The events of this second television adaptation of the franchise do take place in its very own imaginative universe while simultaneously having the plotline of the video game series on display as its premise.
There is no denying that Andrew Dabb’s Resident Evil is primarily based on the Capcom video game series. Having said that, the iconic Albert Wesker, a character who is canonically dead in the game version, makes a triumphant return in the Netflix adaptation of the franchise.
Wesker made his debut in the 1996 video game as the commanding commander of the S.T.A.R.S. unit, assisting the players with useful instructions and leaving supplies for them. He is known with his distinctive slicked-back haircut and let us not forget those deep black shades.
Wesker is obviously revealed to be working for the Umbrella Corporation later, and from that point until his final appearance in Resident Evil 5, one has seen the character scheme, swap sides, and have selfish goals. In relation to the new television series, Lance Reddick, a renowned actor, naturally gives the character a twist.
In reality, Dabb’s most recent series is divided into two universes. In one, Wesker moves to New Raccoon City with his identical teenage daughters Jade and Billie, and the two ultimately learn about their father’s troubled background and the truth about Umbrella Corporation.
The other, which takes place fourteen years in the future and centres on Jade’s struggle against an apocalyptic world caused by Umbrella’s very own activities, is set in that time period.
This takes us to the primary subject of today’s video, in which we will examine the character Albert Wesker’s genesis. It will be an interesting in-depth examination of the character from the television show, the live-action movie, and the video game. You had best be prepared for this!
Albert Wesker – Darkest Backstory
To be honest, not much is known about Wesker’s early life, especially his childhood, and if you ask us, we are pretty sure that Albert Wesker is not even his actual name. But what is known is that he was taken away from his parents as a child by men of Dr. Oswell Spencer and made to be a part of the Eugenics project. For those of you who are wondering what this program was, the purpose of the project was to produce a cream of the crop group of gifted humans altered with the Progenitor Virus.
Now, every child who participated in the program was named Wesker and was brought up with the very beliefs of Dr. Spencer that human beings are in dire requirement of order, deliverance and rebirth. No wonder, the Wesker in concern attracted obvious amounts of attention amongst the other Weskers for his unswerving viewpoints and soon made it to university education where he became a recipient of the highest degree in Virology at the tender age of 17.
In due course, Wesker was hired by Umbrella Pharmaceuticals and the goal was to indoctrinate him as well as the others so he was placed at the Umbrella Executive Training Center to boost the company’s viral weapons research. While the entire batch which included him was heavily disapproved for primarily being dull and lacking lustre, Wesker and the then 16-year old Dr. William Birkin were exceptions.
Soon, the duo caught the attention of Dr. James Marcus, who took a particular interest in Wesker but post a string of covered-up scandals, the training school was eventually shut down. As for Wesker and Birkin, they were relocated to the Arklay Laboratory and given the post of senior researchers. Please know that the transfer was more like a discreet reward to the duo for being able to lay their hands on a specimen of Marcus’ completed T-virus strain.
At the time when Wesker arrived at the Arklay facility, Umbrella was thinking of developing viral weaponry based on the Ebola virus. Wesker along with Birkin gained success in interlacing genes from Ebola in to the pilfered specimen of the T-virus strain thereby coming up with a different virus, one that augmented the possibilities of human beings outliving the contamination and becoming zombies.
Very soon, Umbrella began to put pressure on the Arklay researchers to bring forward newer research. Next, there came a time when Dr. Spencer commanded that Dr. Marcus be gunned down and his body be dumped away. Wesker and Birkin were a part of Marcus’ assassination so as to retrieve ten years of research data that he was in possession of. The following step in the T-virus weaponry was supposed to be through the Tyrant Project but it had to be stalled for a while.
Call it a band-aid solution, the duo was able to acquire an intelligent Bio Organic Weapon parasite genetically created by Umbrella Europe. We are talking about the parasite Nemesis Alpha, which was implanted within the body of a human test subject, Lisa Trevor with the sole purpose of examining it.
However, the fact that Trevor was previously subjected to a number of biological experiments resulted in her possessing a unique physiology and led to the parasite getting rejected by Trevor’s immune system and eventually killed. This is precisely what marked the discovery of the G-virus thereby leading its way to the ensuing G-virus project. With Birkin transferred to NEST, Wesker left the laboratory and bounced around a bit before joining the US Army, which was followed by his brief stint as the commanding officer of the Alpha team of the S.T.A.R.S. unit.
We are specifically talking about him working as a double agent for Umbrella and receiving orders from his superiors to tempt the S.T.A.R.S. into the Spencer mansion and have his unit sacrificed to the mutants so as to collect combat data. Wesker is later seen to consider the entire events at the Spencer Mansion as some kind of a cover but for his own plans; he wanted to have the Bio Organic Weapon embryo samples for himself.
Anyway, his real intentions are figured out by his former S.T.A.R.S. subordinates Chris Redfield and his partner Jill Valentine but post letting loose the Tyrant monster, Wesker is seemingly killed. Of course, it is disclosed by a much alive Wesker later that his motive was to sell the Tyrant to a rival company of Umbrella in exchange for a higher position in the company but his plan was eventually crumbled post the Tyrant getting destroyed by his previous S.T.A.R.S. members.
As for Wesker surviving his seeming death, he had jabbed himself with a trial variant of the T-virus, which was provided by none other than Birkin. While this did revive Wesker giving superhuman powers in terms of strength, speed as well as regenerative abilities, everything came at the cost of his humanity.
Mind-Blowing Story Of Albert Wesker From The Movies
Portrayed by the Irish actor, Jason O’Mara, the character of Albert Wesker first appeared in Russell Mulcahy’s 2007 action horror flick, Resident Evil: Extinction. Unlike his character being a turncoat senior level Umbrella researcher in the video games, here, he is primarily seen as the Chairman of the Umbrella Corporation, mostly running the company’s operations backstage and even conducting regular meetings with his fellow Umbrella executives through holographic technology while sitting in Tokyo.
You would be surprised to know that the character of Wesker was not really planned to be there in this film in the first place. Anyway, Canadian actor Shawn Roberts took over the Wesker character in Paul W. S. Anderson’s 2010 action horror flick, Resident Evil: Afterlife, serving as the central antagonist.
Here, Wesker is disclosed to have used the T-virus on himself in order to possess superhuman powers like strength, speed and even regenerative abilities. To be honest, he has the same glowing reptilian red eyes and even dons the identical all-black look as his game counterpart. Resident Evil fans will easily be able to figure out that the fight sequence with Wesker, Chris and Claire Redfield in the movie is a ditto scene by scene copy of the fight scene in Resident Evil 5 involving Wesker, Chris and Sheva Alomar.
Shawn Roberts reappears as Wesker in Anderson’s 2012 action horror flick, Resident Evil: Retribution, one that served as a sequel to Afterlife. Wesker is seen enacting a new plan by pretending not to be a part of Umbrella anymore and sending his top agent, Ada Wong, to save a captured Alice from an underwater Russian Umbrella facility operated by the Red Queen, who apparently has also taken control over the whole of Umbrella.
While in reality, he had access to the underwater base himself, Wesker wanted to set the impression that he was making Wong infiltrate the base and rescue Alice. The movie ends with Wesker finally meeting Alice face to face and inoculating her with the T-virus, a watered-down version to be more precise, and lying to her on her face stating that her powers are back.
Roberts reprises his role as Wesker in Anderson’s 2016 action horror movie, Resident Evil: The Final Chapter, the final instalment in the original film series. Wesker proves himself to be a mastermind, having easily fooled Alice and mass-murdering everyone at the White House.
He is seen heading to the Hive to enact the final part of his global scale T-virus outbreak plan but unbeknownst to him, Red Queen who has been nothing but a pawn in Wesker’s plan so far switches allegiance and informs Alice about the anti-virus. The final confrontation in the Hive has Alicia Marcus firing Wesker and ultimately leading the Red Queen to crush the right leg of Wesker using a blast door thereby trapping him. No points for guessing that the character bleeds to his death!
What Makes Albert Wesker So Powerful?
It is important that you know that prior to Wesker jabbing himself with the T-virus, he was a pro at martial arts. And now, to speak of his superhuman physical traits post the virus injection, they certainly need a mention; there’s his enhanced strength, speed, reflexes, agility, endurance, regenerative skills as well as his near-invulnerability – all of these making him an advanced fighter.
In case, we have not mentioned his accelerated vision before, this ability helps him evade bullet shots literally at a point blank range and effortlessly may we add? Covering great distances in shorter time periods and let’s say at a speed that is faster than a normal human brain can calculate, that’s Wesker for you literally looking like he is almost teleporting.
There are times when he is seen raising a grown-up human being from the very ground with just one hand. So, it is only fair to say that he is not really in the need of any weapons during the fight scenes. But just so you know, he is usually seen keeping what looks like a handgun holstered most of the times.
Of course, there is no denying that the T-virus has been his greatest power, but let’s not disregard the sole fact that it has also acted out as his biggest weakness. We are stressing on the part where it usually fights him to gain control. This is what leads Wesker to activate his cannibal mode at times. For instance, there is this one very famous fight of him with Chris, Alice and Claire where his mouth is shown to expand and have mandible-like tentacles emerging out of it. Mind you, that scene is still capable of haunting you to this very day.
Albert Wesker In Resident Evil On Netflix
Speaking of Andrew Dabb’s Resident Evil for Netflix, it is finally disclosed over the course of the series that the real Albert Wesker died in the year 2009 post getting blown up by a rocket launcher and completely burnt in a volcano, a similar thing that is shown in the video game series.
So, the Albert that we meet, as in the father of the twins Jade and Billie, happens to be a clone of the original Albert. Speaking of the original Albert, he had created the clones to aid him with his research but having said that, of course, he did not even have the slightest intention of waiting for his clones to grow up naturally.
As a result, he boosted their growth – we are talking about clones turning from a baby to a twenty-year-old in six months. It goes without saying that this speedy acceleration of cells came with its consequences. Dr. Albert Wesker, as the father of the sister duo, eventually became sick, we are stressing on him suffering from degenerative aging issues. This is why, he created the twins, and started using the blood of his very daughters as the cure to his illness.
The main plot of the series is divided into two timeframes. One of the timelines has Dr. Albert Wesker, who is employed at the Umbrella Corporation as the head scientist, moving in to the New Raccoon City with his twin teenage daughters Jade and Billie, and the duo eventually discovering the dark past of their father along with the secrets of the Umbrella Corporation. The other timeline is set fourteen years into the future and revolves around an adult Jade’s fight against an apocalyptic world, one that happens to be a result of Umbrella’s very own actions.
What Do We Think Of Albert Wesker?
Conclusively, one of the most interesting and iconic villains of the Resident Evil franchise, it is true that his final demise in the video game series did mark a visible change in the following installments. There won’t be another Albert Wesker – that is for sure and no matter how many new adaptations we have, it is difficult to have the same flavour of the original Capcom video game character intact.