Jill Valentine: The Resident Evil Movie Character

Jill Valentine in the Resident Evil movies is a Raccoon City survivor and former police officer who fights the Umbrella Corporation alongside the main heroes. She began in Capcom's Resident Evil video games, and the films feature her in two separate continuities: once inside the Anderson saga, and once in a reboot.

In the first run, Sienna Guillory plays her as the second billed actor in Resident Evil: Apocalypse (2004), directed by Alexander Witt, and again in Resident Evil: Afterlife (2010) and Resident Evil: Retribution (2012), both directed by Paul W. S. Anderson. That saga is built around Alice, a character created for the films who is not in the games, so Jill works as a supporting ally rather than the lead.

In the second run, Hannah John-Kamen plays her in Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City (2021), directed by Johannes Roberts. Here the story starts in 1998 and Jill is part of the police special team (the unit the games call S.T.A.R.S.) that includes Chris Redfield. For the full list of heroes and villains, see Resident Evil characters.

Jill's closest ties in the films are to Alice in the Anderson saga and to Chris Redfield in the reboot, with Umbrella and Wesker as the forces that shape her in both.

With Alice, the bond is a partnership of necessity in Apocalypse, where Jill, Carlos Olivera (Oded Fehr) and the other survivors trade their help for the search for Angela Ashford. By Retribution the relationship has flipped, because Jill is the one hunting Alice under Umbrella's control, and Alice is the one who ends the control. The same film puts her opposite a clone of Rain, and beside the rescue team led by Leon Kennedy. Alice also meets Ada Wong in that film.

In Welcome to Raccoon City, her main relationships are with the police special team. Chris Redfield (Robbie Amell) is her teammate on the trip to the mansion, and she later escapes alongside Claire Redfield, Leon Kennedy and Birkin's young daughter Sherry. Wesker, played by Tom Hopper, is both a colleague and a threat, since he is secretly after the virus created by William Birkin.

Across both runs, the Umbrella Corporation is the common opponent. In Welcome to Raccoon City it prepares to wipe out the city, and in Retribution it turns Jill into a weapon.

In my opinion, Jill's best moment in the films is the helicopter escape in Apocalypse, because it is the one scene where she is simply a capable survivor rather than a plot device. Nemesis turns on Cain's troops and dies protecting Alice, Cain is thrown to the zombies, and Jill is in the group that gets out before the nuclear blast. It is a good set piece, and it shows what a former police officer can do in a city that has gone wrong.

Second, perhaps, is the Retribution reversal. Jill spends most of the film as an enemy, so it could be argued that her real moment is passive: Alice removes the device and gets her back. That is a small beat in an effects heavy film, but it gives Guillory's version of the character an arc across three movies, which is rare in a saga that churns through its supporting cast.

Third is the train escape in Welcome to Raccoon City. Hannah John-Kamen's Jill is part of an ensemble rather than the lead, and she is among the survivors who leave the tunnel alive. That being said, compared with the Anderson run, where Alice always sits in the middle, the reboot lets Jill be one of several equals, and in my view that suits her better.