In a theory article that i had written in some weeks past, I made some comments in my last article about how at the time I didn’t want Chris Redfield to die for Ethan Winters. After playing the game and much deliberation on the matter I have decided to reconsider this comment. This article is filled with spoilers from the new Resident Evil 7 game. If you have not played this and do not want it spoiled for you then I suggest not reading any further than this point. If you have played this game, than I suggest reading and commenting on this matter if you so desire.

In my last comment in an earlier article that Ethan Winters did not deserve the right to live on if Chris Redfield were to die for him. Well it turns out however, that “Chris” did not die and is actually working for the now revived Umbrella Corporation. Who has taken over Umbrella is still a mystery as well as the fact of Chris’s character even being Chris due to a possible 180 change or overhaul on the characters appearance all together, but this one matter is meant for an entirely new article. Until this is or is not confirmed in the next DLC chapter by Capcom, I will be referring to this character as “Redfield” if need be for now since there is conclusive evidence of him calling himself “Redfield” at the end of the game, but more on this at a later time .

Ethan Winters is not as bad of a character as I once thought for a number of reasons. First one being is that he basically stuck his neck out there to find his wife Mia, who winded up lying to him about why she was at the Baker home in the first place. At first I had a problem with this because it was already established that she was the kitchen killer, even with this knowledge though it was not as clear cut in stone as they had made it seem to be. After the release of the game however, Mia purpose became apparent. It was not only a startling revelation, but was also aggravating one to say the least. Mia was in fact working for another company (possibly the company Ada’s working for?) that had purchased Evelyn and it was her job to keep watch over her. Even though she had sent the video for Ethan to not come to find her, Evelyn had her hand in controlling not just the Bakers but Mia as well. Meaning Evelyn as Mia had contacted Ethan to come and find her. One cannot help but feel bad for Ethan Winters in this sense since he had no way of knowing who Evelyn was, what she was capable of, and didnt know what Mia was actually doing there in the first place. It was both Mia and Evelyn that had their hands in bringing Ethan over to the Baker house, even though Mia was under Evelyn’s control when this had happened. Ultimately, It was Mia’s lies and her forgetting about recent events leading up to Ethan’s appearance that led up to Ethan’s rather unfortunate fate.

Secondly, Ethan who was the hunter becomes the hunted as he tries to escape death from the possessed Bakers and his wife Mia. Lucas Baker, who we come to find out is the second member of the family aside from Zoe Baker not under Evelyn’s control makes him a far more sinister villain all together that Ethan has to escape from. We all came to find out later from notes in the game that Lucas was not all there in the head in the first place, being a rather smart individual coupled with being a rapist and a murderer all at the same time. For a regular guy, Ethan puts up with a lot considering he had no relative military or any other expertise to help navigate through this horrific Investigation Discovery’esque mystery. He was merely a product of his wife’s own mistakes that unfortunately caused him not only to be infected by the Molded virus, but also having a tooth taken out and a hand being taken and sawed off only to be sewed back on. I’m pretty sure a character of this nature wouldn’t have anticipated such grotesque acts happening to them. Nonetheless I still believe though that the only problem with this character was his own naivety. Though I fully understand that some aspects derived from Evil Dead references and other film realms of horror , if you are going to an unknown location to find a missing person you do not show up without a weapon of some sort to defend yourself with, much less alone. I’m not saying that this would have combated any further damage done to the character in the story, however it would have been more realistic for him to have had some type of weaponry or person with him considering he did not know who these people were or what they had done to Mia. Still, overall the character was good for someone that had no type of relation to any of the characters and sadly is most likely a character Capcom is not going to ever use again. I would have liked to see him again in other games considering he reminded me so much of the main protagonist Ash Williams from the Evil Dead Series. Would I have preferred him over “Redfield” if he had died? I would against my biased better judgment say yes, since he had proven himself throughout the course of the game as someone that could eventually become a part of the rest of the franchise characters. Also I want to take note of the fact that he had dealt with more than some of the original characters had to ever face, so I would say he deserves a pass in my book as a character that I would have liked to stay for future games.

Lastly, I want to bring up how Ethan’s fate remained unresolved at the end of the game. This was something that made me really think about Ethan’s character and what really had to force me to take back some of the things I had said about him in my previous theory article. He gets onto an Umbrella Corporation plane with his wife Mia and something that sounds like a phone rings at the end of the scene sequence. Those who have played any game from this series before already know that nothing good can come of this. We could very well end up with a similar like case that we had experienced with Lisa Trevor in the first game or a Steve Burnside situation from Code Veronica, where him and his wife become nothing more than prey to experimentation. While I will say that Mia may have deserved this due to her own mistakes in working with Evelyn and for a shady company, Ethan was just a guy placed into a situation he had no part in other than him going to retrieve his wife from the Baker House to save her. He had no idea what he was getting himself into, thus his fate seems even darker because he possibly survived all of this only to be nothing more than a test subject for whatever this new virus is.

What are your thoughts on this matter? Let me know in the comments section below.