The Connections: the Shadow Syndicate Behind Resident Evil 7, Village and Requiem

The Connections are a criminal syndicate that builds and sells bioweapons, and they're the thread running through Resident Evil 7, Resident Evil Village and Resident Evil Requiem. They made Eveline, employed Mia Winters, took the Mold from Mother Miranda, and by Requiem they're being painted as the hidden hand behind the fall of Umbrella. (Resident Evil 7: Biohazard; Resident Evil Village; Resident Evil Requiem)

Who are the Connections?#

They're a bioweapons business that works from the shadows. Resident Evil 7's files describe a research programme meant to produce human weapons that could take over the minds of enemy troops and end fights without a shot fired. The documents talk about the project in terms of sales and rival buyers, and they make it clear this was a product line, not a single experiment. (Resident Evil 7: Biohazard)

For a long time the group didn't even have a name on screen. The main campaign of Resident Evil 7 mostly just calls them "the company". The free Not a Hero episode is where Chris Redfield's side starts calling them the Connections. (Resident Evil 7: Biohazard; Resident Evil 7: Biohazard, Not a Hero)

Eveline and the Annabelle (2014)#

The programme's best result was Eveline, codenamed E-001. Lab reports in Resident Evil 7 say she was grown with the Mold built into her from the embryo stage, giving her the power to infect people and bend their minds to her will. Earlier types in the series were less stable or less useful; the E-series was the one that worked. (Resident Evil 7: Biohazard)

In 2014 the syndicate moved Eveline by sea on the tanker Annabelle. Two operatives travelled as her guardians: Mia Winters, posing as her mother, and her partner Alan. During a storm Eveline broke loose, infected the crew and Alan died. The ship wrecked off the Louisiana coast, and Eveline and an infected Mia were taken in by the Baker family in Dulvey. (Resident Evil 7: Biohazard)

Lucas Baker and the salt mine#

Rather than pull Eveline out, the Connections watched. An old salt mine near the Baker farm hid one of their labs, and its files show that Lucas Baker had been given a serum that made him immune to Eveline's control. He played along with the family while reporting on her to the syndicate. The lab is also where Ethan Winters found what he needed to make the toxin that killed her in 2017. (Resident Evil 7: Biohazard)

Not a Hero shows how that arrangement ended. When Chris went into the mine after Lucas, he found that Lucas had turned on his employers too and was passing Eveline's data to an unknown buyer. Chris killed Lucas and stopped the transfer, which also cut off the best lead anyone had on the group. (Resident Evil 7: Biohazard, Not a Hero)

Mother Miranda and the Mold (Resident Evil Village)#

Village explains where the Connections got their fungus. Miranda, the priestess of a remote European village, had studied the Mold for decades. Her notes show she gave the syndicate samples and worked with them on Eveline's creation, and a photo in her lab puts her alongside Mia and the infant Eveline. That's why Chris had been hunting Miranda since Louisiana. (Resident Evil Village)

Mia's past with the group is also why the BSAA hid the Winters family in Europe afterwards, and why Ethan was never told what his wife used to do. Miranda's kidnapping of Rose Winters in 2021 grew from that same history: Rose was the child of two people infected by the Connections' weapon. (Resident Evil Village)

Requiem: Zeno, Gideon and Raccoon City#

Requiem puts the Connections at the centre of the plot. Their representative Zeno, a man with superhuman reflexes who looks and fights a lot like Albert Wesker, backs Victor Gideon, a former Umbrella researcher. Together they hunt for Elpis, a secret project of Oswell E. Spencer sealed in the ARK lab beneath Raccoon City. (Resident Evil Requiem)

The game's biggest claim about them is about 1998. Requiem says the missile strike that destroyed Raccoon City was not only about containing the outbreak. The Connections lobbied for it, and in the fallout they were able to take Umbrella's assets, ARK included. Zeno presents this to Grace Ashcroft as a plan to keep Elpis buried for themselves. (Resident Evil Requiem)

They believed Elpis was Spencer's ultimate weapon, a contagious virus that could control minds, and they thought Grace was the key to opening it. Both beliefs were wrong. Elpis was an antiviral, and Grace was a foundling Spencer had taken in and entrusted to her mother, Alyssa. In the ending where Elpis is released, Zeno injects himself with it, loses his enhanced abilities, and Gideon turns on him and beheads him. In the other ending Zeno kills Leon S. Kennedy. (Resident Evil Requiem)

What we still don't know#

A lot. The games have never named a leader, given a founding date or shown where the group is based. The post-credits scene of Requiem's main ending has soldiers from an unidentified faction wipe out the BSAA troops left in ARK and take something with them, and Capcom hasn't said who they work for. (Resident Evil Requiem)

What is clear is the shape of the story Capcom is telling. Umbrella dominated the first two decades of the series; the Connections are being set up as the force that profited from its collapse and kept the bioweapons trade going after it. (Resident Evil Village; Resident Evil Requiem)