- Primary Subject: Resident Evil: Requiem (Resident Evil 9)
- Key Update: Capcom leans fully into action by portraying Leon S. Kennedy as an overpowered, John Wick–style hero contrasted with Grace Ashcroft’s survival-horror gameplay.
- Status: Confirmed
- Last Verified: March 12, 2026
- Quick Answer: In Resident Evil: Requiem, Leon Kennedy plays like a John Wick-style powerhouse, cutting through infected with ease while Grace Ashcroft delivers the classic tense survival-horror experience.
There’s just no way Resident Evil Requiem could be a major hit without Leon Kennedy. While Grace Ashcroft’s addition provided the sheer dread and scares we’ve all come to love about the franchise, the former R.P.D. cop has made RE9’s experience far more appealing, and that’s all because of how insanely overpowered (and cool) he is in this game.
The best thing Capcom has ever done for the series is turning this pretty boy into the franchise’s version of John Wick. Unlike Chris Redfield doing Rambo shenanigans and punching boulders for a living, Leon Kennedy has been through most of the series’ pivotal moments.
Why Leon Kennedy is Resident Evil’s John Wick
In more ways than one, Leon has plenty of similarities with the Baba Yaga himself. For one, both are always brooding and have cheeky one-liners to cope with their terrible situations.
Leon Kennedy has literally lost a great deal and has witnessed too much. While no sentimental dogs were killed, the pangs of losing his beloved home of Raccoon City and a mentor figure, Officer Branagh, have turned this character into a Chad Stahelski caricature, and Capcom seems to enjoy that idea.
In Requiem, Leon Kennedy is admired by every man and woman playing the game. Everybody wants to be like him or be with him. Capcom did a decent job of making this iconic RE character as attractive as he was during his first outing as an R.P.D. cop, but we’re not here to keep swooning over him. Instead, let’s talk about how he’s continuously used by Capcom as the poster boy for the ultimate campy action the series is known for.
Leon’s sequences in RE9 never take a moment to take a breather; he is always out there, front and center to any bio-organic threat that comes his way, going so far as to use a toppled building as a motorcycle ramp just to make it to his goal. His first sequence in Elbridge had him take down a horde of infected with ease. That first chapter alone was also a great sign that I am in for a good time. Armed with his new hatchet melee weapon, he has essentially turned himself into a one-man army, performing stylish finishers on those poor infected.
For Leon Kennedy, it was just a regular Tuesday.
Leon vs. Grace’s Sections in Resident Evil: Requiem
I always found it amusing how playing as Grace kept my heart rate constantly high, fearing that an infected might jump me around any corner. Leon, on the other hand, doesn’t need to tread carefully at all. The entire Rhodes Hill Chronic Care section is basically just him cleaning house, and if you happened to leave a few infected alive during Grace’s segments, taking them down as Leon Kennedy feels like playing the game on Weenie Hut Jr’s difficulty.
One other moment in the game that really had me laughing my ass off was against the game’s harder infected variants, the Blister Heads. They’re essentially Requiem’s version of Crimson Heads from the first Resident Evil game, and they are terrifying when playing as Grace. The only way to take them down was through a clean stealth kill using a Hemolytic Injector; otherwise, I’d be spending 30 handgun bullets straight to their enlarged heads, risking myself for a game over.
By the time I swapped to Leon, the Blister Heads were not as intimidating as they once were. With two or three shots to the head, I can simply stagger them and finish them off with my hatchet, and it only takes a few seconds to kill them off, unlike Grace, where I had to constantly run around and pray that I successfully juked it. The contrast was hilarious.
Leon Kennedy in Other Resident Evil Entries
Resident Evil Requiem wasn’t exactly the first time we saw Leon Kennedy go ham on infected. Since the Raccoon City Incident and the Tall Oaks disaster in Resident Evil 6, Leon’s skillset has improved, with the series’ notorious characters, like the iconic Grim Reaper, Hunk, even acknowledging his status as a legend during their battle inside ARK.
In the canon Resident Evil animated films, especially Resident Evil: Vendetta, there’s a memorable moment where Leon S. Kennedy and Chris Redfield take on a hallway teeming with infected as a two-man team. It’s a sequence that’s built for pure fanservice. Corny as it may be, the scene showed how Capcom has long abandoned the idea of grounding its main cast in realism, instead letting them go completely off the rails, showing how the powerscaling has now shifted to the infected versus these star players.
It wasn’t even the first time we saw Leon pulling off absurd stunts like riding a motorcycle while mowing down infected. In fact, that same sequence in Resident Evil: Requiem appears to draw direct inspiration from that film.
There is another version where I imagine Capcom completely nerfs Leon Kennedy. Even with his debilitating illness in Resident Evil: Requiem, he still had the gall to throw out his usual one-liner quips and “mog” (as the kids would say) antagonists like Temu Wesker, Zeno and Victor.
Resident Evil has come a long way, that’s for sure, but Leon Kennedy has transformed into the series’ poster-boy for whatever crazy events that’ll happen in the series. It’s a bold step for a franchise best known for its survival horror roots, and for the most part, his overtuned skillset has made every bio-organic threat a cakewalk for him and us, as the player, and I’m already wanting more.
Should future entries bring a series veteran into the mix, such as Jill Valentine or Barry Burton, we should expect them to be among the most overpowered characters in the roster. Because of this, it is almost impossible to build a mainline entry around them as the sole protagonist. Splitting the focus between these legacy characters and newer ones (like Grace in Resident Evil: Requiem) is a smart approach that helps balance the formula.
And turning Leon Kennedy into the series’ John Wick was a brilliant call.
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