Summary
- Jill Valentine's status as a hero is called into question as she prioritizes her survival over saving others in Resident Evil 3, even allowing her companions to be put at risk.
- Jill's sole focus on destroying Umbrella leads her to seem callous and unfeeling, letting people die in her pursuit and becoming an extremist in The Umbrella Chronicles.
- Despite having immunity to the T-Virus, Jill hasn't used it to save others, potentially leaving the world without a proper cure. She prioritizes bringing down Umbrella over helping people.
The Resident Evil franchise is long-running, and there are a number of characters who appear in more than one entry despite the settings and timelines varying wildly throughout. Jill Valentine is a character who was first introduced back in 1996 in the very first game in the franchise, and she has returned in several notable titles since then.
While Jill is undoubtedly one of the best characters and one of the main heroes of the Resident Evil franchise, having appeared in many different games, she has nevertheless had to engage in her share of unenviable activities in her attempts to survive. Franchises like Resident Evil love to push their characters to their very limits, both physically and morally, and that’s just what has happened over time to Jill.
5 Not Saving More People
Jill is in a tricky situation over the course of every game she appears in throughout the franchise, particularly in Resident Evil 3, which many fans think is her best appearance, and where she is constantly in some sort of race against time. Always with Nemesis right behind her, there are a number of people killed by Nemesis as she merely attempts to survive, despite the hulking monstrosity only wanting her.
While this isn’t Jill’s fault, as Nemesis has been purely designed to wipe out surviving STARS members such as herself, she knows pretty quickly why Nemesis is after her and still sticks around other people, putting their lives at risk throughout the game by letting them be near her. While the end of the game sees her and Carlos managing to escape Raccoon City, she doesn’t find a way to stop the missile strikes coming in to destroy it either, letting Brad, Tyrell, and the rest of the city go down. While Jill can’t really be blamed for most of this, it calls into question her status as a hero, pitching her much more as a simple survivalist throughout. Carlos at least did survive with her, although bizarrely, he's never returned to the franchise.
4 Focusing Solely On Umbrella
Part of Jill’s problem with being considered a true white knight hero is that she is always solely focused on the destruction of Umbrella, at times leading her to seem callous and unfeeling about trying to protect people. In various games over the course of the franchise, she has let people die or failed to save them because her entire goal is about stopping Umbrella, leading to her at times seeming anti-heroic.
For example, in The Umbrella Chronicles, a light gun rail shooter game that told various stories throughout the world of the Resident Evil franchise, Jill is shown along with Chris Redfield targeting a Russian Umbrella facility and destroying everyone inside, wantonly murdering anybody who might have anything to do with the Umbrella Corporation. Jill, over time, moved from being an enemy of Umbrella to an extremist, with their destruction being her only goal.
3 Not Using Her Immunity
While others sought her out, such as Albert Wesker, to use her immunity to the T-Virus to their own advantage, Jill hasn’t thus far in the franchise made use of it. After being infected by Nemesis with the virus in Resident Evil 3, Jill would have been lost if not saved by Carlos Oliviera, who got her a cure and gave it to her. Having this in her bloodstream, Jill could be the key to saving many others, but hasn’t done so.
If Jill really wanted to save people, instead of just wanting to bring down Umbrella, she could have allowed others to test her blood and try to formulate a cure since the only other ones within Raccoon City were destroyed at the end of Resident Evil 3. Unfortunately, she hasn’t done so, not yet anyway, and the world remains without another option for a proper cure for the virus. Jill may be one of the best playable characters in the franchise, but she still isn't always entirely heroic.
2 Nearly Killing Alice
Jill Valentine isn’t exactly the star of the Resident Evil movies, with the original character Alice having been created to lead those projects, but Jill appears, played by Sienna Guillory, in three of the films. At first, she has her original look from the third game almost exactly, and despite playing second fiddle to Alice, she has a great role as a heroic character.
However, her role changes in her later appearances, and by Resident Evil: Retribution, Jill has been taken over and controlled by Umbrella and the Red Queen. Admittedly, none of what happens in this film was Jill’s fault, but nevertheless, she does attempt to kill Alice and takes charge of Umbrella agents, whom she commands to kill everybody, including all of her former friends. Jill's appearances in later Resident Evil movies like Death Island may not be perfect, but they certainly improved upon the earlier franchise's treatment of her.
1 Everything Under Umbrella’s Control
The clear worst things that Jill ever did all have asterisks beside them because she wasn’t able to control herself through any of it. After supposedly being killed, Jill was brainwashed through experimentation by Albert Wesker, forcing her to be loyal to him and engaging in some truly horrific crimes at their behest.
It is some comfort to fans that Jill never turned to the evil of her own will and didn't have her best look at all in this entry. In fact, the redesigned Jill that appeared in Resident Evil 5 is something that helped halt the success of the franchise, angering many fans and critics alike, as well as being one of the hardest games in the franchise. Under mind control, Jill infected innocents with the Uroboros Virus and was responsible, if indirectly, for a number of deaths. Jill is a generally heroic character who sought only to bring down Umbrella, but in her time between games and movies, she’s pulled off a surprising number of unheroic actions.