Leon S. Kennedy has been getting chewed up by Raccoon City and everything after it since Resident Evil 2 landed on the PlayStation in 1998. Here is his whole run through the games, the CG films and the live-action misfires, with where to play each one, how scary it actually is, and what Capcom has planned for him next.
The key facts first
- First appearance: Resident Evil 2, Capcom, PlayStation, 1998. Leon is a 21-year-old rookie on his first day at the Raccoon Police Department.
- Lead role in three mainline games: Resident Evil 2 (1998), Resident Evil 4 (2005) and Resident Evil 6 (2012), plus the 2019 and 2023 remakes of the first two.
- Headlines four CG films (Degeneration, Damnation, Vendetta, Death Island) and the 2021 Netflix series Infinite Darkness.
- Played live by Johann Urb in Resident Evil: Retribution (2012) and Avan Jogia in Welcome to Raccoon City (2021).
- Next stop: Resident Evil Requiem, due 27 February 2026, where Capcom confirmed him as a playable lead alongside newcomer Grace Ashcroft.
That is 27 years of service for a man who was late to his first shift. If you only know Leon from the memes about his hair and the suplex, there is a lot more to him than that.
Who Leon S. Kennedy is
Leon Scott Kennedy is the series’ second most important survivor after Chris Redfield, and arguably its most popular. He starts as an ordinary beat cop who drives into Raccoon City on 29 September 1998, the night the T-virus outbreak has already swallowed the place. He ends up as a US government special agent who answers directly to the President.
What separates him from the other heroes is tone. Chris is the soldier. Jill is the professional. Leon is the guy who cracks a joke at a man-sized leech and then feels terrible about everyone he could not save. The series uses him whenever it wants to mix dread with swagger, which is why Resident Evil 4 ended up being the game that reinvented action horror.
Two relationships define him. The first is Ada Wong, the spy he meets in the Raccoon City police station and never quite gets over. The second is Claire Redfield, who shares the Raccoon night with him and shows up again whenever Capcom needs the two of them to bicker like old friends.
Leon’s story in order
The release order and the story order mostly line up, which is rare for this franchise. The exceptions are the prequel-ish spin-offs and Infinite Darkness, which slots in between Resident Evil 4 and Degeneration.
| Story year | What happens to Leon | Title | Released |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1998 | First day at the RPD, Raccoon City outbreak | Resident Evil 2 | 1998 (remake 2019) |
| 1998 | Non-canon escape via cruise ship with Barry Burton | Resident Evil Gaiden | 2001 |
| 2002 | Operation Javier with Jack Krauser | Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles | 2009 |
| 2004 | Rescues Ashley Graham in rural Spain | Resident Evil 4 | 2005 (remake 2023) |
| 2005 | Harvardville airport outbreak with Claire | Resident Evil: Degeneration | 2008 |
| 2006 | White House conspiracy and the Penamstan flashbacks | Infinite Darkness (Netflix) | 2021 |
| 2011 | Civil war and Lickers in the Eastern Slav Republic | Resident Evil: Damnation | 2012 |
| 2012 | Tall Oaks outbreak, Helena Harper, the C-virus | Resident Evil 6 | 2012 |
| 2014 | Hunts Glenn Arias with Chris and Rebecca | Resident Evil: Vendetta | 2017 |
| 2015 | Alcatraz mission with Chris, Jill, Claire and Rebecca | Resident Evil: Death Island | 2023 |
| TBC | Returns alongside Grace Ashcroft | Resident Evil Requiem | 2026 |
Operation Raccoon City (2012) also features him, but that game treats the Raccoon timeline as a sandbox you can shoot at, so nobody counts it.
Resident Evil 2: the worst first day ever
The original Resident Evil 2 was built by Capcom under Hideki Kamiya and gave Leon the character beat he never shakes: he should have been in Raccoon City days earlier, overslept after a bad night, and arrives to find the city already dead. He meets Claire at a gas station on the outskirts and the two split up at the police station, which is where the game’s famous “zapping” system comes in. Play Leon A then Claire B, or the reverse, and the second run changes based on what you grabbed in the first.
Leon’s half of the story is where Ada Wong enters the series. He also gets a Raccoon Police Department tour that fans have memorised room by room, from the main hall statue to the S.T.A.R.S. office. The 1998 game is still playable: Capcom put the original PC version on GOG in 2024, so you no longer need a disc and a PlayStation to see Paul Haddad’s gloriously stiff line reads.
The 2019 remake, directed by Kazunori Kadoi and Yasuhiro Anpo, is the version most people mean when they say “RE2” now. The fixed cameras are gone, the station is darker, zombies take far more punishment, and the Tyrant known as Mr. X stalks you through hallways with footsteps you can hear two rooms away. Leon’s dialogue is rewritten and Nick Apostolides plays him as a scared, earnest kid rather than a wisecracker, which makes the Ada stuff land harder.
Where to play: Resident Evil 2 (2019) is on PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PC, a cloud version on Switch and on iPhone 15 Pro, iPad and Mac. Who it suits: anyone who wants the scariest Leon game, and a fine first survival horror if you can stomach some gore.
The spin-off years: Gaiden, Darkside Chronicles, Operation Raccoon City
Resident Evil Gaiden on the Game Boy Color (2001) is a curiosity: Leon and Barry Burton hunt a B.O.W. on a cruise liner, and Capcom later waved it out of canon. Skip it unless you collect oddities.
The Darkside Chronicles (Wii, 2009) matters more. It is a light-gun game that retells Resident Evil 2 and Code: Veronica, then adds “Operation Javier”, a 2002 mission in South America with Leon and his partner Jack Krauser. It is the only place the series properly explains why Krauser hates him so much by the time they meet again in Spain. Capcom shipped it on PS3 in the Chronicles HD Collection (2012) with Move support.
Operation Raccoon City (2012, developed by Slant Six Games) lets you play Umbrella mercenaries sent to erase evidence in 1998, and one of your optional objectives is killing Leon. It is a poor shooter. Watch a cutscene compilation if you are curious.
Resident Evil 4: the agent, the president’s daughter and the village
Six years after Raccoon City, Leon is a government agent sent to a nameless region of rural Spain to recover Ashley Graham, the President’s kidnapped daughter. The villagers are not zombies. They are Ganados, people controlled by a parasite called Las Plagas, run by a cult leader named Osmund Saddler and his pint-sized castellan Ramon Salazar.
The original 2005 game, directed by Shinji Mikami for the GameCube, invented the over-the-shoulder camera that nearly every third-person shooter has used since. It also turned Leon into the character you probably picture: the fringe, the roundhouse kick, the suplex, the attaché case Tetris, the merchant asking what you are buying. His one-liners in this one are legendary, with “Where’s everyone going? Bingo?” leading the pack. Paul Mercier voiced him here and in Degeneration.
The 2023 remake, again from Kadoi and Anpo, keeps the beats and adds a knife parry, a proper stealth layer and a far less helpless Ashley. It also gives Leon a heavier emotional load. He is carrying survivor’s guilt from Raccoon City and the game lets that show. Critics scored it 93 on Metacritic for PS5, a few points shy of the original’s 96 on GameCube, and that gap is more about the original being the first of its kind than any real shortfall. The Separate Ways expansion (September 2023) tells Ada’s side of the story, and a free VR mode arrived for PlayStation VR2 in December 2023.
Where to play: the 2005 version is on practically everything, from Wii and PS2 to PS4, Xbox One, Switch, PC and a Meta Quest 2 VR port. The remake is on PS4, PS5, Xbox Series X|S, PC, Mac and iPhone 15 Pro. Who it suits: anyone who finds pure horror too stressful. This is the Leon game for action fans, and it is the easiest entry point if you have never touched the series.
Resident Evil 6: Leon’s co-op campaign
Resident Evil 6 is four interlocking campaigns, and Leon’s is the one that still feels like Resident Evil. He starts in Tall Oaks in 2012, pairs up with DSO agent Helena Harper, and spends his first chapters in a dark university and a graveyard full of actual zombies, the first the series had used since the Raccoon City days. The later chapters go full Michael Bay with a crumbling Chinese city and a mutating villain, but the opening third is worth the price alone.
Matthew Mercer took over the voice here and has stayed on for the films. He plays Leon as older, drier and tired, which fits a man who has now lost two cities.
Where to play: PS3, Xbox 360, PS4, Xbox One, Switch and PC. Who it suits: pairs. If you want cooperative survival horror games for a weekend with a friend, this is the one Leon title built for it, and the Mercenaries mode is a decent timewaster afterwards.
The CG films: Leon’s second career
Capcom and Sony Pictures have made Leon the face of their animated features, and they are fully canon, unlike the live-action stuff.
Degeneration (directed by Makoto Kamiya) reunites Leon and Claire at an airport outbreak in 2005. It is talky and a little stiff but it is the only time you see the two of them work a case together properly. Damnation (2012, also directed by Makoto Kamiya) throws him into a war zone with Lickers and Tyrants and gives him the best action of the four films. Vendetta (2017, Takanori Tsujimoto) teams him with Chris and Rebecca Chambers against an arms dealer, and includes a motorcycle fight in a tunnel full of zombies that is pure comic book. Death Island (2023, Eiichiro Hasumi) finally puts Leon, Chris, Jill, Claire and Rebecca on screen together, on Alcatraz, and it plays like the series’ Avengers.
Infinite Darkness on Netflix is the quietest Leon story. Set in 2006, it is a political thriller about a White House hacking incident and a covered-up war crime in the fictional nation of Penamstan, with Claire tugging at the other thread. Nick Apostolides voices him, so it sounds like the remake Leon. Where to watch: Netflix for Infinite Darkness; the four films cycle through digital rental stores and are available on Blu-ray.
Live-action Leon: two swings, two misses
Paul W.S. Anderson’s film series ignored Leon for ten years, then wrote him into Resident Evil: Retribution (2012) as a soldier played by Johann Urb. He gets a cool coat and a few shots at a Moscow Licker and very little else.
Welcome to Raccoon City (2021, directed by Johannes Roberts) tries harder. Avan Jogia plays Leon as a hungover rookie who has been posted to the RPD as punishment, and the film restages the gas station meeting and the station interiors with real affection. The problem is that the script treats him as comic relief for most of the runtime. Fans of the games tend to like the sets and dislike the Leon. Neither film is scary, and neither connects to the game canon.
The arc under the one-liners
Spoiler warning
This section covers major plot turns from Resident Evil 2, Resident Evil 4, Resident Evil 6 and Vendetta.
Leon’s whole character is a man trying to save everyone and learning that he cannot. In Resident Evil 2 he watches Ada fall into the depths of the Umbrella lab after she takes a bullet for him, and in the remake she tries to shoot him seconds before she falls, which makes his grief messier. He leaves Raccoon City with Claire and Sherry and is promptly scooped up by the government, who use Sherry’s safety as leverage to recruit him.
Resident Evil 4 brings the past back in person. Krauser, his old partner from Operation Javier, faked his death and sold himself to Saddler, and the knife fight between them is Leon’s one truly personal battle in the series. Ada reappears, uses him again, and leaves with the parasite sample. He never stops falling for it.
Resident Evil 6 cuts deepest. The president who vouched for him, Adam Benford, is infected during the Tall Oaks attack and Leon has to shoot him in the opening minutes. Everything after is him proving the death was not his fault, while the real villain, Derek Simmons, pulls the strings. By Vendetta he has stopped believing the job matters, drinks too much, and has to be dragged back into the fight by Chris. Death Island is his recovery. That is why Requiem casting him in a lead role is a big deal: the next game picks him up after the one time he nearly quit.
What comes next: Resident Evil Requiem
Capcom revealed Resident Evil Requiem at Summer Game Fest in June 2025, with a release date of 27 February 2026 on PS5, Xbox Series X|S and PC. The initial reveal led with Grace Ashcroft, an FBI analyst and the daughter of Alyssa Ashcroft from the Outbreak games, and a return to a ruined Raccoon City. Fans assumed Leon had been benched.
Then the Tokyo Game Show trailer in September 2025 put him front and centre, older, bearded and playable. Capcom has said the game switches between Grace’s survival-horror sections and Leon’s action-heavier sections, which is the Resident Evil 2 zapping idea stretched across two very different protagonists. Expect it to feel like a cross between the Resident Evil 2 remake and Resident Evil 4, and expect every outlet to run his hair as the headline image.
Where you should start with Leon
Pick by mood, not by chronology.
- You want to be scared: Resident Evil 2 (2019). Lights off, headphones on, Mr. X will find you.
- You want the best action game of its generation: Resident Evil 4 (2005), then the 2023 remake once you know the beats.
- You want co-op: Resident Evil 6, Leon campaign, split screen with a friend who talks too much.
- You cannot handle gore: Infinite Darkness. It is a spy show with zombies in the margins.
- You want the full lore: Darkside Chronicles for Krauser, then the four films in order.
If you liked this
Resident Evil 3 (2020) for another Raccoon City night with a stalker on your heels. Dead Space (2023) for the same over-the-shoulder dread with a dismemberment twist. Resident Evil Village (2021) for the closest thing to Resident Evil 4’s castle and village mix without Leon.
FAQ
What does the S in Leon S. Kennedy stand for?
Scott. Capcom confirmed Leon Scott Kennedy in the Resident Evil 4 era supplementary material, and the CG films use the full name on screen.
How old is Leon in each game?
He is 21 in Resident Evil 2 (1998), 27 in Resident Evil 4 (2004) and 35 in Resident Evil 6 (2012). The films age him accordingly, so he is 38 by Death Island.
Who voices Leon Kennedy?
Paul Haddad in the 1998 original, Paul Mercier in Resident Evil 4 (2005) and Degeneration, Matthew Mercer in Resident Evil 6, Damnation, Vendetta and Death Island, and Nick Apostolides in both remakes and Infinite Darkness. Eduard Badaluta is the face model for the remake Leon.
Is Leon in the Netflix Resident Evil series?
Not the 2022 live-action series with Lance Reddick. He leads the animated Infinite Darkness (2021) on the same platform.
Which Leon game is the scariest?
The Resident Evil 2 remake, easily. Resident Evil 4 is tense but it hands you too much ammunition to stay frightened, and Resident Evil 6 is an action game with a horror opening.