Sony released a new trailer for the upcoming animated filmResident Evil: Death Islandearlier today and it has some fans wondering why some ofResident Evil’s female characters don’t seem to age. It turns out that there is a reason thatClaire Redfield, Rebecca Chambers, and Jill Valentine stay young longer than the boys, though it’s definitely a weird one.Announced in February,Resident Evil: Death Islandis the upcoming fourth installment of the animatedResident Evilseries. The new movie finally sees series protagonists Leon Kennedy, Chris and Claire Redfield, Rebecca Chambers, and Jill Valentine brought together to investigate Alcatraz Island during a zombie outbreak in San Francisco. Unlike the live-actionResident Evilmovies, which only loosely adapt parts of the game’s setting and characters,Death Islandtakes place in the same universe as theResident Evilgames. The upcoming movie will also be the first time Leon Kennedy and Jill Valentine ever directly meet in theResident Evilcanon.RELATED:Resident Evil 4 Fans Are Glad Certain Things Didn’t Make It Into the RemakeAs some fans realized, this raises some weird questions regarding the characters' ages.Resident Evil: Death Islandtakes place in 2015, seventeen years after the first threeResident Evilgames, which canonically took place in 1998. Nevertheless, Jill Valentine, Claire Redfield, and the prequel’s Rebecca Chambers don’t seem to have visibly aged since their zombie-fighting careers began. However, that’s not true for the male characters.Leon Kennedy is no longer the wide-eyed rooky cop fromResident Evil 2, and Chris Redfield looks downright grizzled after 17 years of fighting the Umbrella Corporation’s science experiments gone wrong.
However, those unethical experiments are the key to the women’s apparent eternal youth. As some Twitter users pointed out, all three have been infected with one of Umbrella’s zombie-creating viruses. Jill was briefly infected withthe original T-Virus duringResident Evil 3, while Rebecca and Claire contracted the A-Virus and T-Phobos Virus. A side effect of all three genetically engineered viruses is that they halt the victims' aging process. One fan even noted that Rebecca looks a little bit younger than she did in her last video game appearance.
Some Twitter users were quick to poke fun at this weird little explanation, with one dubbing it the “Young and Hot Forever” Virus. Another pointed out how, while it was one thing whenResident Evil’s Jill Valentine gained convenient anti-aging powers, extending it to Claire and Rebecca is just getting silly. Still, at least it shows that the Umbrella Corporation might have a future in skin care if it ever decides to get out of the bioweapon and super soldier market.
Resident Evil: Death Islandreleases in Japan on July 7th.
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