Resident Evil Reboot Villain Explained: Who Is Lisa Trevor? (Powers & Origin)

Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City is set to reboot the franchise’s movie adaptations, with early images suggesting a focus on the villain Lisa Trevor. The movie will have no connection to the Milla Jovovich films. Instead, it will retell the story of the first two Resident Evil games, revisiting the origin of the series and working closely with Capcom to get it right.

The first Resident Evil game sees the S.T.A.R.S. Alpha Team taking shelter in an abandoned mansion on the outskirts of a Midwestern town: Raccoon City. The team, including Chris Redfield (Robbie Amell), Jill Valentine (Hannah John-Kamen), and Albert Wesker (Tom Hopper), are ostensibly searching for the Bravo Team who had come to town to investigate a series of strange murders. However, as they discover the mansion’s hidden secrets and ties to the Umbrella Corporation, they are plagued by zombies infected with the T-Virus, a monstrous Tyrant, and the peculiar figure of Lisa Trevor.

Lisa Trevor (Marina Mazepa) never appeared in any of the previous Resident Evil movies, which focused more on action than horror (the character is not to be confused with Lisa Addison from Resident Evil [2002]). Lisa Trevor’s disturbing history and appearance make it clear that Resident Evil Welcome to Raccoon City will be leaning into the franchise’s horror elements. Writer and director Johannes Roberts has stated that the character of Lisa Trevor always fascinated him and will play a pivotal role in his movie.

Lisa Trevor’s Backstory In The Resident Evil Games

Lisa Trevor only appeared in the first Resident Evil game, which is set in 1998. Her father, George Trevor, was an architect hired to build the Spencer Mansion in the 1960s for Ozwell Spencer, the head of the Umbrella Corporation. The mansion concealed a secret hidden lab that specialized in experimenting on viruses and upon the mansion’s completion in 1967, concerned that George would reveal his secrets, Spencer took a lesson from the pharaohs and imprisoned the architect within Spencer Mansion.

To cover his tracks entirely, Spencer also had George’s wife, Jessica, and their daughter, Lisa Trevor, kidnapped and used as test subjects for the progenitor virus they were working with. Jessica was not a useful test subject to the Umbrella Corporation and was killed. Lisa, however, survived the viruses administered to her, albeit with negative physical and mental effects. In an effort to keep her calm, Umbrella presented Lisa with an impersonator of her mother but she became convinced that the imposter had stolen her mother’s face and therefore removed it, sewing it to her own body so she could later return it to her mother. After years of experimentation and originating several viruses for the Umbrella Corporation, including the G-virus, they decided to execute her with little success. Since then she has haunted the estate’s grounds and tunnels in search of her mother.

Lisa Trevor’s Resident Evil Powers Explained

Lisa Trevor’s body adapted to years of viral experimentation from the Umbrella Corporation and she slowly began to regain some of her sanity. As the viruses mutated within her, they gave her certain powers that make her a formidable foe, both for the Umbrella Corporation and for the S.T.A.R.S. team members. She has extreme healing and regenerative abilities that make her effectively bullet-proof and enabled her to survive an attempt at throwing herself to her death, and it seems that only explosions can have any real effect on her.

As well as healing power that works extremely quickly, Lisa Trevor has superstrength and increased stamina. While she typically uses the stocks around her wrists as a simple bludgeoning weapon that can, with her strength, easily be lethal, one late-game moment sees her express a final power. Whether through a spontaneous mutation or purely in revealing something that was always there, Lisa Trevor sprouts multiple tentacles from her body which she uses as an additional mode of attack.

Lisa Trevor’s Possible Role In The Resident Evil Reboot

While Lisa Trevor is only one of several villains in the original Resident Evil, it seems likely that her character and backstory will play a large part in Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City. While her appearance and powers would make her an easy figure to include as a simple monster, it seems that the movie will work to include her horrific backstory as a way to highlight how monstrous the Umbrella Corporation itself is. Including her final showdown from the original Resident Evil with Albert Wesker, who is revealed to be a double agent working for the Umbrella corporation, could help to cement the fact that Lisa is as much a victim as an antagonist.

As the movie will combine the events of the first two video games, which take place months apart, with the first occurring within the mansion and the second in Raccoon City itself, it is unclear exactly how Lisa’s narrative might span the full events of the film. However, Roberts has indicated that there will be a connection between Lisa Trevor and Claire Redfield centered around the orphanage where the latter was raised. The movie might double down on Lisa’s connections to other characters as the cast includes Annette (Janet Porter) and Sherry Birkin (Holly de Barros), characters from Resident Evil 2, who are the wife and daughter of William Birkin (Neal McDonough), a scientist who experimented on Lisa alongside Albert Wesker.

How Resident Evil’s Reboot Has Changed Lisa Trevor

The image of Lisa Trevor that has been released for Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City looks to be a faithful recreation of the character from the original Resident Evil video game. This tracks with Johannes Roberts’ assertion to fans that they worked hand-in-hand with Capcom to create a faithful adaptation of the games. It seems probable that Lisa’s story will be fully explored while remaining largely unchanged, aside from potentially updating aspects of it to be more appropriate for a 2021 audience.

Speaking to IGN, Roberts highlighted that he wanted Lisa Trevor to “be a three-dimensional character, not just some creepy specter” and that “she’s terrifying but also tragic.” At the same time, he also emphasized that though they wanted to remain faithful to the originals, they wanted to go beyond purely making the adaptation a shot-for-shot remake of the games. If he has achieved his goal, then long-time fans of the Resident Evil franchise can look forward to a movie that honors the spirit of the games while still giving something new in Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City.

About The Author

Faefyx Collington
(488 Articles Published)

Faefyx Collington (They/Them) is a senior features writer for Screen Rant. They’re a British writer of both fiction and non-fiction, focussing on science fiction, fantasy, and mystery for the former and on culture, gender, and current affairs for the latter.
Never content to settle to one thing, Faefyx is also a co-host and producer of the podcast and video series “Unramblings,” and can occasionally be found making music around the internet as well.
Having acquired degrees on both sides of the Atlantic, Fyx has settled (for the moment) in the southern United States where they live with their spouse and an entirely appropriate number of cats.

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