Netflix’s Resident Evil: Why does Albert Wesker inject himself with Jade and Billie’s blood? (spoilers)

Albert Wesker is an enigmatic character in Resident Evil (played by the excellent Lance Reddick) who is often seen injecting himself with blood drawn from his twin daughters. Why does he do it?

Spoilers ahead for Resident Evil season 1

I imagine if you found out your father was injecting himself with your blood you would be pretty freaked out, so you can imagine how Billie and Jade react to that development.

We see Albert drawing their blood and injecting into himself as early as episode 1, but the reasons behind it aren’t revealed until much later in the season, along with some other shocking revelations.

Resident Evil: Why does Albert Wesker inject himself with Jade and Billie’s blood?

In Resident Evil episode 7 we find out that the Albert Wesker we know is actually a clone of the original Albert Wesker (from the games). As a clone, Albert underwent rapid aging, progressing from age 0 to 20 in less than six months. That sort of rapid cell growth causes all sorts of nasty problems and complications, including cancer and tons of other things.

Albert gets sick and weak from time to time and that’s when he injects himself with the blood. But lately, he’s become more sick than usual, needing injections on a daily basis rather than only once a week or so before that. We also find out that he genetically engineered Jade and Billie’s blood specifically to be a cure for him.

Why doesn’t Bert need blood injections?

One thing the show doesn’t address is that Bert does not appear to have the same sickness that Albert does. Bert is kept imprisoned by Umbrella for years and he didn’t even know Albert had daughters or where he was. So how was he being kept alive? It’s possible that Umbrella just used some of their blood on Bert without him knowing, but it doesn’t seem likely.

The other possibility is that Albert is an original clone, and the other clones got a more perfected version of the DNA so they don’t suffer the same shortcomings. It’s not really clear, or it’s another mystery unsolved as of yet.

However, in the 2036 timeline, Billie does say that their “dad,” which would have to be Bert since Albert was dead by that point, had died while Jade was gone. So maybe he is sick and it just didn’t really affect him until later.