Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City (2021): Cast, Plot and Ending Explained

The full plot of Welcome to Raccoon City follows Claire's flight through the city and the police team's descent into the mansion, until both groups end up in Umbrella's underground lab. As a child, Claire befriended Lisa Trevor, a girl harmed by Umbrella's experiments, and later escaped the orphanage. In 1998 she hitches a ride back to the city, sees early signs of a viral outbreak and tries to warn Chris, but infected people close in and she has to run.

Chris, Jill Valentine, Richard Aiken, Brad Vickers and Albert Wesker are sent to the Spencer Mansion to look for the missing team. They find zombies there, Richard dies and Brad is bitten. Wesker turns out to be working secretly for another side, and he is after the virus created by William Birkin.

Back in town, Claire and Leon team up with Chief Irons as the police station is overrun. They head for the orphanage to find a hidden tunnel that leads to the mansion. A creature kills Irons, and Lisa helps Claire and Leon reach an underground lab. There, Wesker clashes with Birkin's family, and Birkin injects himself with a new virus and becomes a monster. The survivors flee on an underground train while Umbrella prepares to wipe out the city. Leon destroys the pursuing monster with a rocket launcher, and the survivors get out as Raccoon City is destroyed.

The ending of Welcome to Raccoon City shows the survivors outrunning both a monster and an official lie. As the city is destroyed, the train is damaged and the mutated Birkin chases them, until Leon kills him with a rocket launcher. Claire, Chris, Jill, Leon and Birkin's young daughter Sherry leave the tunnel alive, even though Umbrella has reported no survivors.

That last detail is the point. In my opinion, the film is setting up a cover-up story rather than a victory, because a company that has already erased a town has every reason to silence the people who saw it happen. Claire opens the film trying to warn Chris about Umbrella, and she closes it as proof that the warning was right.

It could be argued that the rocket launcher finish is the film's most honest moment, since it hands Leon, the rookie, a decisive act on his first night. The weapon is a nod to how the games let a prepared player finish a boss, and it gives the film a payoff that a monster chase on a damaged train needs. Perhaps the better question is what Umbrella does next, which the post credit scene starts to answer.

Compare how the Anderson films close. Resident Evil: Apocalypse also ends with Raccoon City destroyed, but Alice is the one who walks out and the story keeps going with her. Here nobody carries a superpower, so the survivors are a group of ordinary people with one unlikely escape and a company denying they exist. As such, this ending plays closer to a siege film than to the franchise habit of ending on a bigger war.

The cost of the small scale is that Wesker, Ada and Umbrella's plans are left open, and the film earned only $41.9 million worldwide, so no sequel followed. For how this fits the wider story, see the Resident Evil timeline.

Yes, Welcome to Raccoon City has one post credit scene, and it introduces Ada Wong. Wesker wakes up in a body bag and cannot see. A woman gives him sunglasses and introduces herself as Ada Wong.

It reads as a teaser for a follow up, and it shows that Wesker survived the events in the lab. In my opinion, it is a smart small reveal, because it turns a character the film kept in the background into the next hook. Lily Gao plays Ada in this film, and the character's earlier screen appearance was Li Bingbing in Resident Evil: Retribution. Since no sequel was released, the scene remains an open thread.