Resident Evil 4 remake ending explained

The Resident Evil 4 remake makes some changes to the ending of the original. Here’s what it means for the series going forward – Major spoilers from here!

The original Resident Evil 4 ended like most of the other games in the franchise. The bad guy mutates into a blobby monster, the hero battles them until they’re tossed a rocket launcher, which they fire at the beast while making some cheesy quip such as “Game Over.”

All this happens as it should in the remake of Resident Evil 4 but this time, the game makes more of an effort to tease what’s next in the series, as well as connecting nicely to the earlier entries. Here’s everything that happens at the end of the Resident Evil 4 remake.

Sayonara, Saddler

Just like in the original Resident Evil 4, the remake ends with Leon Kennedy rescuing both Ashley Graham (the President’s daughter) and his on/off love interest frenemy Ada Wong from Osmund Saddler, the leader of the Los Illuminados cult. Leon also manages to rid himself and Ashley of their own infection before confronting the villain.

After doing major damage to Saddler’s mutated form, Ada throws Leon a rocket launcher and he delivers the villain one final and fatal blow. This kills Saddler’s master Plaga parasite and effectively frees the Ganados from his control, but many die as a result. Although, this fate may be preferable to being his murderous thralls.

This time, rather than simply putting a gun to his head and demanding he hand over the virus sample, Ada offers Leon a spot on her helicopter and a place at her side. He declines and Ada gives him the keys to her jetski after wishing him well – but takes the Las Plasgas sample as this was her true objective all along. Leon and Ashley escape using the jetski and Ada notices them make it to safety from the window of her chopper.

Presumably, Leon and Ashley then return home and Leon completes ‘The Kennedy Report’ about the incident, which Chris Redfield mentions in RE5.

A change of heart

Ada then has a video call with series villain Albert Wesker, who had ordered her (and Jack Krauser) to infiltrate Saddler’s cult and steal a sample of the virus/parasites. By this point in the Resident Evil timeline, Wesker has already helped Ada survive the events of Racoon City, betrayed the Umbrella Corporation, and is working with their equally shady rival Tricell. Due to the events of Resident Evil: Code Veronica, the protagonists know Wesker is alive and is associated with Ada. Leon even criticizes her for this in the original RE4, but the dialog is different in the remake.

Wesker then tells Ada of his plan to murder billions of people, using Las Plagas as part of his Uroboros project along with the T-Virus. Horrified by her employer’s intentions, Ada hangs up on the sunglasses-wearing psycho and forces the helicopter pilot to fly to a new destination at gunpoint. In the original game, Ada’s betrayal of Wesker happened off-screen, but in the remake, we see it play out before the credits.

What happens next?

In Resident Evil 5, we learn that Ada instead gave the sample to ‘The Agency’, implied to be the US government who originally hired her, and enticed Wesker and William Birkin from RE2 to betray Umbrella. However, Wesker has triple-crossed them for Tricell. Meaning Ada has actually stayed loyal to her original employers by refusing to go along with Wesker’s plan.

Although in RE5, Wesker is given a Las Plagas sample by a former Umbrella researcher called Ricardo Irving. As the RE3 remake implied, the parasites may be an ingredient of the T-Virus, meaning Irving and Umbrella had access to it from the start. Wesker then uses this to infect the residents of an African village. RE4’s Luis Sera is also a former researcher for Umbrella in the RE4 remake, creating even more ties between the parasites and the virus. This also explains why both have similar mutagenic properties such as making their hosts produce massive eyeballs from their limbs!

Wesker creates his Uroboros super virus in RE5 but he is eventually stopped and killed by Chris Redfield, Sheva Alomar, and Jill Valentine at the end of that game.

For more Resident Evil 4 content, check out the following guides below:

RE4 ending explained | Where to find the Shotgun | Where to find the Golden Egg | Can you save the dog? | Separate Ways | The Mercenaries | Changing costume | How Spinels work | Achievements & Trophies | Remake differences | Resident Evil 4 review | Resident Evil 5 remake | Code Veronica remake