Duo the Duolingo owl mascot has been through a lot already in 2025, including a dramatic faked death. Now he's turned up in the least likely of places, as a villain in Resident Evil.
Yep, forget zombies – Leon Kennedy has met his ultimate match in the language learning app's pushy green mascot. For reasons that are not at all clear, the account of Capcom's Resident Evil Ambassador Program (REBH) kicked of an exchange of posts with Duolingo Japan on X by presenting a beefed up Duo as "our new bioweapon" to "spread language learning to the world."
この並びはずるいと思うんです pic.twitter.com/Pr60MJdPynAugust 2, 2025
Following Resident Evil's lead, Duolingo followed up with an edited image of its own showing Duo in a fedora replacing Mr. X in Resident Evil 2. "Leon, you haven't done today's lesson, right?," the caption reads.
The Resident Evil account responded with an image of Leon using Duolingo to learn Spanish, a neat reference to Resident Evil 4 where he ventured to rural Spain to rescue the president’s daughter. "I'll chase you anywhere until everyone can play Bio (Resident Evil) in English," retorted the Duolingo account, with an image showing Duo in front of a burning police station in Racoon City.
レオン、今日のレッスンやってないよね？ https://t.co/5JnHIiAxDQ pic.twitter.com/a0oj39YSnVAugust 2, 2025
みんなが英語でバイオをプレイできるまで、どこでも追いかけるから https://t.co/ADgpeedEKs pic.twitter.com/F0EmFim8X5August 3, 2025
The Japanese Duolingo account has since made a post revealing DNA testing showing Duo is not 100 per cent owl (I'd never have guessed).
It remains unclear whether the posts were coordinated as part of a paid collaboration or are just spontaneous banter. It seems to be working well for Duolingo, with many Resident Evil fans responding with screenshots of their activity in the app to prove that they have been doing their lessons.
Resident Evil Requiem, the first new entry in the Resident Evil series since 2021's Resident Evil Village, will be released on February 27, 2026. I'm not expecting Duo the owl to make an appearance, but who knows? We have seen Capcom do some bizarre collabs before, including dropping KFC's Colonel Sanders into Street Fighter 6.
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