I played about three hours of Resident Evil Requiem earlier this month, and I could not shake the feeling that I know where the rest of the game is going to go when it launches next month. Though I have not seen enough of the ninth entry in Capcom’s long-running horror series to be sure, I’ve got a theory, and it’s one that some fans have independently come to as well after combing through the trailers. There’s nothing in the time I played that outright confirms this is the way things are going to go, but there are clues that I’ve started latching onto. If you don’t want your experience of Requiem to be influenced even by speculation about where the story might go, turn back now.
I think Leon Scott Kennedy, one of Resident Evil’s long-time protagonists, is going to be dead by the end of Resident Evil Requiem. Now, I know what you’re thinking. “Capcom would never kill one of Resident Evil’s recurring leads.” And yeah, we are in uncharted territory. Take my hand and follow me down this dark passageway toward the worst-case scenario.
In my time playing Requiem, I learned something that astute fans have already picked up on: Leon has some kind of deadly infection. He’s looking for a cure, which is why he ends up in the Rhodes Hill Chronic Care Center where his Requiem co-lead Grace Ashcroft has been taken. The infection manifests in a gnarly wound on his neck, but whatever’s going on, he still has time before he turns. How much time? That’s unclear right now. But that infection is only half the reason I think Leon is going to be pushing daisies by the end of Requiem.
The game’s name, Requiem, has a few different meanings, both in and out of the context of the game. A requiem, as the dictionary describes it, is a “mass for the dead,” or some kind of musical tribute to the dead. Yes, this could be in reference to Grace’s mother Alyssa Ashcroft, whose death is an inciting incident in the story, but it also has a very specific meaning attached to it that links Leon and Grace. Early on in the section I played, Leon and Grace meet, and the ex-Raccoon City cop gives Grace a powerful revolver named Requiem. Though I only had one bullet for it in Grace’s resource-scarce segment, it did blow a hole right through a zombie’s head, so thank you, Leon, for saving my ass with your gift of foresight. However, this moment could also be seen as a literal passing of the torch (or gun) to a new generation of Resident Evil heroes, and that’s something Capcom has been pretty upfront about in its marketing.
Two generations of survival. Grace Ashcroft and Leon S. Kennedy face unimaginable terrors in Resident Evil Requiem.
🌿https://t.co/JBHl3u25qT pic.twitter.com/NrcAVXDNTf
— Resident Evil (@RE_Games) December 12, 2025
Grace’s playstyle is defined by her inexperience. A gun that wrecks shop in Leon’s hand barely harms a zombie when Grace is using it. This is her origin story, and while she and Leon might be separated for large parts of the game, she has his gun, whose name literally means a tribute to the dead, on her at all times. From a thematic standpoint, Leon entrusts something to her, and parts from her fully realizing he may never see her or the revolver again. I would not be surprised if Requiem ended with Leon doing something to save Grace, ensuring she gets out of this whole outbreak alive and earning himself a big goddamn hero’s sacrifice, knowing that he was on borrowed time anyway. Grace escapes, but still has the Requiem revolver in hand, and uses it as a tribute to her fallen comrade in future cases. See? It all comes full circle.
That’s all speculation, but if Requiem is really meant to be a generational shift for Resident Evil, it would make a lot of sense for Capcom to sell that in the most definitive way possible. But hey, characters like Leon, Chris, and Jill have gotten through worse, so I also wouldn’t be surprised if he manages to squeeze his way out of this problem, too. We’ll find out for sure when Resident Evil Requiem launches on February 27.
