Why Fans Aren't Happy About Claire In Resident Evil: Infinite Darkness

Contains spoilers for "Resident Evil: Infinite Darkness"

The year: 1998. The game: "Resident Evil 2." The characters: rookie Raccoon City Police Department officer Leon S. Kennedy and headstrong young biker Claire Redfield. For "Resident Evil" diehards, these two strangers turned allies in survival are characters that helped define the franchise. They join forces again to take on a new bioweapon threat in the recently released Netflix series "Resident Evil: Infinite Darkness." However, for some fans, it wasn't exactly the reunion they were hoping for.

"Infinite Darkness" sees Leon (Nick Apostolides) tapped to investigate a series of attacks on the White House that ultimately leads him to uncover a bioweapon conspiracy at the highest levels of the US government. And Claire (Stephanie Panisello) ... is also there. She does have her own storyline that involves her investigating a possible T-Virus outbreak in the fictional central-Asian country of Penamstan. But she ultimately doesn't get a ton to do in the series.

Many of the revelations about the links between the incident in Penamstan and the White House attacks are covered in Leon's story and Claire only meets up with her old partner for a few short scenes. It's something that casual viewers may not have noticed, but it didn't escape the attention of "Resident Evil" fans on Reddit.

In a general discussion thread about the series, a number of commenters aired their dissatisfaction with Claire's limited role. As user u/triplegxxx bluntly put it, "Claire might as well not have been in the movie since she do f— at all."

Here's what else they had to say.

While discussing their thoughts on "Resident Evil: Infinite Darkness," there were a lot of complaints about the size and scope of Claire's role in the series. Many commenters, such as u/afydrew, were annoyed that they were promised Claire, only to have her mostly relegated to a backseat role. They wrote, "Give CLAIRE REDFIELD more things to do or not have her in the movie at all. With a character like her it was so dumbfounding to me to see her practically be a background character in it."

User u/WheelJack83 shared a similar sentiment, noting, "yeah her role was virtually pointless here. She uncovers [things] that Leon already figures out or is told later. She has no active impact on the story. She has no character arc at all."

And it wasn't just that she wasn't integral to the story. Fans also noticed that when it came to fighting the series' signature bioweapons, "Infinite Darkness" didn't give her the opportunity to show off the skills that earned her a reputation as one of the franchise's most badass characters. User u/NerdTalkDan complained, "She was a freaking damsel in distress. What a waste! They should have straight up double teamed the boss showing why she was [a Raccoon City] survivor."

One fan even had a theory as to why she got largely sidelined. User u/Fuzzfaceanimal posited, "Writers played RE2 but only chose leon as their character."

Let's hope she gets a beefier role in that upcoming live-action "Resident Evil" reboot film. You can check out "Resident Evil: Infinite Darkness" on Netflix.