Resident Evil Village's ending is a twisty one, and though the game's only been out in the wild for a few days, theories are running rampant on social media. But, this recent discovery in the game has shocked players and unpicked some of the neatly tied-up threads of the story.
Spoilers for Resident Evil Village follow, so make like a banana and split if you're not done with the game yet. If you're on the fence about buying this one, why not watch our not-spoilery video review?
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In order to eliminate the Megamycete - the giant growth of mould that looks a little like a fetus - Chris Redfield sticks a detonator inside of it. Once Ethan has killed Mother Miranda, Chris and Ethan meet up again, but it's clear that Ethan is in bad shape. The villain did tear out his heart and kill him, thereby revealing through a dream sequence with Eveline that the character was not the same Ethan from the start of Resident Evil 7 and is in fact an Ethan-mould hybrid brought back to life by the regenerative powers of the bioweapon. Phew.
When Ethan has encountered small snags like losing a hand, he's just jammed it back on and rinsed it with a health med kit. Don't try this at home. However, he likely isn't able to regrow an entire heart, especially after the stress of the battle with Mother Miranda, and he soon realises that he won't be surviving this one. He takes the detonator from Chris and stays behind with the Megamycete to blow it up and end this for good. The end.
Or. If you hang about in the credits for Resident Evil Village, we see Rose Winters all grown up and paying tribute to her father's grave. She returns to the car and the shot lingers on the vehicle driving away along a road. There's someone else standing there, though, facing the vehicle down, and the driver seems to slow to greet the individual. With some elastic trickery called a Photo Mode, a player has discovered who is waiting for Rose on the road.
Is it totally out of the question that Ethan managed to survive a huge explosion that liquified a mould that was lurking underground for hundreds of years? Well. It's Ethan. The man shrugs off unhinged murderers, nine foot tall vampires, direwolves, and a creature made from magnetised metal. lalalegion on Reddit puts it succinctly: "The reason Capcom killed him off here was so that every future game can't just be solved with 'just send in Ethan Winters'." To be honest, the only way I see this working is if the mould wasn't totally eradicated and did recreate Ethan, but the thing is, he's still got a bloodied bandage on his hand from having his fingers chewed off. Wouldn't the mould be so generous as to give him two new shiny hands?
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Furthermore, Capcom has emphatically stated that "The father's story is over," which sounds very final to me. It's possible that Ethan's model is here as a simple placeholder for the real someone who was waiting for Rose Winters. We have heard that the Resident Evil 7 and Resident Evil Village are the first and second chapters in a trilogy, and after the rollercoaster ride that was the newest game, sign me up.
Featured Image Credit: CapcomTopics: News, Resident Evil, Capcom