Resident Evil’s Leon S. Kennedy is one of the most recognizable characters in the franchise. Introduced in 1998’sResident Evil 2, Leon was a rookie cop from the Raccoon Police Department when infected zombies attacked Raccoon City and killed everyone at the station. He was later recruited and trained as an expert special agent under STRATCOM because of his experience fighting the zombies. The next time fans saw Leon was inResident Evil 4, where he went up against the Los Illuminados to rescue the US President’s daughter Ashley Graham.
Leon would show up in otherResident Eviltitles, both in the video game and movie form. Many fans became invested in his backstory, even discussing how old he really is because of how young he continues to look in theResident Evilfranchise. But there’s a good explanation for this.
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How Old is Leon Kennedy in Resident Evil?
Leon was born in 1977. InResident Evil 2, he had just graduated from a police academy before joining the Raccoon Police Department in 1998. He was only 21 years old at the time. The events ofResident Evil 3: Nemesis, where he makes an appearance in the epilogue, were believed to have happened a few months after the previous game. In this scene, he was approached by a member of the US government, who looked like they were recruiting him to be an FBI agent.
Six years later, Leon would find himself in a rural village in Spain torescue Ashleyfrom a religious cult called the Los Illuminados. If one would do the math, he was 27 years old in 2004. While in Spain, Leon and Ashley were captured and injected with Las Plagas, the same virus that infected the people in the village. Although both of them received Antigen Medication from Luis' laboratory to eradicate the virus, manyResident Evilfans seem to believe that traces were left in Leon’s system. This allegedly caused him to age slower or not at all.
Leon’s last video game appearance was in 2013’sResident Evil 6, where he’s now a Division of Security Operations agent. He was 36 years old at the time. Fortunately, he was alive and well towards the end, but playershave not seen him in the two most recentResident Evilgames. However, his colleague Chris Redfield had been very present. The only other time Leon showed up was during the events ofResident Evil: Vendetta, which was in 2017.
The next timeResident Evilfans would play as Leon would be in the remakes ofResident Evil 2andResident Evil 4. As far as they know, he’s still living, so they can assume that he’s already 46 years old in 2023. No one knows for certain when he’ll show up in the mainline games again. Many were hoping thatLeon would be in theResident Evil VillageDLCtitledShadows of Rose, but he was nowhere to be found as it mainly focused on Rose Winters and her father Ethan Winters.
Here’s the interesting part:Resident Evil Villagewas set in 2021, andShadows of Rosehappened 16 years later in 2037. It was the furthest time skip thatResident Evilhad gotten, most likely signaling a new generation of characters in the franchise. If Leon was still showing up in future titles, he would already be around 60 years old, and possibly already retired from his duties as a special agent. (Unless Leon’s body really stopped aging because of the alleged infection.) Of course, there’s still a chance that Capcom would release an officialclosure for the previousResident Evilgenerationfeaturing the original cast, perhaps even putting Leon and Jill Valentine in a game to get closure.
