Odds are that if you come across any social media content involving “Resident Evil,” whether it be cosplay, fancams, memes, or even fitness content, it will reverently feature tight-shirted poster boy Leon S. Kennedy in some capacity — namely, his “Resident Evil 4” iteration: shoulder-holstered and leather-jacketed.
Leon, the poster child of the “Resident Evil” franchise, has recently ascended to icon status among fans on social media. Knowing only this about Leon, I plumbed the depths of his deceptively peculiar character prior to his return in last Friday’s “Resident Evil Requiem,” and I couldn’t have been less prepared for the degree to which I found myself enamored.
On paper, Leon shares similarities with other conventionally masculine protagonists in the zeitgeist, defying the archetypal model of a hero for the Generation Z palate. But in the context of the outlandishness and frequent silliness of “Resident Evil,” Leon is far more realistic than others of that archetype. Per UCLA’s latest Teens & Screens survey, that’s a big contender for why Leon has resonated in this way with Gen Z — its desire for empathetic male heroes. Leon may as well be the “edgier” side of the “kindness is the real punk rock” phenomenon inspired by last summer’s “Superman.”
Leon is first introduced in “Resident Evil 2” as the archetypal rookie cop: clean-cut and eager to do good. His first day on the job coincides with a zombie-like virus outbreak in Raccoon City, which the player navigates through Leon’s eyes. He soon finds that Raccoon is a modern-day company town for the Umbrella Corporation, the evil residents behind said virus, a staple of the series.
When I played through “Resident Evil 2’s” remake for the first time, I was expecting to find in Leon a character strongly defined enough to merit both his status as a mascot for this flagship gaming franchise, as well as the affection for him I’d seen online. Instead, I found myself surprised by how little I was charmed by Leon, who didn’t come across as a complete character to me.
Leon is the good-est of Samaritans and a staunch defender of human life — qualities inherent to the “golden boy” trope that are hard to fault. But, even as boys of gold go, I found “Resident Evil 2’s” Leon to be overly naive and, at times, actively oblivious, especially in his ostensibly romantic friction with Ada Wong, a mercenary with pendulous morality. Leon survives the outbreak, but despite his best efforts, most of Raccoon City doesn’t. Ada, too, is presumed dead, but returns in future installments to harangue him.
In the face of what seemed like the end of days for “Resident Evil 2’s” characters, Leon’s reaction — and, by extension, his character at large — made little sense. Capcom, the developers behind “Resident Evil,” had him wearing too many hats in service of the story at the cost of being a compelling character. By the end of “Resident Evil 2,” Leon had witnessed dozens of deaths, dispatched the same number of zombies, and been chased around his precinct by a fedora-wearing mutant behemoth. And yet, when the truth of Umbrella’s viral experiments was exposited to him, Leon’s reaction was more wowed than appalled, jauntily exclaiming: “That explains the horrible things I’ve seen!” This reaction simply doesn’t line up.
The remake of “Resident Evil 4,” set six years later, shifted gameplay paradigms with haste, much to Leon’s benefit. This story is far less restrained, allowing the truth of his character to begin to shine through. “Resident Evil 4” Leon was the Leon I had envisioned coming into the series, the one that’s picked up virality with fans and nonfans to such a degree that I, a non-TikTok user, caught wind of it.
“Resident Evil 4’s” Leon is a vision of complete control in gameplay. Confronted by a medieval hamlet of mutated cultists, his response is to spin-kick first, backflip second, and unleash deadpan quips that are baffling in both content and context. “I’ll give you a holy body,” he grimaces, just before impaling his target. The compassionate Leon of “Resident Evil 2” remains, of course, most notably when he rescues a wolf from a bear trap. His dopier side is there too: When the wolf returns to save him from a massive mutant, he exclaims, “It’s that dog!”
“Resident Evil 4’s” tone serves this dopiness well. These bits of character, manifested as the reactions of a compassionate Boy Scout to his ludicrous circumstances, are integrated frequently enough to ingratiate the fanbase to it. His reaction to a church bell beckoning the mutated villagers away and saving his life is a predictably intense, earnest, “Where’s everyone going? Bingo?” No single component better exemplifies the evolution of how we have perceived Leon as the reaction to this line, which has grown from abject derision to nothing short of adoration in the years since the initial release.
Leon’s successful completion of his mission — to rescue the president’s kidnapped daughter Ashley — allows him to make amends for Raccoon City’s losses and his self-perceived failure, leaving him where we pick up in “Requiem,” give or take two decades.
“Resident Evil 6,” the last mainline entry to feature Leon prior to “Requiem,” doesn’t do much to further Leon’s character, despite doing far too much of everything else.
Opening “Resident Evil 4” off the heels of Raccoon City allowed it to pose questions of Leon’s character to the player. How exactly would a slightly obtuse Boy Scout react, half a decade on, from living through the harrowing events of Raccoon City? What kind of survivor’s guilt manifests in a man driven by the fundamental urge to help anyone and everyone in need? And as I moved through RE4, I began to look past the center-stage tight pants and came to understand the enduring fervor around Leon. His more upfront, outrageous attributes — see: roundhouse kicks — are tempered by an interiority, one that has both defined his arc and speaks to his ever-growing popularity.
I find Leon’s duality bizarre yet captivating. On one hand, Leon is an unflagging Samaritan whose naivety puts the “boy” in Boy Scout, and on the other, an unflinching human weapon whose borderline sociopathically-timed comedy would be bad stand-up if not for the sole reason that he is more often found spinning than standing — see: roundhouse kicks. Together, these sides personify the unabashed, and perhaps unexamined, empathy that is the driving force to his actions, unempathetic though they can appear. A pastiche of the one-man-army, he operates with all the dopey bravado of the archetype, but the sensitivity and compassion at his core bring beat to his bosom. When we examine the too-silly-to-be-earnest parts of Leon as just that, the rest of him makes sense. The quips are walls, and the kicks are kicks.
To forego mentioning Leon’s physical appearance would be to compliment the Mona Lisa solely based on Da Vinci’s paint water. Just as the sun shall rise until it does not, so it is that Leon Kennedy is widely considered one of the medium’s great Adonises. Science has reached a consensus: Both are hot. His fringe defies convention, but one does not expect Leon to obey convention — see: roundhouse kicks. The rest of him is, I concede, conventionally attractive, but the 24-inch arms and 6-inch waist are the point. As is so infrequent in the action genre, he possesses a deep-rooted inner purity that matches his external Michelangelesque beauty.
It’s this aggregate that has seen the hype around his return in “Requiem” — only his fourth mainline appearance — reach a fever pitch. The reveal was kept a surprise until relatively late in the marketing phase, when he was shown off in all his stubbly 51-year-old glory. The blonde fringe is more silver than dirty, and he’s traded his physics-defying knife for an axe — all indicators of a less spry, more jaded Leon. But nowhere is this more apparent than in a gameplay sneak peek, in which he grimly watches a zombified doctor apply a chainsaw to a nurse before growling, “I think I want a second opinion.” While we can’t draw any conclusions, Capcom has shown enough of Leon’s older, gruffer appearance for fans to wonder if this might be his swan song — if the titular requiem is Leon’s. I know, despite my newness to the franchise, that I speak for those fans when I say I hope “Requiem” doesn’t mark Leon’s last time at bat.
I doubt Capcom knew that it was swinging for the fences when it first introduced Leon 28 years ago, but the result is certain: Somehow, it spin-kicked a home run — one that endures to this day. Now, maybe more than ever, the people need Leon Kennedy.
