Major Spoilers ahead for both Resident Evil 7: Biohazard and Resident Evil: Village.
If you found your way here, either you've already beaten Capcom's highly anticipated release Resident Evil: Village and want a little context for how it all went down, or you just want to know the story without experiencing it hands-on for yourself. Either way is cool with us. But if you happened to wander in here accidentally, allow us to step into the stylish heels of a 9'6" vampire lady and chase you away. Spoilers follow from here on out.
Much of the marketing for Resident Evil: Village centered on Lady Dimitrescu, a.k.a. Tall Vampire Lady, and her deadly daughters, but that was merely a brilliant play by Capcom to give thirsty fans just enough memes to keep them distracted. Sure, Castle Dimitrescu takes up a good chunk of the early game, as does the titular village itself, but there is much, much more to the rest of the game in terms of lore, exploration, battles, creatures, characters, and collectibles. RE: Village is relatively huge compared to recent titles that came before it, and it's got the absolute bombshell lore drops to match. Here's your last chance to turn back, since beyond here be monsters, explainers, and spoilers.
The Story So Far
Since RE:V picks up after the events of Resident Evil 7: Biohazard, to fully understand what's happening to protagonist Ethan Winters in this new adventure, you have to know what he's already been through. His previous survival story took him to Dulvey, Louisiana in search of his missing wife, Mia. She'd been kidnapped and held hostage by the mad Baker family in their swampy plantation manor. Something is ... not right with the Bakers, and it's not just their Texas Chainsaw Massacre-meets-Deliverance aesthetic. Turns out, they have all been infected by a mysterious new Bio Organic Weapon (B.O.W.) that has taken over their minds, bodies, and manor house. And both Mia and Ethan are caught up in the corruption.
By the end of RE7, Ethan managed to uncover the source of the corruption, the B.O.W. by the codename E-001, or Eveline. Created as a genetically modified human on behalf of the criminal organization known as The Connections, Eveline first appeared as a 10-year-old girl, the better to blend in with refugees and orphans in cities targeted for bio-terrorist attacks. While Eveline was being transported to a secure location, looked after in part by Mia Winters (unbeknownst to her husband Ethan), a storm caused their ship to capsize. After being rescued by the well-meaning Jack Baker, Eveline used her powers to infect Mia and the family with Mold, a super-microorganism that grants mind-control powers, has a long-lived collective memory, and can even reanimate bodies or form them from Mold itself. (It's also been dubbed the Megamycete in the English localization, but what a mouthful.)
After Eveline's rapid aging accelerated, she took on the appearance of a rather sedentary and elderly woman whom Ethan didn't see as a threat at first blush. That soon changed. Having endured great personal trauma, Ethan was able to put Eveline down for good before he and Mia were rescued by Chris Redfield and the B.S.A.A. (Bioterrorism Security Assessment Alliance) team, coordinated with Blue Umbrella. This allowed Mia and Ethan to pursue some semblance of a normal life. They went about as far from Louisiana as they could, traveling to Eastern Europe to settle down and raise a family. It's "happily ever after" for a while, until things go horribly, horribly wrong...
To the Village & Beyond
Since we're here to talk about the ending of Resident Evil: Village, we can sum up the main events of the game first. (Again, spoilers.) Ethan's fairy tale family life is violently interrupted by the B.S.A.A. and Chris Redfield, of all people, who brutally guns down his wife Mia and kidnaps his newborn baby, Rosemary, along with Ethan. Their orders are to eliminate Mia, take Rosemary and Ethan into custody, and spirit them off to safety. That ... doesn't happen. What does happen is that Chris' convoy gets attacked, Ethan escapes into the titular village to find Rose, and he suffers endless torment in horrific battles against all manner of creatures from gothic legend and lore. Is it all worth it in the end? Well, that depends on how you feel about Ethan's fate in RE:V and the game's connections to the distant past, present, and near future of the franchise. Last last chance to turn back.
Once Ethan has bested the four lords of the village -- Lady Dimitrescu and her daughters, dollmaker Donna Beneviento and her delightfully dark-spirited puppet Angie, the morose muck-dweller Moreau, and the Frakenstein-meets-Magneto metal-wielder Heisenberg -- he comes face to face with the big bad herself, Mother Miranda ... who promptly does what no one since Jack Baker could do. She kills Ethan. Like, straight up kills him. She impales him with her mold tendrils and rips his heart directly out of his chest before bathing in its blood. You can't argue the point; Ethan's dead. Chris repeats it, his team confirms it, and the game itself puts an official stamp on it. How? By giving you control of Chris Redfield!
Admittedly, this twist is one of the few moments in RE:V that might have people putting the controller down temporarily. It's a rough turn of events. Not only does the game kill off Ethan, a character you've been in control of for nearly two full games at this point, it does it without any agency from you. Insult to injury, you're now in control of Chris, the dude who gunned down your wife, stole your baby, kidnapped you, and basically kickstarted this whole mess. Except... did he really? Don't worry, the incoming lore drop explains everything ... right after you get to enjoy a pretty badass run as Chris in Resident Evil's take on tactical, military missions. (Did we mention this game also features "Mercenaries" mode in endgame? Yup!)
After mowing through what remains of the village, currently in the process of being destroyed by Mother Miranda's massive mold creature, and easily dispatching a boss rush, Chris just so happens to discover the origins of the Big Bad and manages to rescue Mia Winters in the same stroke. Yup, that Mia Winters! Seems that she's been held captive (again...) by Mother Miranda so that the shapeshifting immortal could take Mia's place in order to spirit away with Rosemary. Why? Because, roughly 100 years ago, Miranda lost her own daughter to the pandemic known as the Spanish Flu. She's been looking for a way to revive her ever since, experimenting with a powerful mold species that she discovered in the mountainous region of the area for the last 100 years. Turns out that Baby Rosemary (see what they did there?) is the perfect vessel to reanimate Miranda's daughter Eva, in part because of her particular parentage... Stick with me here.
Recall that Mia was already infected with Eveline's Mold but was also cured thanks to the serum. Now here's the kicker: Ethan was actually killed by Jack Baker during the Dulvey Incident and only survived because the Mold resurrected him, mutating him into a walking, talking, mold-supercolony approximation of Ethan Winters. (Which "explains" why Ethan can take as much punishment as he does, why a little bottle of healing solution can reattach his limbs, and why everyone in a position of power in the village knows all about him... more on that in a second.) That also means that the Mold-cured Mia and the Mold-Man Ethan got together (gross) and had a baby who is, essentially, a natural evolution of something that The Connections wanted to create in the lab, something Miranda wants in order to restore her dead daughter Eva. Rosemary is the evolved from of Eveline, one who is both connected to the Mold super-colony and its collective memory but also able to fully control it once she comes of age. (I honestly thought this whole game was a mold-influenced hallucination caused by Rose after hearing the fairy tale bedtime story.)
So, again, shapeshifter Miranda (who also appears as the old hag, the youthful Mother Miranda, and even as a flock of crows) kidnapped Mia and took her place in order to steal Rose away. Ethan was never the wiser, but Chris got there first. So no, Chris and his Hound Wolf Squad didn't gun down Mia, just Miranda disguised as Mia. But the joke's on them because Miranda then pretended to be dead until she resurrected during the transport and killed Chris' teammates, spiriting Rosemary away and leaving Ethan for dead. Got all that? Good! But wait, there's more!
The Deep Roots of the Village and the Origin of Umbrella
Before Ethan learns his life-changing revelation, the truth about Rosemary, and the fact that Mia is alive and well, Chris discovers even more devastating lore. Longtime Resident Evil fans likely know all about Dr. Oswell/Ozwell E. Spencer, the founder of the Umbrella Corporation and the discoverer and developer of the Progenitor Virus, which pretty much led to all the mad scientist creations in the franchise. Not so for Village. What we learn at the end of the game is that Miranda was actually Spencer's superior, both in age and in microbiological research, having started her experimentation with the semi-sentient mold species before Spencer was even born. She took him on as an apprentice, but the two soon parted ways over a disagreement: Spencer wanted to shape mankind's evolution and world politics through the use of virally derived mutants, while Miranda sought to use her mold-based discoveries to find a way to resurrect her lost daughter, eventually collaborating with The Connections in order to create Eveline and unexpectedly cause the Dulvey Incident. They seemed to have parted ways amicably enough, with Spencer using the symbol of the Four Lords of the Village as the iconic logo for his Umbrella Corporation (as well as his own family's crest...)
That's ... huge. It basically adds another branch to the evolutionary tree of the Resident Evil franchise, one in which mold forms the basis of mad science instead of, or alongside, a virus. And Miranda didn't waste any time experimenting with that mold. In a credits sequence that, honestly, Capcom should be ashamed of, it shows Miranda distributing her untested mold concoction through plague doctors to sick and dying villagers afflicted by the flu, not to heal them, but to experiment on them. (Ah yes, the scientists are always the villains; who can save us but military jackboots with lots of guns?) Through numerous in-game documents and run-ins with the Lords of the Village and their minions, we learn that they are also creations of Miranda and her Mold experiments, which explains why they're aware of Ethan and his true nature, even if he is not.
It seems that coming into contact with the Mold vastly increased Miranda's own intelligence and abilities as she tapped into its collective consciousness. It remembers everything and everyone it touches, and is incredibly hard to eradicate. Miranda's early experiments with the Mold mostly killed her test subjects, so she opted to use a bridge organism instead. Enter: The Cadou parasite. Meaning "gift" or "present" in Romanian, the Cadou was cultured and grown from the Mold and then implanted into test subjects. Many still died. Most who didn't were turned into Lycans or other regionally specific creatures of the night. A chosen few, based on their bloodlines or existing mutations, developed powers similar to Miranda herself.
Lady Dimitrescu was first among them, her blood disorder amplified by the mutations, requiring her to consume blood and flesh, while also allowing her to grow substantially larger and maintain control over her transformation. She often aidied Miranda in experiments, like those that created her daughters. The other Lords -- Donna Beneviento, Salvatore Moreau, and Karl Heisenberg -- soon came into their own as well. (It's worth noting that Heisenberg had his own machinations, shall we say, to take down Miranda. He used her research along with his own metal-bending powers to create an army of armed and armored monstrosities... which Chris Redfield promptly blew up.) Powerful as they all were, Ethan dispatched them in short order. Miranda thanked him for disposing of her defective children and for bringing Rose to her, along with some of his own blood, to complete the ceremony and resurrect Eva. But ... it didn't work.
Ethan was able to defeat Miranda once and for all, rescuing Rose in the process. Now knowing what he was, and how little time he had left (apparently), Ethan chose to stay behind and face down the Megamycete in a final confrontation, giving Chris, Rose, Mia, and the B.S.A.A. a chance to escape. A final explosion wiped out the village, taking Ethan and the Megamycete with it. (The credits confirm, "The Father's story ends here.") But there are still some loose ends to tie up, and to do that, we'll need a time jump.
Rosemary, Heaven Restores You in Life
(It's worth noting that Chris and the Hound Wolf Squad recovered a B.S.A.A. soldier's body when they escaped the village, only to discover that it was a B.O.W. They opted to change course for the organization's European headquarters to get answers. We'll hopefully find out what happened in the interim, because that's been left unsolved at the moment.)
Since this is Resident Evil, we don't know exactly how far forward in time the post-credits scene jumps. It could be a realtime ~15-20 years, placing us in the 2030s, or, due to Rosemary's possible accelerated aging, it might only be a few years after the events of RE:Village. None of this is confirmed just yet. What we do know is that Rosemary has kept her father Ethan's jacket with her all this time as a memento; the same goes for the Village of Shadows bedtime story book. Oh, and we also know that she possessess powers stronger than Eveline and is currently working for the B.S.A.A. under the tutelage and training of Chris Redfield. Rosemary is kept on a short leash by the B.S.A.A., who barely let her pay her father's grave a visit after his birthday passes; they also always have a sniper targeting her in case her powers get the better of her...
That's all well and good since it means we'll probably get to see a Rosemary-centric DLC or solo story in the future. It also means the Winters Family saga will continue, likely along its mold-focused course. We may not know what's next, but this is an intriguing setup for things to come in the Resident Evil universe. Rest assured, the end of Village is likely just the beginning of a whole new evolutionary branch for the franchise.