Resident Evil Village synopsis, ending, post-credit scene explained

Resident Evil Village's crazy ride has won over fans of the series to become one of the most popular Resident Evil games ever. Capcom said Tuesday it shipped more than 3 million copies worldwide of the newest entry in the survival horror franchise across all platforms.  

Players enjoying the scares and gore in Resident Evil Village since its release on Friday for PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox Oneand PC came to terms with the plot of the game that hearkens back to Resident Evil 7, where protagonist Ethan Winters made his debut. Series mainstay Chris Redfield plays a big part in the Resident Evil Village with his shocking actions at the start of the game leading to a lot of questions. 

There's a lot to unpack, so let's get started. 

Be warned, SPOILERS follow.

What happened in Resident Evil Village? 

Ethan and now-wife Mia have been moved from the US to a village in Transylvania, Romania, for their protection by Chris Redfield. It's been three years since then and they now have a child, Rose. When Rose is six months old, on a seemingly regular evening, the night is disrupted with a sniper shot to Mia's chest. After a barrage of gunfire, Mia is on the floor dead and Chris comes into the house and proceeds to shoot her dead body a few more times. A confused Ethan is taken into custody by Chris' team, who also abducts Rose. As Ethan is being transported, something crashes the van Ethan he's in, and he has to go to a village to find Rose and Mia. 

Ethan comes across the village's supposed guardian, Mother Miranda, and her disciples: Lady Dimitrescu, Donna Beneviento, Salvatore Moreau and Karl Heisenberg. After taking down one after another, Ethan finds Rose's body parts have been put into containers for some ritual. After collecting all four, he learns why Mother Miranda did this (see below) and that she was impersonating Mia when Chris' team attacked her at the start of the game. In a short segment where the players control Chris, Mia is found, and she explains that Ethan is actually made of the same mind-controlling mold used by Eve, the bioweapon antagonist from Resident Evil 7. 

After he destroyed Mother Miranda, Ethan makes the ultimate sacrifice again to save both his wife and newly found daughter, thus ending the game. But there are some lingering questions. 

What's the deal with Mother Miranda?

The game's main villain lost her daughter Eva to the Spanish flu, a real-life pandemic that ran from 1918 to 1921 and caused an estimated 50 million deaths. Stricken with grief, Miranda wandered into a cave to die and happened upon the Megamycete -- the source of the mold from Resident Evil 7 and Village. 

Its regenerative properties made her immortal, and she realized it absorbed the consciousness of those who died. That meant Miranda could bring her daughter Eva back to life. She started experimenting on the villagers as she sought the perfect vessel.

The "Mia" Chris killed in the game's opening was actually Miranda in disguise. She kidnapped the real Mia Winters, wife of protagonist Ethan Winters, and used her for experiments, eventually taking her place in order to snatch their daughter Rose. The Winters' baby, being the child of parents who'd been infected by mold, was apparently the ideal vessel for Eva's return.

Is Ethan Winters really dead? 

In a move likely to surprise everyone playing the game, Miranda removed Ethan's heart like a Mortal Kombat fatality. As he seemingly laid dead, a vision of Eveline, the antagonist from the last game, appeared to him. 

She might look like a little girl, but Eveline was actually a bioweapon with power over mind-controlling mold. She was created by The Connections, a criminal group, after Miranda supplied them with a sample of the mold. Ethan killed Eveline in the previous game's final battle after she mutated into a giant mold beast.

In Village, Eveline shows Ethan a quick flashback revealing that after his fight with a possessed Mia at the start of Resident Evil 7, family patriarch Jack Baker killed him with his "Welcome to the family, son" punch and stomp to the head. However, thanks to Eveline's mold, Ethan essentially became a "super" being with the ability to heal himself and attaching torn-off limbs quite easily with healing items. This power isn't quite as flashy as the abilities of the rest of Eveline's victims, but it was enough for Ethan to stop them all. 

In Village, we get a clue about Ethan's status early in the game. When Lady Dimitrescu feeds on his blood during their first encounter, she says it's "starting to go a little stale."

After Eveline's revelation, Ethan comes back to life and defeats Miranda. With his body failing, he makes one final sacrifice to make sure Mia and his daughter Rose are safe -- he destroys the Megamycete, seemingly cutting off the source of Miranda's power and ending her for good.

So is Ethan really dead? He's about as dead as a character can be in a game about zombies. It seems like Capcom did kill him off, as we see a grown-up Rose visit his grave and the final message saying "The father's story is now done." But with so many organizations developing bioweapons, it's possible our faceless hero could turn up in Resident Evil 9 or some future game. 

What will happen with Rose? 

If Ethan doesn't come back for the next Resident Evil game, his daughter appears to be a possible replacement. 

The final scene flashes forward to a grownup Rose, implying she became an agent with the new Umbrella under the tutelage of Chris Redfield. She also wields some sort of power, which was the reason why mother Miranda kidnapped her. Rose's powers are most likely equivalent to Eveline's use of mold in Resident Evil 7, since the agent who tracked her mockingly calls her "Eveline." 

It also seems that a sniper was prepared to shoot Rose if she got out of control, but the agent tells them to stand down.

As for whether we'll see her in Resident Evil 9, it's up in the air. There are still a lot of the Resident Evil characters we haven't seen in some time -- aside from the remakes -- like Claire Redfield, Leon Kennedy and Jill Valentine. 

Who was in the final scene? 

As Rose and the agent who finds her drive off in the distance, there looks to be someone walking on the street in the opposite direction. It seems the vehicle stopped next to the person walking. Using the in-game photo mode, it appears the person is Ethan, as evident by the hand wounds. 

There are two theories on this. One is that Ethan did survive and took the 15-year route to make it to his own gravesite. The second, and likely theory is that Capcom simply reused his character model to troll players. We won't know what is the truth until the release of some downloadable content or Resident Evil 9. 

What happened with the BSAA?

When players briefly take control of Chris towards the end of the game, there are multiple mentions of the BSAA, or Bioterrorism Security Assessment Alliance. 

Longtime Resident Evil fans will remember the introduction of the organization in Resident Evil 5, which brought back Chris as a member of the BSAA. The UN-backed group tracks down bioweapons and destroys them, but for some reason, the BSAA has started using them as soldiers, as evidenced by a zombie in military gear it deployed to the village. 

Just like how Umbrella went from bad company to good company in Resident Evil 7, maybe the BSAA flipped as well. The BSAA could also be a focus of some future downloadable content for Resident Evil Village, but Capcom has yet to announce any such plans. 

What's with the Umbrella logo? 

One of the big questions raised in the early trailers for Resident Evil Village centered on the Umbrella logo found in a stone structure. At the end of the game, we learn that Oswell Spencer, one of the founders of the Umbrella Corporation, visited the village when he was a medical student, some years before the formation of the company. 

Spencer was inspired by the umbrella-looking design on the Giant's Chalice at the village and decided that would be the logo for his company. 

Seeing how Miranda was infecting villagers with the mold gave him the idea to use a virus to further human evolution. Her plan to resurrect her daughter wasn't quite ambitious enough for Spencer. He parted ways with Miranda and discovered the Progenitor virus in Africa (as seen in Resident Evil 5), which led to the development of the T-virus that was the start of the zombie outbreak in the original Resident Evil. 

This usage of the logo has little to do with the story of Resident Evil Village and is more of an Easter egg for longtime fans. However, its presence is dripping with symbolic meaning, since Spencer's encounter with Miranda at an impressionable time inspired him to research viruses. Miranda's quest to resurrect her daughter indirectly kicked off the events of the whole series and is the reason bioterrorism is a constant threat in the Resident Evil universe.

When did Miranda replace Mia? Didn't Ethan notice there was something up with his wife?

It's hard to determine when the switch happened. Considering Rose is still an infant, Miranda probably took over Mia within the past few weeks or even months. 

As for why Ethan didn't notice, well he is a little slow. He does have mold for brains after all, but he's still a badass.