Resident Evil's Shocking Ending Does Something None Of The Other Movies Were Brave Enough To Do

Published Sep 29, 2026, 11:30 AM EDT

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Warning: Major spoilers for the ending of Resident Evil (2026) below!Resident Evil ends on a shocking note that none of the other films would have dared attempt. Almost by default, Zach Cregger's latest adaptation of Capcom's survival horror video game saga has come to be considered the best. That's not to say the Milla Jovovich Resident Evil movies that came before weren't entertaining, but they were also radical departures from the source material.

Cregger's film is the eighth entry in the overall franchise and is, ironically enough, another huge departure. It still takes place in the world of the games, but Cregger has created a new protagonist in Austin Abrams' Bryan, a medical courier going through a night from hell. Not only has the film received great reviews, but Cregger's Resident Evil has been a box office smash too.

It leans hard into the survival horror origins of the property too, where Bryan has to work with limited resources and constantly face down new creatures. It's surprisingly funny too, but Cregger gives the audience an unexpected gut punch with Resident Evil's ending, where Bryan succumbs to the infection coursing through his body and turns into a hideous creature.

None Of The Other Resident Evil Movies Were Bold Enough To Kill The Main Character

Bryan's bleak fate is a gutsy move, especially considering how likable the character is. His death seemingly removes any hope of Abrams returning for a sequel, too. While the games - namely Village - were sometimes brave enough to kill a lead character, Cregger's Resident Evil represents the first time the film series attempted such a move.

Austin Abrams previously worked with Zach Cregger on 2025's Weapons.

Now, technically, Jovovich's Alice died a few times through her six-film arc 0 but that always involved her many, MANY clones. While The Final Chapter heavily teased Alice's impending death, she ultimately lived to fight the undead another day. In hindsight, it would have been a serious bummer had the finale ended with her demise, considering all she had been through.

Still, it's hard to imagine the producers behind those movies even considering killing off their heroine. Even the supporting characters who died - like Michelle Rodriguez's Rain - tended to reappear down the road as clones.

The same was true for the 2021 reboot Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City. Director Johannes Roberts' film was far more faithful to the games, with its plot merging the events of the first and second games. Yet again, despite featuring such a sprawling cast of heroes - all of whom come from the games - everybody survives in the end.

The ending of 2012's Resident Evil: Retribution promised to unite many of the game's major characters (Leon, Ada, Jill Valentine, etc) with Alice to make a last stand to save humanity. Cut to the opening of The Final Chapter, that epic battle has taken place offscreen, and no mention is made of what happened to Alice's allies. Like, at all. As a supposed finale, the sixth film leaves the fates of many major characters unaccounted for, but in a 2017 Collider interview, Jovovich explained why.

In short, Resident Evil publisher Capcom didn't want any of the characters to die in the movies, so director Paul W.S. Anderson decided to drop them and create new allies for Alice. It was an inelegant solution, but it also would have been odd to have a final battle where none of the protagonists perished.

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Cregger was likely allowed to get away with Bryan's demise in his film reboot because the character was an original creation. He feels like an NPC character that someone like Jill would have encountered in Resident Evil 3: Nemesis who dies shortly after they meet, except Cregger's film follows the entire, tragic story of that character.

It will be intriguing to see where a sequel (and make no mistake, a follow-up is definitely happening) will take the story now. With Bryan dead, it would make sense for a Resident Evil sequel to bring in familiar faces like Leon or Jill, but if that's the case, don't expect any shock deaths on their part.

Source: Collider