Even though the Resident Evil video game franchise has been quite successful, Netflix has decided not to continue the series. The sitcom featuring Ella Balinska, Paola Nez, Lance Reddick, and Adeline Rudolph among others has been terminated by the streaming service after only one season. While the survival horror video game series premiered in 1996 and continues to do gangbusters with its sequels, the television adaptation, which followed two split timelines during an outbreak of a deadly virus, received mixed reviews from fans and critics alike and did not seem to live up to its legacy. The series began a little over a month ago and had a decent start, debuting at #2 on Netflix’s “most-watched” list, but it failed to keep fans engaged enough to binge it or watch more episodes.
On Rotten Tomatoes, the series has a 22% audience score, and on Metacritic, fans have been even more brutal by giving it a 1.4 user rating, therefore the reception from fans and mainstream audiences was largely unfavourable. The series didn’t do well with critics, either. The “tedious” Wesker family drama and bad vocabulary are only two of the reasons why Ross Bonaime called the show “a biohazard that should be avoided.” Of course, this isn’t the first time the Resident Evil franchise has been translated into another medium. The six-part film series starring Milla Jovovich (Monster Hunter) also wasn’t well received, and in 2018, Screen Gems released Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City, directed by Johannes Roberts (47 Meters Down) and starring Kaya Scodelario (The Maze Runner) as Claire Redfield, Robbie Amell (Upload), and Hannah John-Kamen (Ant-Man and the Wasp) as fan-favourite Jill Valentine.
Even though its audience had a higher approval rating than the critics (65% vs. 30%), the science fiction horror picture was not a box office success. Still, this isn’t the end of the Resident Evil series on the streaming service. The 2021 anime series Resident Evil: Infinite Darkness follows protagonists Claire and Leon as they battle zombie hordes in the early 2000s. Netflix has been mum about the future of the animated series up until this point.
Recent interviews with Lance Reddick, who plays series villain Albert Wesker, have shown his excitement at joining the cast of a property with such a large and dedicated global audience. In its entirety, the original season of Resident Evil is available on Netflix.