Resident Evil Requiem Is A Perfect Resident Evil Game, But They Did This Fan-Favorite Way Too Dirty

Resident Evil Requiem is a stunning horror experience, and that much should be clear by now. From its empowering and cathartic action-combat facilitated by Leon Kennedy to its slower, more tense passages built around Grace Ashcroft, Resident Evil Requiem is a wonderful victory lap for the storied franchise, arriving just in time for its 30th anniversary.

Spoilers ahead for Resident Evil Requiem

As a longtime Resident Evil fan, Resident Evil Requiem is particularly satisfying for me. Make no mistake, Requiem doesn’t have MCU levels of references, Easter eggs, or callbacks, but it definitely doesn’t shy away from fan service. You could argue that the very presence of Leon Kennedy, a protagonist who has come to define the Resident Evil brand, is fan service in and of itself. Other surprises, like the return to the Raccoon City Police Department or the reprisal of the Tyrant mutant, are kept from feeling like nostalgia bait by not overstaying their welcome: they play the role they need to play and don’t take center stage. It seems like this touch-and-go philosophy was applied to a certain third-act cameo as well, and while I still think this moment is effective, perhaps its transient, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it nature made it a bit of an anticlimax.

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Resident Evil Requiem’s HUNK Showdown Is an Abrupt End for the Character

Famous mercenary and Umbrella operative HUNK, whose title has been speculated to stand for “human unit, never killed,” appears in Resident Evil Requiem’s final act. It’s a massive surprise, as the character, who has been playable in several Resident Evil games and has a legacy of being overpowered, ambushes Leon when he least expects it. This leads to a hatchet battle between the two, which is highly reminiscent of the Krauser knife fight in Resident Evil 4.

There has been some debate about whether this assailant is actually HUNK; I even thought it may have been the Umbrella Corps protagonist at first. But certain HUNK-specific details, like the iconic finger-waggling movements, give him away.

Fit the 9 games into the grid.

Naturally, Leon overcomes HUNK and emerges victorious, and the epic battle feels like it’s over before it even begins. The relative ease with which Leon dispatches HUNK is rather ironic since, when both characters were introduced in Resident Evil 2, HUNK was meant to serve as a cathartic power fantasy, his game mode only available after you’ve struggled for safety and resources in the main story. Back then, Leon was a fledgling compared to HUNK; now, Leon can defeat him in a few minutes of single combat. In this sense, the encounter in Requiem serves to remind audiences how much Leon has grown since 1998.

But don’t we already know that? Resident Evil 4 established him as a globe-trotting, nigh-superhuman special operative, and he’s basically Kratos in RE Requiem. HUNK, on the other hand, has been largely absent from the franchise for quite some time, and it feels like his swift death at the business end of Leon’s hatchet is a little unearned. At the very least, HUNK should have posed a greater threat to Leon, perhaps even acting as one of Resident Evil’s stalker enemies, before meeting his demise.

Does HUNK Really Die in Resident Evil Requiem?

We should touch on the elephant in the room: if you return to the location of the hatchet fight, HUNK’s body will have disappeared. Bodies seem to persist in the game world otherwise, so this has been interpreted as proof of HUNK’s survival. He is renowned for his ability to survive anything, after all.

I think that this uncertainty may have been Capcom’s plan. There’s just enough ambiguity here that HUNK’s return in future Resident Evil games wouldn’t be completely unrealistic, but he doesn’t have to come back either. Modern Resident Evil is defined by flexibility and experimentation, and not ruling anything out when it comes to a character like HUNK seems consistent with that policy—even if a little dirty.