Do be warned that this article contains major spoilers for the second half of Resident Evil Requiem.
Resident Evil Requiem was all about surviving the Raccoon City trauma, right? That’s why Leon came back. That’s why we got Sherry as a supporting character too. They came out of the Raccoon City outbreak with a lot of mental scarring and it was good to see them heal from it together during the events of Requiem. But the Resident Evil series appears to be completely allergic to even the mere mention of another series protagonist, to the point where it’s almost comical. I am, of course, talking about the one and only Claire Redfield.
Leon and Claire’s stories started together during the events of Resident Evil 2. Both of them explored the RPD and survived Mr X. Yet, it’s not lost on me that Capcom has seen fit to feature Leon three other mainline games, while Claire has been painfully sidelined again, with her most recent chronological appearance being in Resident Evil Revelations 2 — a side game, and also one of the least popular titles in the entire series.
With Resident Evil Requiem taking us back to Raccoon City and attempting to explore Leon’s rookie cop trauma, I was eager to hear some dialogue that would give us an update on what Claire’s been up to, at the very least. I had already accepted that Claire wouldn’t play a major role in Requiem, and while part of me was still holding out for a cameo appearance, I figured we’d at least get some mention of her. After all, she makes up one entire half of Resident Evil 2. She’s the one who bonded with Sherry and rescued her. It makes sense, right?
But no. Save for a charm called Trusted Companion that you can unlock in the Bonuses menu, Claire gets absolutely nothing in Requiem.
When Leon enters the RPD, we get flashbacks of his encounter with Marvin. We hear him and Sherry talk about how they think about the events of Raccoon City every single day. Sherry says she was just a helpless kid back then and I’m over here like, yeah yeah yeah you were a helpless kid and do you remember who saved you from your terrible parents? Apparently not!
From a lore perspective, it makes sense that we haven’t seen much of Claire in the mainline games, especially since they’ve been so focused on the government divisions like the BSAA and the DSO, and Claire is notably very anti-government, and has chosen to work with human rights agency TerraSave to stop bioweapon production and help people. You go girl, that is a just cause. But sidelining her this hard feels criminal, especially given the fact that she’s a Redfield, she’s taken down the Ashfords, and she’s obviously still doing her bit to stop bioterrorism.
The Claire erasure feels particularly egregious, considering that Resident Evil 6 canon has confirmed that Claire and Sherry stayed in close contact after the Raccoon City outbreak, and Sherry even mentioned seeing Claire as her maternal figure. The Claire/Sherry bond is clearly the one we were meant to invest in, while Leon — I love him, don’t get me wrong — was off gallivanting with Ada. So for Resident Evil Requiem to play up the Leon/Sherry dynamic without a single mention of Claire feels especially odd.
Outside of game lore, I’m well aware of why a character like Claire hasn’t been brought back to helm her own mainline entry. It’s the same reason why we haven’t seen Jill as a main protagonist since RE3, and I guess RE5 if you want to count that. Middle-aged female protagonists just aren’t as appealing as young women or rugged men. At this point in the Resident Evil timeline, Claire would probably be well into her 40s and about to push 50, and you just don’t see very many 40-something year-old women as video game protagonists, period.
With the way the story is going and the rumors that Capcom is working on yet another remake of Resident Evil 1, all signs point to Resident Evil 10 shaping up to be a big Chris Redfield game. While I’ve been holding out hope for a Code: Veronica remake with Claire and Chris as dual protagonists at the very least, it seems it’s Claire’s destiny to get benched for the foreseeable future.
All I’m saying is, a badass who voluntarily jumps into an arena with G-Birkin, saying “I’ve got this!”, deserves way better than what Capcom has given her.
Even Leon could never.
