping him walk alongside her. His service couldn’t save Sherry, and now, he almost died before saving Grace.

And for Grace, this moment means something else entirely. She is watching a different cycle conclude right in front of her eyes.

Her gestures are careful, and her voice is pleading. If Leon doesn’t wake up, she has to watch another protector fall victim to a pre-determined outcome — and just like last time, she’s powerless to stop it.

These last moments in PANDORA make the non-canon ending so much more devastating.

Leon dies without ever having truly saved Sherry, and without being able to properly say goodbye. But he can’t fail another person like her again. So he lifts Grace up, pushes her to safety, and stays down.

And Grace doesn’t leave. She watches from the catwalk as the building self-destructs, and pleads with Leon to come with her. She loses the ability to change this outcome again. Paralyzed, she watches as another person tries to fight for her — as they die for her.

Their final words are said facing each other.

At least I was able to save you. I wish I could have saved you, Leon.

In the canon ending, however, Grace releases Elpis. She is the one to put an end to Progenitor-based viruses after decades of endless carnage. I theorized more on Elpis here.

Elpis, hope itself, restores Grace's agency. It tells her that her role a daughter matters, and she wasn't created to be a tool. She was born, taken in, and loved by Alyssa. Elpis gives her a choice, and that choice is what defines her.

And by releasing it to the world, it cures Leon, and saves Emily. And most importantly, it frees Sherry from the cage she has been in her whole life.

This Was All For You

For a long time, Leon believed that nobody remembers that boy he used to be that night in 1998. He believed that he changed too much, that he has been forced to become an entirely different person to cope with everything.

Raccoon City. You know, after the incident. The world changed. I guess I changed, too. (RE4make)

But that isn’t true.

Sherry remembers.

When Leon was 21, a fresh faced rookie with a strong moral compass, he believed that he was a critical failure. He believed that he couldn’t save anyone he came across that night.

When Leon is 49, he finally does.

After an entire lifetime together, Elpis gives Leon a way to truly save Sherry. The last daughter of Raccoon City — the only person he’s wanted to save for the last 30 years.

And for a long time, Grace believed she wouldn't be able to have a world again.

She shut herself out for years, never learned how to trust someone other than her mom. And the first person she met and she connected with after that trauma got taken away from her in an instant.

But now, Elpis gives Grace a way to save Emily, too. We get this mirrored closure touched on in the post-credits cutscene where she's on the phone with Leon, asking about Sherry.

That last scene can be read as a symbolic passing of the torch.

Leon's fight is over. But, he’s still in touch and talks regularly with Grace. He asks her how she is and how Emily is doing, and in turn, Grace does the same about Sherry. They talk about their daughters together.

Leon gets to watch Grace keep her safe and live simply — raise her gently, and teach her to read.

He gets to watch her have a normal life with her daughter after Raccoon City, something he didn't manage to get the first time around.

Grace leaves that night with two new friends and a surrogate daughter who all get to live because of her strength.

She starts the game off as meek, and shy. But ultimately, her relentless courage prevails. She single-handedly shapes the lives of those around her.

After 30 years of grating service, endless war, and unimaginable loss, Leon can lay his arms down. And in doing so, he gets to have a front row seat in watching the next generation of survivors live peacefully.

And Grace? She frames the pictures of her mother, and of Emily. They’re on her desk, for the world to see.

I Forgive It All As It Comes Back To Me

Horror games have a penchant for using daughters negatively. We see that not only across this series, but in other franchises, like Silent Hill and The Evil Within.

Daughters carry blood and babies, and in becoming wives, often lose their names. They are easily forgotten and easily targeted — innocent, young lives that are broken purely for shock value.

Grace, however, shatters this mold. She has her own arc, and works wonderfully as not only a mirror for Sherry and Leon, but as an important co-protagonist who saves Leon’s life with her agency multiple times.

She starts this game off as closed off, afraid of touch and of emotion. She's a girl with little to no friends who is still reeling over a core trauma that she doesn’t understand – the death of her mother, the death of her whole world.

Over the runtime of this game, we watch her become strong. She ends the game knowing what happened to her mother, figuring out where she came from, and leaving it all with someone she can trust again. She fights for her life, for Emily’s life, for Leon’s life, for Sherry’s life.

Without Grace putting her foot down, and telling Leon that she’s going to fight for what’s right alongside him if it’s the last thing she ever does, him and Sherry would have died.

Without her holding a gun to her own head, Leon would have died the first time he walked into PANDORA.

Without her trusting her gut, and going against Leon’s wishes, the war that she ended would have continued. Emily would have died in the water treatment plant all alone.

She’s first introduced as Alyssa’s daughter, then as Spencer’s daughter. And yet, she loses no importance.

A girl we see repeatedly re-emphasized as a daughter above all else, strikingly normal and unimportant, still becomes the main emotional crux of the game.

It is through Grace that we realize a daughter’s choice matters, the lives of millions hinging on it.

Requiem gives us this – a girl, breaking a generational cycle. A daughter, tied seamlessly into the theme of hope and revival.

Euripides, a Greek tragedian of classical Athens, even goes as far as describing hope as a treacherous illusion that is ultimately humanity's curse in his play The Suppliants.

Hope is man’s curse; many a state hath it involved in strife, by leading them into excessive rage. (The Suppliants, 421 BC)

But this isn't his only play that concerns that idea of hope. In Heracles, hope is presented differently, as something that is deeply complicated – something that constantly shifts.

Throughout the tragedy, gathering momentum by contrast, runs the rhythm of its minor terms: first despair, then hope, then again despair, and finally an endurance deeper than either. (Forward by William Arrowsmith, Euripides II, 1969)

The question regarding Elpis' intent has always been complex in nature. Did Elpis hide herself under the lip of the jar out of preservation, essentially turning herself into a blessing to be found after ills have plagued the world? Or was the jar sealed before Elpis could leave it, effectively making her another curse inside – a blind hope, a belief that only serves to prolong suffering?

This ambiguity is not lost thematically in Resident Evil: Requiem. It's almost a one to one of the discussion that many have been having about the intention of Elpis since the game came out. Was Elpis, the antiviral found in the ruins of Raccoon City, a cure at inception – something Spencer made to preserve life, and undo the suffering he has caused? Or was it just another way to seek viral control – a private, strategic failsafe meant to be deployed at his own discretion?

And that's a good question to ask. Over the course of the whole series, Spencer's work has involved horrific atrocities and terrible ideologies. So it does feel shocking at first glance that Requiem tells us that in the 80's, Spencer had a huge shift in ideology, and started the development of a cure. His words are clear at the end – he felt guilt, and he hopes that the concept of Elpis serves as a requiem for all those who have died.

But the question still stands. What could have possibly happened for him to have started development of an extremely potent antiviral, a cure to his entire life's work so early into its research?

I, in good faith, will try to answer that question, focusing on Grace's report and Spencer's last on screen appearances in 5 and 9.

The Timeline of Elpis

We know that the first mention of Elpis was in 1980. Spencer continued R&D of Elpis all the way through to the mid 1990s, where it is suspected the cure was finalized due to a decrease of public appearances and a confiscated record from 199X. The Raccoon City Incident seems to have happened shortly after, and Spencer was locked into court proceedings which ended in 2004.

If it was meant to be a cure, why didn't Spencer ever use it? Why did he greenlight horrific eugenics experiments for a decade after its initial mention, why did he still remain obsessed with his evolution of humanity well into his final years? Why does even Grace herself say that his true intentions regarding Elpis will forever remain unclear? What gives?

1978-1980, a Rift Between Founders

Umbrella's outward objective was the development of B.O.W.s using viral research, particularly through the T-Virus project. This objective existed within a broader ideology established by Spencer himself, whose true aim for Umbrella was to develop a new world utopia by any means necessary. After the discovery of the Progenitor virus, which held the special ability to make and remake life, Spencer realized that his ambitions of a new world order actually had the chance of becoming a possibility. 

However, while the Progenitor virus had the capability of granting immortality and superhuman traits, its mortality rate on infection was incredibly high. In order to successfully use the Progenitor virus for forced evolution, it had to be weakened, thus leading to the development of the T-Virus.

When viewed in the context of Umbrella's internal history, particularly the ideological divide and growing paranoia between Marcus and Spencer in the 1970s, its inclusion alongside T-Virus research and the first inklings of viral research into the Wesker Project gives us a much clearer read on its original intention.

From its earliest mention in the 1980 ARK roadmap, Elpis actually seems less like an intentional cure, and more like a structural component that was baked into Spencer's long-term strategy. While Marcus was developing the T-Virus, Spencer saw the potential in the new strain as it was less lethal, but never was able to fully trust Marcus during its R&D.

Placed within this rift, Elpis reads not as a contradiction of Spencer's goals, but as a contingency against them spiraling out of his control.

Elpis is presented here as a failsafe – something capable of stabilizing, suppressing, or even reversing the outcomes of the Progenitor virus should Marcus ever turn against Spencer. This would make it highly invaluable not only as a preventative measure against the possible internal weaponization of Marcus' viral work, but also as an important safeguard within the Wesker Project itself.

If a subject eventually proved to be uncontrollable by Spencer, Elpis would allow him to invalidate that result entirely. In this sense, Elpis represents the complete and total authority Spencer wanted over the Progenitor virus – not just the creation of power, but the ability to take it away.

Around 1986, Marcus started to receive funds from the "F Foundation", a puppet organization of The Connections, whom Marcus eventually became an operative for. Although Spencer's isolation of Marcus led him to continuing his research and correspondences separately from ARK, Spencer was still able to deduce Marcus' intentions of presenting the T-Virus to Umbrella's executive directors, and his intention of betraying Spencer by seizing the company.

Spencer promptly started an internal purge of Umbrella. In 1988, Spencer had Marcus killed, and took over his lab and research. Seizing these correspondences – and Marcus' true motivations becoming clear through them – validated Spencer's worst fears. His decision to eliminate Marcus did not resolve his paranoia, but instead expanded it.

1990, Paranoia's Slow Build

Even after Marcus' purge, Umbrella still continued to see gradual destabilization and infiltration by The Connections throughout the 1990's. As the organization expanded, it grew too large to control effectively.

Plagued by leaks, internal sabotage, and pressure from rival companies, the role of Elpis in Spencer's life naturally evolved. A viral failsafe bred from an insular and focused distrust towards one person had suddenly turned into an extremely important contingency plan against anyone trying to weaponize the Progenitor virus against him. This caused Spencer, already obsessed with a controlled outcome, to double down inside ARK to continue his research into Elpis.

Spencer's message of "Elpis shall bring it all to an end" suggests a shift from distrust towards specific researchers, to distrust towards the entire system that houses them. If Umbrella itself can no longer be counted on, then its entire foundation should be privately rendered useless – not out of good will, but out of paranoid desperation. This is evidenced by Elpis being password protected on completion. It was Spencer's private safeguard – his last Hail Mary. A tool, not a cure.

Spencer's viral goal of godhood could now be met by any means necessary. He pulled back from his duties as CEO post-completion to seemingly complete step four of his long term plan privately, as the distrust for his subordinates still lingered even after full development of Elpis. He let them take over main roles, but he did so knowing if the purging or seizing of whoever betrayed him next did not work, he could use Elpis at his discretion.

1998, The Raccoon City Incident

The direct cause for the outbreak in Raccoon City was due to the betrayal of one of the lead T-Virus researchers, William Birkin.

In 1988, Birkin discovered another progenitor based retrovirus, the G-Virus. A decade later, after further research, Birkin entered talks with the US military and plotted to sell the G-Virus for their own bioweapons project. In September of 1998, Birkin began sabotaging Umbrella facilities. Spencer, noticing these behaviours but still seeing potential in the G-Virus, grew concerned that Birkin would prevent him from receiving the G samples and hinder his plan of viral evolution.

Umbrella caught wind of the plans to sell the G-Virus, and a U.S.S task force confronted Birkin in his laboratory. In the confrontation, a sample of the T-Virus not only leaked into the sewers of Raccoon City, but was also leaked into the city's main drinking water reservoir by rats who drank the virus from broken vials.

Following the raid, Umbrella's underground lab had fallen into irreparable chaos, with the T-Virus spreading through it at an alarmingly fast rate. The city itself fell into the same chaos shortly after, as tens of thousands of people became infected through the waterways. Taking advantage of the viral outbreak, The Connections had swiftly seized control of ARK, meaning Spencer no longer had access to the failsafe he spent so long developing.

Spencer, having lost his main research facility, had actually not abandoned his ambitions like many believe. Spencer's notebook in RE5 gives us a little more insight on his personal thoughts immediately after the incident. 

In it, he outlines a plan to return to Umbrella's hidden Progenitor facility and rebuild from the ground up. He plans to get rid of anyone who knows of the facility to the best of his abilities, showing that even after a large-scale outbreak like Raccoon City, his research still holds sole importance. He believes he can start again, that maybe that he can recreate Elpis to take back control, so long as the Progenitor facilities remain in his hands. 

2004, The Paradox of Hope

Spencer's plans to rebuild never come to fruition. Whether due to age, the court hearings, or loss of access to tools, Spencer fails to return to the Progenitor facility and recreate Elpis. Spencer has not chosen to abandon his ambitions of forced evolution. Instead, he is forced to come to terms with the fact that he no longer possesses the ability to realize them.

In this lens, Spencer's characterization in Alyssa's interview reads less like moral redemption and more like a desperate attempt at conceptualizing his failure. Elpis, once seen by Spencer as complete control, is now reframed as his personal hope. 

My research has opened Pandora's Box, unleashing disaster upon the world. Except Elpis, the goddess of hope? Or so the myth goes... A Blind hope. [...] Humans cannot predict when death will come for them. This is why they have hope. I was wrong... and I am plagued by guilt. Happiness cannot be achieved at the expense of others. (Alyssa's Interview, RE9)

This shift is not because the viral function has changed, but because Spencer's relationship to it has. We even see him attempt to undercut the hopeful framing that Alyssa tries to give it. Spencer can no longer wield his creation as a weapon, and so in turn it becomes something he has mythologized. A blind hope.

He spent his entire life pursuing godhood by any means necessary, only to lose that pursuit due to his own greed. He had so many opportunities to use Elpis. He could have used it when The Connections began to infiltrate his company in the 1980s-90s in droves, or when global Umbrella labs started to see repeated accidents, or even when his subordinates started to show early signs of betrayal, but he didn't. His role as god was more important. He would see it through using viral research no matter what.

For Spencer, Elpis was not hope, but safety — something he believed he could rely on at any time. That belief allowed him to continue his research unchecked. And in the end, his inability to act cost him everything.

By the time of the interview, Spencer is no longer a demigod on the path to ascension. He is a human man forced to confront the hand he played in the collapse of his own legacy. The conclusion he presents, that happiness cannot be achieved at the expense of others, is in turn deeply ironic. We are watching a man who did everything in his power to become a god attempt to rationalize his failure in the most human way possible.

The guilt he expresses is not moral. It is selfish. And the decision to take in Grace as one final atonement fits into this selfishness. 

Is she... Perfectly normal. Just an average child needing a home. She ... is my hope. (Alyssa's Interview, RE9)

Although Spencer himself sees it as one, this act is not a redemption. This is a desperate scramble to control one last life, a way to change one outcome. Where he once desired to rule the entirety of humanity, he is now left with only one life he can influence. So he tries again, and seemingly treats her with care. His idea that this one simple act can offset decades of cruelty, and him being fully content with that is not evidence of moral growth, but is evidence of a man building a narrative he can live with while he is actively trying to parse through failure.

Spencer didn't become good, or change his entire ideology at the end of his life. He simply lost the ability to enforce it, so he tries to rewrite his life at the end to make it more bearable. He reframes Elpis as hope, Grace as a redemption, and selfishly reframes himself as remorseful.

2006, the Connective Thread

I was to become a god... creating a new world with an advanced race of human beings. However, all was lost with Raccoon City. Despite that setback, your creation still holds great significance. Now my candle burns dimly. Ironic, isn't it? For one who has the right to be a god. To face his own mortality... (Ozwell Spencer, RE5)

Elpis, in hindsight, gives his conversation with Albert Wesker new emotional weight. In this moment, Spencer, a man obsessed with immortality and godhood is not just facing death. He is facing the loss of significance, and the loss of being a key developer in a new world he thinks he was supposed to rule.

The bitterness that we see stems from the realization that the complete authority he once held over Progenitor research through Elpis has been taken from him. Spencer has not only lost the ability to complete his vision, but also the power to control it. Now, Wesker stands in front of him as a fully realized version of the future that Spencer envisioned. In hindsight, the absence of Elpis is crucial. And in the end, he is destroyed by the very system he was too greedy to stop.

Final Thoughts

Ultimately, Elpis serves as a continuous thread throughout Spencer's time at Umbrella. Much like the shifting idea of hope in Heracles, Elpis starts as a failsafe against internal paranoia, then becomes a contingency against an entire system, and ends as a mythologized symbol of failure.

And much like the Elpis in Hesiod's original poem, Spencer's true intention is not clear, and is still layered in deep ambiguity. Although I have spent the last thousand something words trying to make sense of it all, we still do not hold a complete and total answer over the intention of Elpis. And honestly, we might not even get one. But that is unimportant.

Whether you view its inception as a cure, or a weapon, or anything that lies in between those two, the importance of Elpis to Spencer is clear. It is a constantly shifting, private tool that represents the selfish lengths he would go to have complete and utter control over the future he is trying to shape.