Resident Evil VII: What Happened? – All We Know Ahead of the “Not A Hero” DLC
Resident Evil VII: What Happened? is our look into what actually went down in the game as it introduces more questions than it answers. This will be a spoiler-filled look into the secrets of Resident Evil VII, so avert your eyes if you’ve yet to experience the horrors of the Dulvey home. With that said, let’s go over everything that we know so far.
So reader, you’ve finished Resident Evil VII and you’re probably wondering, “what just happened, what does this mean?!’, but don’t worry because I’ve got your back. We’re going to look back at the adventure and piece everything together the best that we can. A lot of questions are left unanswered though, so expect a fair bit of speculating because I, and many other fans, have theories of our own. We’ll be taking a look at the specific events in the game and DLC, as well as tracking what the individual characters were up to throughout their journey.
The Beginning Hour (The Ballad of Mouldy Dave)
The Beginning Hour is when we’re first introduced to the Bakers and one of the biggest questions is raised there and then — who is this ghost girl appearing all over the place? Mia Winters, your wife who you’re looking for in Resident Evil VII, is the most likely culprit here as she was being held by the Baker’s at this point. Although her dress is never seen in the main game, her hair acts as the biggest giveaway that it could be Mia.
Who knows though, maybe Capcom just forgot to expand on the ghost girl’s origins? But if it isn’t Mia, then it’s nobody of note that we know of so far. The person you play as is never revealed or seen in-game either and this is because, depending on your ending, they either escaped or turned into Molded — who knows, maybe you defeated them at some point! A moment of silence for “Mouldy Dave”, he shall be missed.
Ethan Approaches the Dulvey Home
Resident Evil VII begins with Ethan receiving a tip that his wife, Mia, has been located at the Dulvey home which has been abandoned for three years. Not having any idea what she did for work or the circumstances under which she went missing (that we know of, anyway), Ethan arrives in the middle of nowhere and finds himself at the decrepit building. It’s uninhabited, so what’s the worst that could happen? The game presents many questions to you in its opening hours that aren’t resolved until much later (or not at all), so it’s normal to be a bit confused at first. That’s why we’re here, to make it clearer and theorise and potentially be wrong on everything.
You find Mia very quickly but she’s quickly taken away again, and what’s worse is that she’s clearly not herself. While you find this out much later, Mia is under the control of mastermind Evelyn who is able to control everyone other than the Baker’s son Lucas (though she does not realise she can’t control Lucas, he’s a spy playing a part, but more on this later). Mia attacks you, saws your hand off and you wake up not long later with it sewn back on by the Baker’s daughter Zoe.
Meet The Bakers
The Bakers are the main antagonists for the bulk of the game and they’ll constantly chase you down in an attempt to kill you — pretty unfair considering they have insane regenerative powers! It’s evident that at one point the Baker family were all pretty normal (well, bar Lucas who was always a creepy weirdo) and that when they locked themselves away from society, things had changed.
Consisting of Jack, Marguerite, Lucas, and Zoe, the Bakers were once a happy family until Mia and Eveline came along and changed their lives for the worse. Giving the pair a place to stay after a shipwreck, the Bakers don’t realise that Eveline is a biological experiment with the power to control those around her. Sadly, the Bakers fall to her will and are never the same again, kidnapping and killing innocent people such as the Sewer Gators.
How the Bakers were before the incident is better explored in the Daughters DLC. It shows that before Mia and Eveline arrived, they truly were a normal family (again, excluding Lucas who clearly has always been sadistic) and he claims that Jack used to physically abuse him for saying bad things about Marguerite’s food but I’m torn on whether or not it’s true. Lucas cannot be trusted.
We see Mia and Eveline brought to the Dulvey home after being found unconscious nearby, and the beginnings of Eveline corrupting them and taking over. What once was a seemingly happy, normal family — bar Lucas, who’s always been sadistic — has been ravaged by the bio-weapon known as Eveline, and they begin beating each other with merciless intent. Zoe manages to keep away from Eveline’s mind-control, somehow? Once he arrives, Zoe realises that Ethan is her best chance to receive the serum that’ll cure her of Eveline’s infections, and thus helps him via phone to guide him.
As soon as Eveline arrives the Bakers find themselves under her control, bar Zoe who escapes outside to the trailer where you meet up with her again later as Ethan. If you got the true ending, then Zoe’s current status is unknown.
Jack Baker and his Dream Party
Jack is a big guy, and an ex-Marine. Despite this, pre-infection Jack was a gentle soul — loving his family, and more than willing to lend a helping hand to strangers in trouble. It’s this kind heart that unfortunately and unfairly causes the demise of the Bakers, as saving Eveline and Mia in the storm ends up making them a target for Eveline’s distorted mind. His attempt to battle Eveline’s machinations in the Daughters DLC are in vain, as he ends up violently pursuing his own daughter, Zoe.
Even infected, Jack still has family values. Spouting Eveline’s dreams like a puppet, he has a newfound devotion for a wider concept of “family”, seeking to add strangers to the group to appease her desires. But if you talk trash about his wife’s cooking, he’s still gonna get mad. He relentless pursues Ethan throughout the beginning of the game, toying with him. He’ll even chop Ethan’s leg off and help him heal it back on to pursue him more. His own power seems to be a ridiculous strength and super fast regenerative abilities.
Prior to Ethan’s arrival, it seems Jack was mostly responsible for bringing victims to the house, capturing Moudly Dave in some endings of The Beginning Hour, and presumably Clancy too. He seems incapable of not saying “welcome to the family, son” when he does so. Why does he eventually trap Clancy in a horde mode in the basement? I have no idea, actually.
By the time he corners Ethan in the basement he’s much more pissed off. Eveline sees Mia as a “mother figure” since she played that role transporting her on the cargo ship. Because of her relationship with Ethan, this makes Ethan, to Eveline’s mind, the natural and ideal “father” for her. Even though she has control over the family, she does not have complete control at all times. The violent tendencies brought out by Eveline mix with Jack’s own idea of himself as the family’s father and head. He sees Ethan as a threat. His actions, interestingly, rebel against Eveline’s desires, but still in a twisted way. That’s why he needs to inflict chainsaw death upon Ethan. Unfortunately, it is him that is cleaved in two, black liquid spurting from his body.
This triggers a mutation in his body as a last ditch method for survival. He turns into a black, tentacles mass covered in eyeballs — but is still somehow capable of talking shit to Ethan throughout his boss fight. He ambushes Ethan by smashing through the boathouse after Zoe and Mia are freed from Lucas. Ultimately, he’s too powerful, and needs to be “cured” to kill him, as he’s so far gone destroying Eveline’s infection will destroy him completely. Or so it seems.
While Ethan is captured by Eveline on the boat, he has a dream sequence in which the soft-natured Jack is back, and asks Ethan to free his family. Zoe is also present, whereas Marguerite (killed by Ethan) is not. Could he still be alive in some form, or does a cured version of his mind still exist within Eveline’s psychic consciousness somehow?
It also seems that at some point he forced Mia to run through the house repeatedly on his birthday, picking out ludicrous food items for him to gulp down. Perhaps this is yet another nightmarish hallucination caused by Eveline…
Marguerite Baker
Potentially the scariest Baker because she gives birth to thousands of insects which have the intent to murder you, Marguerite is another good person who fell to Eveline’s control. Gleaning information from her notebook, it’s shown that Marguerite had been visiting a doctor as she had been feeling unwell, Having found mold on her skull, they ask her to return but Eveline takes control during this time, and it’s far too late for Marguerite to fight back. During the Daughters DLC, she is the first to “turn”. She is fended off by Jack temporarily, until he becomes infected too. Maguerite views her new state as a gift from Eveline, Marguerite vows to destroy anybody who dares to try and change her back to normal or to take Eveline away from her.
It’s not known if she always liked insects but she did take care of a greenhouse, which is where Ethan murders her after a gruelling fight. She clearly has a love for nature and this likely explains her affinity with insects, and her death marks the end of her insects too. During most of the game she seems to be patrolling the Old House and Greenhouse area, likely as they’re surrounded by insects and she either feels comfortable there, or knows that’s where she can utilise her new abilities best. Her abilities seem tied to a lamp she carries around. It seems she also likes to be close to Eveline’s room, located on the top floor of the Old House. During his initial escape of the house, Ethan sees her heading to the Old House, this would be after she already pursued and captured Mia there.
Unlike Jack, Marguerite can be fended off with weaponry. If Ethan does enough damage to her while she pursues him in the Old House, she’ll run away, ambushing him later. At the end of their fight she falls and is consumed by the swamp, triggering her mutation into a long-armed monster with a pregnant nest-belly of insects. Just as she is the primary “mother” of “the family”, so too is she the mother of the insects, literally running away to give birth to them during her final fight. Ultimately, all she wanted to do was protect her children. She is the only one who never seems to betray Eveline.
Lucas Baker
Ah, Lucas. An absolutely vile man and the biggest villain of Resident Evil VII, Lucas proves to be terrifying enough even without Eveline controlling him. Whereas Jack and Marguerite were clearly friendly, caring people before Eveline arrived, Lucas has always been interested in experiments and has proven to be very clever. As demonstrated with Clancy, Lucas has no issue toying with the lives of others and murdering them in exceedingly violent and horrifying ways.
Towards the climax of the game, you find files that show that Lucas was always pretending to be controlled by Eveline (who never realised) and that he was feeding information about Eveline and her victims, including his family, to a third-party. Lucas’ current whereabouts are unknown, but it’s clear that he survived the night’s events. Zoe seemingly survived too if you got the true ending, but her whereabouts are also unknown.
David Anderson’s Bad Day
Ordered to patrol near the Baker household following a spate of recent disappearances (caused by the Baker family), Deputy David Anderson apparently called on the Bakers more than once to ask them questions. He might only be a bit-part in the story, but it’s actually his interruption that breaks up the Baker family welcome party for Ethan, giving him the chance to escape.
Shortly after he meets up with Ethan and doesn’t listen to his warnings. After he agrees to meet Ethan in the garage he is instantly killed by not looking behind him. His corpse is then taken to the Processing Area in the basement, near where Ethan fights Jack with a chainsaw. He’s been covered in black mould, clearly the early process for creating a “molded”, showing that as well as turning the living, it can also have an effect on the dead. Later, Lucas decapitates his head (by that point more fully turned to the Molded), and hides a key inside of his throat. It might have been a pretty bad day for the poor Deputy, but at least, unlike Clancy, he was dead for most of it.
Eveline and the Molded
Eveline’s story is a sad one but there’s only one way it can end. Eveline is a genetically modified human who was created with the hopes that she would be the next level in bioweaponry — while Eveline’s creator is not clear, it could be Umbrella Corps or another company who has yet to be revealed. The name Tentsu is being thrown around due to its presence in the game due to its appearance on cases used for storing D-Series body parts — it’s unknown if they have further involvement than just creating casing, or if they knew what purpose it would serve. Mia and her partner, Alan, were Eveline’s handlers but when she got loose Alan became one of her first victims — being turned into a Molded after he loses it and calls her a bitch (to be fair she was on a murderous rampage at the time).
Eveline just wanted to be loved. She was never loved as an experiment and never had any family, but she looked up to Mia as a mother. She wishes to make the Bakers, and those turned Molded, into her family, rather than be used a bio-weapon. Eveline is also behind the Molded, who are her victims transformed into horrific, deformed beasts. She seems to have a lot of control over her biologicial powers, allowing the Bakers to avoid this fate while her other victims aren’t quite as fortunate — well, nobody is fortunate in Resident Evil VII, really. She goes about finding affection the wrong way entirely and Ethan has no choice but to kill her. Eveline’s story really is rather sad — she never wanted or asked for this, after all.
Eveline is the scary old lady in the wheelchair who appears randomly as you progress through the game, and she never fails to ruin your already bad night just that little bit more. Will she attack you? No, she won’t, but you damn well didn’t know that at the time when she’s lazily watching you do your thing. How she even gets around without a sound will forever be the biggest mystery of Resident Evil VII, but maybe she has a personal Molded chauffeur who works like a stairlift.
The Sewer Gators: Clancy’s Doomed, Mini-Game Filled, Life
Speaking of the Gator Crew, they make for the most prominent victims of the Baker’s, especially Clancy who is featured across several video tapes. The bulk of the DLC focuses on him too. Originally arriving at the Dulvey house to record footage for their paranormal TV series “Sewer Gators”, it isn’t long until one of the crew is gruesomely murdered and Clancy is run through a series of brutal, horrible series of events by the Bakers. With Clancy’s story now told in full, let’s run through the chronological order of events for the poor cameraman.
Clancy, along with Peter and Andre, arrive at the Baker’s house in the dead of night when Andrew is brutally murdered and the other two are knocked out. Clancy then awakes to find himself tied to a chair (as seen in the Kitchen demo) with Peter trying to free him but, just like Andre, Peter is brutally murdered and beheaded. This is where the DLC content comes in as Clancy is moved to a bedroom in the Baker house where Marguerite is trying to feed him and make him one of the family — just like they do with Ethan at first.
Left to his own devices and with a will to live, Clancy manages to escape the bedroom and into the basement where Jack traps him for 5 hours with the Molded — Clancy is a man who can hold his own though, and he kills dozen of Molded and fights Jack himself before finding himself in Lucas’ clutches.
Clancy soon finds out that he isn’t the only person who Lucas has a hold of once he’s forced to play a deadly game of blackjack/21 with a man named Hoffman. The winner is promised a chance to leave and after his opponent has his fingers cut off, is electrocuted to death and then has his corpse mutilated by a saw.
Even though he just barely wins, Lucas decides he wants to play yet another game with Clancy. This is the happy birthday room that you later play through as Ethan (in the main game) and although Clancy manages to solve the puzzle, he’s set on fire and dies regardless. Sadly, this is the end of Clancy’s gruelling tale. That is, unless they add more DLC for him to suffer him through.
Mia Winters
The game centers around Ethan trying to find Mia who has been missing since 2017, and isn’t located for another three years. Ethan seems to be unaware of exactly what she did for work (she just said she was “babysitting” Eveline, a convenient half-truth). So when she goes missing, he understandably wanted answers and to find out what happened. Being Eveline’s “babysitter”/handler along with co-worker Alan Douglas, she must transport her on a cargo ship.
Eveline eventually lashes out and escapes from their care and begins to turn everybody on the ship that they’re travelling on into Molded. It’s during this catastophe that Eveline sends a message to Ethan warning him not to look for her. Mia and Eveline are the only survivors of the ship wreckage and they wake up by the bayou, near where the Bakers live. They take the pair to safety in their home, where it isn’t long until Eveline decides that she wants them as her family. It seems Mia is regularly locked up in the basement of the guest house, perhaps to keep her from escaping when she is not “turned”. After being freed from the Guest House by Ethan, Eveline forces her to attack Ethan. He guns her down in self-defence, but Jack steps in, taking the both of them to the Baker household proper.
As Ethan makes his escape, so too does Mia. For some reason she seeks refuge in the old house, being pursued by Marguerite. She does not manage to evade her. Somehow she’s in the old house again later (perhaps she was kept there by Marguerite), where she briefly speaks to Ethan before being captured by Lucas, along with Zoe. Lucas uses them as hostages, keeping them in the old boathouse. Once freed, and after Jack is dispatched, Ethan must choose to save either Mia or Zoe with the serum.
Either way, Mia makes her way to the shipwreck where Eveline captures Ethan (this is the part where you play as her). She relives the events of Eveline’s escape on the ship, and then must make her way to Ethan to rescue him. She does so, but depending on whether Ethan used the serum on her will decide her fate at this point. She’ll either fight the freed Ethan in her turned form, or simply shove him through a door while she holds Eveline at bay. In the latter case, she survives the night, escaping in the Umbrella helicopter with Ethan.
Ethan Winters
Saving Ethan for the end might seem like a weird choice, but he’s sort of the bow that ties all of the Resident Evil 7 lore together as he journeys through the game, touching on the echoes of those around him. At least for now, anyway. The Not a Hero DLC looks to star a certain someone else… Ethan himself is a bit of a blank slate, and we never really know who we’re playing as. Despite this, he can get a few action hero quips out here and there.
Ethan’s journey was to find his wife Mia, who he believed to not be dead, and to find out where she disappeared to and why — he thought she was a nanny, after all, so it struck him as odd. Having spent years looking for her, he receives a tip and finds her at the Dulvey residence despite her pleas for him to not come. Finding Mia doesn’t take long but neither does it take long for her to go insane and lop his hand off, which is later sewn on by Zoe and Ethan is almost completely unfazed by the events.
Not willing to give up, Ethan continues to search for Mia while working with Zoe. He kills Jack and Marguerite during his adventure and defeats Lucas’ horrible games. Armed with a cure serum made by mixing the D-Series Arm and D-Series Head, Ethan cures Mia, leaving Zoe infected — you can cure Zoe, but this leads to her immediate and explicit death. Both survivors are split up once more and with the defeat of Eveline at Ethan’s hands, the couple are reunited and appear on Umbrella’s helicopter at the end of the game.
Ethan doesn’t seem to be a good person by the end of the game. Initially, you can empathise with him and his plight as all he wants is to be re-united with his wife, but by the end of it you realise that neither of them are particularly good people. Ethan may not have known about Mia’s experiments and that she played a vital role in the creation and loss of Eveline, but Ethan seems to be know more than he lets on. He’s possibly even connected to the big bad Umbrella itself — I say this as it seems he may have been anticipating their arrival during the night’s events, though he does need to be introduced to his rescuers. It’s not like everybody knows what Umbrella does, and his reactions to the nights events are far too ordinary to that of an ordinary man.
He also seems undaunted by what he sees, implying that he may be somewhat used to this, and is too readily available to accept outlandish facts which are clearly not ordinary. Especially when told he has to retrieve the parts of a weird zombie baby in order to concoct a serum. Ethan is masterful with a variety of weaponry, and it wouldn’t be too shocking if he turned out to be an Umbrella employee.
Ethan’s character has certainly been set up in an interesting way, and I look forward to learning who he actually is.
Ending – Chris Redfield, Umbrella and What’s Next
The ending raised more questions than it answered, with many wondering if familiar series hero Chris Redfield has joined Umbrella, the company that he’s dedicated his life to defeating. This new Umbrella is the reborn Umbrella from Umbrella Corps (yes, the multiplayer-centric game that wasn’t very popular) but they still seem to be up to no good. Chris’ appearance has greatly changed and although Capcom have said that he’s still the same hero we know and love, it’s not uncommon to think that they’re misleading us — they did it with Ada Wong in Resident Evil 6, after all.
Ethan clearly knows them quite well and is secured by Umbrella — seemingly not taken hostage — and everything else is left open. Chris, Umbrella, Ethan, Mia, Zoe and Lucas all have much to answer for, and I’m looking forward to where Capcom take us next. First up though, is the “Not a Hero” DLC which stars Chris Redfield — well, unless Capcom are lying to us because I still don’t believe it’s our lovable boulder puncher supreme.
Thanks to fellow Rice Digital writer Oscar TK for working with me on this!
- Super Mario Odyssey Celebrates its One Year Anniversary - October 28, 2018
- Dragon Ball Z KAI Final Chapters Review (Anime) - October 28, 2018
- Resident Evil 2 Remake Gets a Steelbook Edition in Europe - October 24, 2018
