Ethan Winters: the Faceless Father of Resident Evil 7 and Village

Ethan Winters is the protagonist of Resident Evil 7 and Resident Evil Village, an ordinary civilian with no training who goes after his missing wife and finds a family rotting from the inside out. He's the first lead in the series who isn't a cop, a soldier or an agent, and for most of his two games he has no idea what's happening to him. (Resident Evil 7: Biohazard; Resident Evil Village)

Who is Ethan Winters?#

Ethan is an everyman with a quiet life and a wife who disappeared three years before Resident Evil 7 begins. Mia told him she was going away on a babysitting job and never came back. What he didn't know was that she worked for a criminal bioweapons syndicate, The Connections, and had been escorting Eveline when the tanker carrying them wrecked off the Louisiana coast. (Resident Evil 7: Biohazard)

That gap between what Ethan knows and what everyone around him knows runs through both of his games. Mia hid her past from him, and so did the BSAA and Chris Redfield. It's a big part of why Village opens with him furious. (Resident Evil 7: Biohazard; Resident Evil Village)

The Baker house (Resident Evil 7, 2017)#

In July 2017 Ethan got an email from Mia telling him where she was: the Baker property in Dulvey Parish, Louisiana. He drove there alone. He found Mia in a cell under the guest house, freed her and then had to fight her off when Eveline's control took hold. She cut off his left hand with a chainsaw. Jack Baker then caught Ethan and dragged him into the main house. (Resident Evil 7: Biohazard)

He woke with the hand stapled back on. Zoe Baker, the one member of the family Eveline hadn't fully broken, talked him through escaping by phone. Ethan fought his way past Jack, Marguerite and Lucas Baker, gathered the parts for a serum that could cure Mold infection, and was forced to choose between giving the last dose to Mia or to Zoe. (Resident Evil 7: Biohazard)

Whichever he chose, the escape went wrong at the wreck of the tanker. He found a toxin designed to kill Eveline, tracked her to the guest house where she now looked like an old woman in a wheelchair, and injected her. She grew into a huge mass of Mold, and Ethan finished her off with a gun dropped from a BSAA helicopter. Chris Redfield, working with the BSAA, met him on the way out. (Resident Evil 7: Biohazard)

The Village (Resident Evil Village, 2021)#

After Louisiana the BSAA questioned the Winters, removed the Mold growths from their bodies and moved them to Eastern Europe under protection. Rose was born there. Ethan was never told about Mia's past with The Connections. (Resident Evil Village)

In February 2021, Chris Redfield's team burst into their home and shot "Mia" dead in front of Ethan. Rose was taken. Ethan woke in a wrecked convoy near a snowbound village whose people had just been butchered by Lycans. The village was ruled by Mother Miranda and her four Lords, and Rose's body had been split into four flasks, one for each Lord. (Resident Evil Village)

Ethan went through all four. He killed Lady Dimitrescu and her daughters in their castle, Donna Beneviento in her house of dolls, the fish-like Salvatore Moreau at the reservoir, and finally Karl Heisenberg, who had tried to recruit him against Miranda. Chris then told him the truth: the woman he'd shot was Miranda wearing Mia's face, and the real Mia was alive. (Resident Evil Village)

Straight after Heisenberg died, Miranda tore out Ethan's heart. He should have stayed dead. Instead, a trace of Eveline inside his head explained what he'd never questioned: Jack Baker had killed him in 2017, and the Mold had rebuilt him. Every wound he'd shrugged off since, including the reattached hands, came from that. (Resident Evil Village)

How did Ethan Winters die?#

Ethan came back to the ceremony site, fought and killed Miranda, and took Rose back. But his body was turning to stone, the calcification that kills Mold-infected people in both games. Chris told him a bomb was set under the Megamycete, the giant Mold mass beneath the village. Ethan handed Rose to Chris, sent them away and set off the bomb himself. He died in the blast in February 2021. (Resident Evil Village)

Shadows of Rose (2037)#

Sixteen years later, Rose, now a teenager struggling with Mold powers, entered the consciousness held in a recovered piece of the Megamycete to find a crystal that might cure her. A guiding presence that called itself Michael helped her through it. It was Ethan, or the part of him the Mold had recorded. He protected her from Miranda's remnant and gave her the last of his strength so she could beat Miranda for good, then let her go back to the waking world. (Resident Evil Village: Shadows of Rose)

Why is Ethan Winters so tough?#

People ask this because Ethan takes absurd punishment: a chainsaw, a hand nailed and torn, a hand sliced off, his heart pulled out. The games' answer is Village's reveal that he'd been a Mold body since the Baker house. Resident Evil 7 drops hints, from the hand that reattaches with a staple gun to the way he keeps getting up, but the explanation only lands in the sequel. (Resident Evil 7: Biohazard; Resident Evil Village)

Capcom also never shows his face clearly in either game. Even in cutscenes it's hidden by angles and shadow, which keeps him a stand-in for the person holding the controller. (Resident Evil 7: Biohazard; Resident Evil Village)