In July 2017, systems engineer Ethan Winters received an email from his wife, who had been missing for three years. Mia Winters was believed to have died on a work trip, yet her message came from Dulvey, Louisiana — with a warning not to look for her. Ethan went anyway, driving through the swamp to a derelict plantation the locals called the “haunted house”, and from the moment he stepped through its rusted gate, the normal rules stopped applying.

Resident Evil 7: Biohazard was the biggest turning point in Capcom's series. After two action-heavy entries, the game returned to survival roots: a single location, a first-person view for the first time in a mainline entry, scarce resources, and fear that came from not knowing what waited behind the next door. It was also the first game to use Capcom's own RE Engine.

This article retells the full story of the main game, following the canonical choice of curing Mia, together with the two expansions Not a Hero and End of Zoe that close the fates of Lucas and Zoe. Details belonging to the alternate route — when Ethan chooses to cure Zoe — are clearly marked, because End of Zoe confirmed they are not part of the main timeline.

📌 Quick summary: Ethan Winters travels to the Baker estate in Dulvey, Louisiana to find his wife Mia, missing for three years, and is captured by the Mold-infected Baker family. Working with Zoe Baker, he crafts a serum, kills Jack and Marguerite, survives Lucas's traps, then chooses to cure Mia. On the wrecked tanker Annabelle, he discovers Eveline — the E-001 bioweapon in the form of a little girl — turned the Baker family into her “family”, then crafts the E-Necrotoxin and destroys Eveline with Chris Redfield's help.

A message from a wife dead for three years

Ethan found Mia locked in the guest house basement, gaunt, panicked, and repeatedly telling him to leave at once. She could not explain where she had been for three years, only repeating that the place was not safe. On the way out, Mia suddenly turned inexplicably violent: she stabbed Ethan's hand, threw him through a wall, then swung a chainsaw and cut off his left hand. Ethan fought back in self-defence, and believed he had killed his wife.

When Ethan woke, a strange woman's voice on the phone, calling herself Zoe, guided him to escape through the attic. But Mia came back to life — her severed hand seemingly never detached in any normal way — and attacked him again, before Jack Baker, the head of the family, appeared, knocked Ethan out, and dragged him to the main house. There, Zoe sewed Ethan's hand back on — the first clue that wounds here did not follow normal biology.

The opening raised all of the game's questions: what had Mia been doing for three years, and what had an ordinary farming family become? The answer lay in a wrecked ship, a shadowy organisation called The Connections, and a “child” who never grew up.

The last supper at the Baker house

Ethan woke up tied to a chair, facing a table full of things that could hardly be called food, surrounded by Jack, his wife Marguerite, their son Lucas, and a silent old woman in a wheelchair at the head of the table. Jack cut off Lucas's arm at the table just because his son dared to talk back — and then the arm grew back. Marguerite flew into a rage when Ethan refused to eat. The old woman said nothing, but her eyes followed Ethan throughout the meal.

Once the family left, Ethan escaped his ropes and began exploring the main house. It was both a home and a slaughterhouse: the living room hung with happy old family photos, while the basement was a “processing area” with human corpses and black fungus-covered creatures the game called Molded — people transformed by fungus into monsters. Ethan realised he was not merely locked in a house, but inside the territory of people-hunters who had been operating for three years.

Between escapes, Zoe contacted him again by phone. She revealed she was the Bakers' daughter, and that her family and Mia were all infected with the same “illness” — but this illness had a cure. It needed two serum ingredients: a head and an arm from a D-series creature, hidden in the old house in the swamp. Ethan set off, while the old woman in the wheelchair occasionally appeared at the end of a hallway, then vanished.

Jack Baker — the predator who cannot be killed

Jack was the nightmare that defined the first half of the game. He smashed through walls, squeezed through gaps no one could fit through, and got up from wounds that would kill any human: being hit by a car, set on fire, shot in the head. Every time Ethan thought he had escaped, Jack's heavy footsteps sounded behind him.

Jack's design deliberately recalled Jack Torrance in The Shining: a family father turned stalker inside his own home, frightening and faintly tragic at once. Director Koshi Nakanishi and producer Jun Takeuchi once said the dinner scene was originally judged “too normal” and had to be reshot to make Jack more violent.

Later, the player learned Jack was not born a monster. Before 2014, he was an ordinary father who rescued Mia and Eveline from the shipwreck out of kindness — and that very kindness brought the Mold into his home. Jack's immortality was not a power, but a symptom: the fungus kept rebuilding his body, and only a specially made serum could break the cycle of regeneration. When Ethan finally used the serum on Jack, he did not scream with hatred but came to his senses for a moment, begging Ethan to kill Eveline so his family could rest in peace.

The old house, the insects, and Marguerite

The old house lay deep in the swamp, separated from the main house by a wild garden and rotting wooden bridges. This was Marguerite's territory. She did not hunt with strength like Jack, but with persistence: whispering through walls, releasing swarms of insects from a nest inside her body, and turning the house into a living trap.

While searching for a serum ingredient, Ethan watched a tape of Mia: she had once fled Marguerite in this very old house, and the tape showed Marguerite had been stalking Mia for a long time. The confrontation ended when Marguerite fully transformed into a giant spider-like creature in the greenhouse, and Ethan was forced to burn her to death with a homemade flamethrower. Her death brought no sense of victory: she died still calling out for her “family”, as if to the very end she believed she was protecting her children.

This chapter was also where apparitions of a little girl appeared more thickly. Ethan saw the girl standing at the end of the old house hallway, heard childish giggling in the nursery, and found rooms decorated for a child — even though the Bakers had no young child. That girl was Eveline, watching Ethan's every step to make sure he did not leave her “family”.

Lucas Baker and the deadly “Happy Birthday” game

After Marguerite, Ethan found Lucas waiting for him in the boathouse: not hunting him like his parents, but inviting him to “play a game”. This was the chapter where RE7 showed the most of its Saw influence. Lucas had booby-trapped the boathouse with cameras, explosives, and a series of “Happy Birthday” puzzles that forced Ethan to choose between burning himself and blowing up.

Lucas was different from Jack and Marguerite in an important way: he was never truly Eveline's puppet. The game later confirmed Lucas had been in contact with The Connections since before the infection, helping them monitor Eveline while pretending to be controlled. His cruelty was his own. The tape he recorded of himself torturing Mia was the most disturbing evidence: he treated the family's pain as entertainment.

Lucas captured Zoe and Mia and forced Ethan through the final death trap, then fled in a helicopter before Ethan could use the serum on him. Meanwhile, Zoe had made two doses of serum.

One dose of serum, two people to save

The scene at the dock was the emotional peak of RE7. Jack, transformed into a giant Mold monster after the first serum dose failed to stop him fully, cornered Ethan. Ethan injected him with one dose, Jack crumbled into a pile of fungus, and only one dose remained — for two people: Mia, Ethan's wife, and Zoe, the girl who had guided him the whole way and whose family had been destroyed because of Eveline.

The player had to choose. The canonical choice, confirmed by End of Zoe, was to cure Mia. Zoe accepted with bitterness but no hatred, telling Ethan to go and to send help back for her. Ethan promised. He and Mia boarded the boat and fled through the swamp toward the wrecked ship, the Annabelle.

The consequence came at once on the river. Ethan and Mia passed the wrecked ship and were attacked, falling into the water. If Ethan had chosen Zoe instead, the alternate route would have played out in reverse: Zoe would have been turned to stone and killed by Eveline on the boat, while Mia — feeling betrayed — would have lost the will to resist Eveline and forced Ethan to kill her on the ship herself. That route was confirmed by End of Zoe as non-canonical.

The wreck of the Annabelle — Mia recovers her memory

On the ship, the game switched control to Mia. This was the most valuable storytelling section of the game, because it made the player live through Mia's past. The truth was: Mia was not a “nanny” as she had told Ethan. She was a covert operative of The Connections, escorting Eveline — the E-001 bioweapon in the form of a little girl, capable of controlling minds — aboard the Annabelle to another laboratory, together with her colleague Alan Droney. On October 5, 2014, the ship hit a storm, Eveline rebelled, killed Alan, and infected the entire crew. Mia was also infected, but kept enough awareness — until the ship broke apart and she and Eveline washed ashore, where Jack Baker rescued them.

From October 10, 2014, Eveline used the Baker family as her new “family”. She planted Mold in them through food and contact, first controlling Marguerite, then Jack, then the children. Within about two weeks, the whole family was under her control, and the “hunting” of travellers passing through Dulvey began — the fungus feeding Eveline by bringing her new people to control. Zoe, the youngest child, resisted longest because she was infected later and less severely, which explained why she could still call Ethan for help.

Recovering her memory, Mia gave Ethan a vial of Eveline's tissue and sealed him off, sacrificing herself so he could reach the salt mine laboratory where The Connections had experimented. This act redeemed Mia: she was not a liar by nature, but a person trapped between a mission and a family she had never wanted to destroy.

The salt mine, the E-Necrotoxin, and the old woman in the wheelchair

Ethan entered the salt mine — the Abercrombie mine, converted by The Connections into a laboratory — and found the research records. Eveline was the first successful E-Type bioweapon, designed to make enemies voluntarily obey through a craving for a “family”. But there was a fatal flaw: without regular maintenance doses, her body aged at 25 times the normal rate.

This explained the game's biggest twist: the old woman in the wheelchair, whom the player had assumed was the Bakers' grandmother, was Eveline herself. Three years without maintenance had turned the “10-year-old girl” into a decrepit old woman, still trying to keep her “family” together with the last of her strength. On the way back to the guest house through the tunnel, Eveline poured all her power into hallucinations to stop Ethan. He pressed on, injecting the toxin into Eveline in the attic. The illusion shattered, the old woman appeared in her true form, crying that everyone hated her — then her body broke apart and merged with the fungus throughout the house, becoming a giant monster.

Ethan, out of ammunition and strength, received a weapon dropped from a helicopter: the Albert-01 pistol with RAMROD rounds, specially made to kill bioweapons. He shot Eveline until the monster collapsed into ash. A helicopter landed, and Chris Redfield, who had survived the Spencer Mansion, stepped out in BSAA gear bearing the logo of a reformed Umbrella — the beginning of the next chapter of the series.

The fates of the characters

Ethan Winters survived Dulvey with Mia in the canonical ending, but the price came late: Resident Evil Village later revealed that Ethan had actually died at his first encounter with Jack, and his body from then on was only Mold reconstructed into human form. In RE7, he was the most ordinary hero of the series — no army, no special training, just one reason not to run: his wife was inside that house.

Mia Winters was rescued and left with Ethan. Jack Baker and Marguerite Baker died as victims of Eveline, not as monsters by nature — their bodies were burned and buried in the ruins of the house. Lucas Baker escaped to the salt mine, where Not a Hero followed Chris Redfield's pursuit: Lucas set traps, tried to transmit Eveline's data to The Connections, and was finally killed by Chris before he could send it.

Zoe Baker was the character whose fate the expansions redeemed. In the canonical ending she stayed behind, waiting for Ethan's promised help. End of Zoe told what happened next: Eveline's calcification spread through her body, but her uncle Joe Baker — a man living alone in the swamp, untouched by the infection — fought through the swamp, killed the mutated “Swamp Man” Jack, and used the cure to save Zoe completely. The expansion ended with Zoe receiving the phone call Ethan had promised. Eveline died in the guest house attic, her body turned to ash. Chris Redfield returned to the front of the series, but with a new mission: to watch over the reformed Umbrella, the organisation he did not trust, while cleaning up the bioweapons it had left behind.

Common misconceptions

Is Eveline really E-002?

No. Eveline carries the designation E-001, the first successful E-Type bioweapon of The Connections, and the research records in the salt mine and the official game wiki both state this code clearly, with no other E-002 in her file, and no document in the game ever uses a different code for her.

The E-002 confusion may come from vaguely remembering the “E-series” without the number. In the game, every document about Eveline calls her E-001, and that very number “001” underlines the point: Eveline was the first prototype, unfinished, so her body aged quickly and lost control without maintenance doses.

Did Chris Redfield join Umbrella?

No. Chris did not join Umbrella; he worked alongside the reformed Umbrella because the BSAA assigned him to supervise it, and he never trusted the organisation he had spent his life fighting. The BSAA sent him precisely because he distrusted Umbrella and would report honestly on its activities.

This was the most controversial twist when the game launched: the Umbrella logo on the rescue helicopter made many people think Chris had “switched sides”. Not a Hero made it clear: Chris did not trust the new Umbrella, he only worked with it because the BSAA sent him to supervise. Later, that very distrust pushed Chris into conflict with the BSAA in Village.

Is curing Zoe instead of Mia the “bad” ending?

No, it is not simply a “bad” ending; it is an alternate route that End of Zoe confirmed as non-canonical, but it reveals a truth the main route hides about Mia's will to resist. It is, however, the route the story itself treats as a dead end.

However, calling it a “bad” ending is not enough. The cure-Zoe route showed: if Ethan chose Zoe, Mia would feel betrayed and lose the will to resist Eveline, forcing Ethan to kill his wife himself on the ship. Both choices had someone pay a price — the only difference was who paid it.

Were the Bakers always killers?

No. Before October 2014, the Bakers were an ordinary family in Dulvey, and it was rescuing Mia and Eveline from the shipwreck that brought the Mold into their home, and they had never killed anyone before that fateful night, before Eveline ever entered their lives.

The clearest evidence is in Daughters: on the night Eveline arrived, Jack still planned to call the authorities after sheltering two strangers from the storm, while Zoe worried about getting clean clothes for the little girl. Within about two weeks, the Mold fully took over the family, and the brutal acts that followed were all Eveline's orders, except for Lucas, who was already cruel and merely used the fungus as an excuse. That is also why the deaths of Jack and Marguerite carry tragedy: they were Eveline's first victims, before Ethan.

Theories & mysteries

The biggest mystery RE7 deliberately left open was who The Connections were. The game only said it was the organisation behind Eveline, with roots in the US government, and powerful enough to cover up the Dulvey disaster with a “gas leak” story. Only in Village did players learn Eveline was created from a Mold sample of Miranda — mother of Eva, her dead daughter — and that The Connections were merely middlemen trading in bioweapon technology.

Another mystery concerned Ethan's body. Throughout RE7, Ethan's hand was reattached, his wounds healed impossibly fast, and he survived injuries no human could. Village answered this: Ethan had died at the very start, and the “Ethan” the player controlled was a Mold copy. That revelation reframes the whole game: the player was not saving a human, but a creature fighting to stay human.

A third mystery, still unanswered, is whether the Dulvey Mold was fully destroyed. Eveline died, but the fungus had spread through the swamp, the mine, and the bodies of the Bakers. Village showed the Mold surviving in Rosemary, Ethan and Mia's daughter — suggesting the story of the Mold did not end in Dulvey.

The legacy of Resident Evil 7

RE7 saved the series. After Resident Evil 6 was criticised for leaning too far into action, RE7 returned to horror, and its first-person view became the template for Village and for the remakes' camera experiments. Commercially, it was also a success: by June 30, 2025, the game had sold 15.4 million units, the second best-selling title in the franchise.

In terms of story, RE7 was also a bridge between two eras of the series: it closed the old Umbrella era with Blue Umbrella, while opening the Mold era with Eveline, Miranda and Rosemary. Anyone who wants to understand why Chris Redfield went from a S.T.A.R.S. soldier at the Spencer Mansion to the cold man in Village must pass through Dulvey — and anyone who wants to understand the Raccoon City disaster in Resident Evil 2, Chris's search for his sister in Code: Veronica, or Chris's global war in Resident Evil 6 will see the same thread: an ordinary man facing an organisation that never really dies, only changes its name.

For Vietnamese players, RE7 also marked the moment the series stopped being about zombies and became about family — not the family you are born into, but the family someone forces you to belong to. And in Dulvey, that difference cost everything. Read more on the Resident Evil series page.