From Resident Evil 7 on, the saga’s threat changes shape. It is no longer an Umbrella virus but a fungus, the Mold, which absorbs living things and keeps what they were: their body, their memories, their consciousness. This thread follows the Mold from a village in Eastern Europe in 1919 to 2037, when Rose Winters walks into the fungus’s memory. It covers Resident Evil 7 with its extra episodes and Resident Evil Village with Shadows of Rose.
The story here runs in chronological order, not in the order the games reveal it: much of what the first sections tell only comes out in the files at the end of Village. For what comes before (Spencer, Umbrella and the classic viruses) read Umbrella; for what The Connections do next, Requiem.
The Megamycete and Mother Miranda
Spoilers: the files in chapter 12 of Village and in Shadows of Rose.
In 1919 the Spanish flu reaches an isolated village in Eastern Europe and kills Eva, a 10-year-old girl (in August 1919, per the wiki). Her mother, Miranda, walks into the caves under the village to die. What she finds there is the Megamycete: the core of a gigantic Mold colony that absorbs whatever it touches and keeps the consciousness of what it absorbs. The villagers will call it the “Black God”, and the Ritual Text, from Shadows of Rose, is a prayer to it. Miranda comes out of the cave changed, and able to “cure” the flu.
She tells it herself in Miranda’s Diary, which you find in her laboratory in chapter 12: Eva died a hundred years ago, the Megamycete keeps the consciousness of the dead and, given a body able to receive it, it could bring her daughter back. She spends the next century on that.
The village had old masters: four houses, Dimitrescu, Beneviento, Moreau and Heisenberg, founded by four men of legend and ruling the region since at least the 15th century. Miranda pushes them aside and becomes Mother Miranda, a kind of priestess the villagers pray to and fear. The goats placard warns that whoever breaks the offerings will suffer her wrath.
From the Mold, Miranda creates the Cadou, a Mold-altered parasite she implants in villagers while looking for a vessel for Eva. Most die. Many become Lycans or Moroaică. Moreau, who does implants too, notes it in his Moreau’s Diary 1: of five villagers, four die and one turns into a Lycan. Village’s credits show it through a family that moves to the village during the flu: the father takes Miranda’s “cure” and ends up a Lycan.
Four people bond with the Cadou and survive. They are the four Lords:
- Alcina Dimitrescu, a noblewoman with a hereditary blood disease. The Experiment Notes describe her as subject 181, aged 44, with extremely high affinity; per the wiki she received the Cadou before 1958.
- Donna Beneviento, adopted by Miranda according to the Gardener’s Diary.
- Salvatore Moreau, deformed and desperate for his “mother’s” approval.
- Karl Heisenberg, who controls metal and hates her.
None of them will do. The medical reports in the lab say so one by one: Dimitrescu’s (the best affinity, but she has to drink blood), Donna’s, Moreau’s (“unfit vessel for Eva”) and Heisenberg’s (“a splendid specimen”, and still unfit).
Spencer, Miranda’s student
Spoilers: chapter 12 of Village.
In the 1950s a British medical student gets lost near the village. Miranda rescues him and teaches him what she knows about the Mold. His name is Oswell E. Spencer. Their goals drift apart and Spencer leaves; years later he discovers the Progenitor virus and, in 1968, founds Umbrella.
The proof is Spencer’s Letter, written to his old teacher and kept in Miranda’s lab: Spencer recalls his stay in the village and tells her that the company he is about to found will bear a symbol like the one in the cave. That symbol is the crest of the four houses, the same one you see on the Giant’s Chalice: Umbrella’s logo was born here. In Ernest’s Diary (chapter 10), a villager sees a pharmaceutical company’s emblem in a forbidden newspaper, identical to the chalice’s, and remembers “that man who stayed here years ago”.
This is the hinge between the Mold era and the classic games: the whole saga, from the Spencer mansion to Raccoon City, starts with one of Miranda’s students.
The Connections and the E-Series
Spoilers: the files of Resident Evil 7 and Village.
The Connections are an international bioweapons syndicate with deep ties to the US government; the wiki also links them to H.C.F., Tricell and The Family (see bioterrorism). At some point they approach Miranda: in the 1990s according to one wiki page, in 2000 according to another. She gives them Mold and Eva’s genetic material. Her diary only says she gave the Mold to “an organization”, and that Eveline came of it.
The R&D Report [1 of 2], in RE7’s salt mines, tells the project from 2000: the fungus implanted in human embryos, series A to D failed and the E-Series perfected, shaped like a girl of about ten, controlling the infected through hallucinations. The file also mentions technical help from H.C.F. What is left of the D-Series is the D-Series Arm and the D-Series Head that Ethan hunts for the serum.
The result is E-001, Eveline, created in the early 2000s (in Munich, per the wiki) and artificially aged to look ten. The Connections surround her with controls: stabilising drugs that keep her young, a D-Series-based serum that blocks her control and a toxin that can kill her, the E-Necrotoxin (E-Necrotoxin Document). The R&D Report [2 of 2] notes the design’s flaw: Eveline is obsessed with having a family and a mother’s love.
One of her caretakers is Mia, a Texan who has worked for The Connections since 2010. On 29 May 2011 she marries Ethan Winters, a systems engineer in Los Angeles, without telling him what she does.
October 2014: the Annabelle
Spoilers: chapter 6 of Resident Evil 7 and the “Daughters” tape.
In early October 2014 the BSAA tries to seize Eveline in Munich and fails. The Connections decide to move her out of Europe to a lab in Central America aboard the Annabelle, a liquefied natural gas carrier. The Orders explain it: Mia and agent Alan Droney will travel posing as her parents and, if anything goes wrong, must dispose of her. In Jim’s letter, a sailor mentions a couple on board with a little girl nobody is allowed to talk to.
A hurricane hits the ship. On 5 October Eveline breaks loose and infects the crew. Giovanni’s Will records the outbreak: a girl laughing, a “riot” below decks and a black monster with shark teeth. Alan dies and the ship, adrift, runs aground in the Dulvey bayou in Louisiana. You play it as Mia in the “Old Videotape” of chapter 6.
Jack’s Journal tells the other side: after a storm, Lucas reports that a huge ship has run aground in the swamp and Jack goes to look. On 9 and 10 October Jack Baker and his son Lucas find Mia and Eveline in the wreck and take them to the farm. The “Daughters” tape in Banned Footage Vol. 2 shows that night through the eyes of Zoe, the daughter: its true ending closes on a “normal” breakfast and a “Hello, sister”.
Within days the whole family belongs to Eveline: Jack, a former Marine; his wife, Marguerite; Lucas and Zoe. Mia is infected too, half under her control. Only Jack’s older brother, Joe, who lives alone in the swamp, is spared.
2015–2017: the Baker farm
Spoilers: the files of Resident Evil 7 and Not a Hero.
The Connections find out. In January 2015 they set up a lab in the Abercrombie Salt Mine, give Lucas the serum that blocks Eveline and make him their agent. The Email Log, his reports from January 2015 to September 2016, says Lucas is free of her control, that Mia is locked up and that Eveline treats her as her mother and wants ever more “family”.
Without her drugs, Eveline ages all at once. The Eveline Observation Log records it between July and September 2016 (the wiki dates the change to 26 August), and the company sends the E-Necrotoxin “in case she gets out of control”. From then on Eveline is the old woman in the wheelchair, the silent woman you see at dinner and all over the estate.
Meanwhile the Bakers hunt people. Eveline turns many of their captives into Molded, masses of mycelium in human shape. The hardware store receipt includes 20 pet collars; the Doctor’s Letter tells Marguerite that her X-ray shows fungus-like structures in her skull. A newspaper article dated 19 January 2016 reports more than 20 people missing in southern Louisiana; per the wiki it is signed by Alyssa Ashcroft, the mother of Requiem’s protagonist.
On 1 June 2017 the crew of the show Sewer Gators arrives: Pete Walken, Andre Stickland and cameraman Clancy Jarvis. Their tape, “Derelict House Footage”, is in chapter 1, and the article on the three missing men is in the main house. Clancy dies in Lucas’s Party Room (the “Happy Birthday” tape).
On 11 June 2017 Lucas, now in charge of the lab, locks the researchers in with the Molded. The Researcher’s Journal complains about his cruelty that same day, and Lucas’s journal shows he wants to break with The Connections: he thinks he is the only one able to make use of Eveline’s Mold.
July 2017: Ethan in Dulvey
Spoilers: the whole Resident Evil 7 campaign.
Three years after Mia disappeared, Ethan gets an email from her dated 18 July 2017: “Dulvey, Louisiana. Baker farm. Come get me.” He reaches the farm on the 18th or the 19th (sources disagree). What follows takes about two days:
- Chapter 1. In the guest house basement Ethan finds Mia in a cell. She turns on him twice: with a knife and then with a chainsaw, after cutting off his left hand. Ethan stops her and Jack shows up.
- Chapter 2. Ethan wakes up at the Bakers’ dinner, with the old woman sitting at the table. He escapes, Zoe guides him by phone, and Deputy David Anderson is killed by Jack in the garage. Jack hunts him through the house and waits for him in the morgue.
- Chapter 3. Zoe explains that she and Mia need a serum. In the old house, Marguerite and her insects; Ethan gets the D-Series Arm and starts seeing a girl.
- Chapter 4. Lucas’s “games” in the barn: the party room and the D-Series Head. Lucas gets away.
- Chapter 5. Zoe makes two doses of the Serum. One goes to mutated Jack, and only one is left: the choice. The canon ending is giving it to Mia; Zoe stays behind and Eveline calcifies her.
- Chapter 6. You play as Mia on the Annabelle and learn her past. Mia resists Eveline and protects Ethan.
- Chapter 7. The salt mines: The Connections’ lab, Lucas’s reports and the project files. Ethan makes the E-Necrotoxin with the Eveline tissue samples.
- Chapter 8. Back in the guest house, through hallucinations, Ethan finds the old woman and injects her with the toxin. Eveline turns into a giant mass of Mold (the final boss). A helicopter with the Umbrella logo arrives and drops the Albert-01 handgun, Chris Redfield’s voice tells Ethan to take it, and Ethan finishes her off. Chris introduces himself: “I’m Redfield.” Ethan and Mia leave in the helicopter (on 20 July, per the wiki).
In the other ending, giving the serum to Zoe, Eveline kills Zoe, Mia succumbs and becomes a boss on the ship, and Ethan leaves alone. It is not canon: End of Zoe and Village follow the first one.
What Ethan didn’t know
Spoilers: the ending of Village.
Ethan recovers from things that should kill him: the hand Mia cuts off in chapter 1 gets reattached. The Infection Report in chapter 7 gives the explanation the game drops without underlining it: people infected by the E-Series regenerate, limbs reattach within minutes, and at the end come hallucinations and control.
The full truth arrives four years later, in chapter 12 of Village. In RE7’s chapter 1, Jack punches Ethan and stomps on his head. Ethan dies right there, clinically, for minutes. He comes back because the Mold had already replaced him. Everything he does afterwards in Dulvey, and in the village, is done by a body of Mold with Ethan’s mind, free of Eveline’s control. He doesn’t know it.
Not a Hero, End of Zoe and Banned Footage
Spoilers: Resident Evil 7’s extra episodes.
Not a Hero (its own chapter) takes place shortly after the campaign. Chris is a BSAA captain on loan to the new Umbrella, Blue Umbrella, which he doesn’t trust. The Letter Regarding Umbrella’s Goals introduces it: a private military company re-founded in 2007 from the old Umbrella’s assets, which took the name to atone for the past and stop bioweapon makers. The Briefing Document gives the mission, Operation “Lurking Fear”: capture Lucas, hiding in the mines and linked to The Connections.
Chris goes down with Veronica on the radio and a bomb on his wrist. He faces the Mama Mold with anti-regeneration rounds (the RAMROD guide). Lucas’s files show his plan: sell Eveline’s data on his own (Note on the Wall) and send “the E data” before leaving (Email Log, 20 July). Lucas mutates and Chris kills him (Mutated Lucas). Sources disagree on whether the upload went through. Chris takes “an urgent call”, and the only direct lead to The Connections dies with Lucas.
End of Zoe (its own chapter) takes place in August 2017. Zoe, calcified by Eveline, is still in the swamp. Her uncle Joe finds her and goes looking for a cure: the Cure for E-Type Infection. The orders on the anti-infective drug explain why it is on the paddle boat. He is hunted by the “Swamp Man”, who turns out to be Jack, regenerated; the Analysis Report says his cells divide by force until they hit their limit. With the AMG-78 gauntlet, Joe kills him for good. Zoe is cured and Chris arrives: Ethan had kept his promise to send help. The setting is already the walled-off swamp, with Blue Umbrella bases.
Banned Footage is found tapes. “Daughters” (the 2014 night), “21” (Clancy’s blackjack against Hoffman) and “Bedroom” (Clancy as Marguerite’s prisoner) are presented as story events. “Nightmare”, “Ethan Must Die” (Vol. 1) and “Jack’s 55th Birthday” are game modes with no weight in the story, or at least none that is confirmed.
After Dulvey: the cover-up and the Hound Wolf Squad
Spoilers: the Winters’ past as Village tells it.
The BSAA closes the case. It builds a wall around the swamp, with an exclusion zone expected to last until 2027, and calls it a gas leak. Village’s Old News Clipping gives that version: the Dulvey “gas incident”, the Baker family dead, and Ethan and his wife’s whereabouts unknown.
Mia cooperates and, in exchange, her past with The Connections is kept secret (per the wiki, even from Ethan). The Winters have surgery to remove what is left of the Mold and are moved to Eastern Europe under protection; Ethan gets some military training. Ethan’s diary, dated 6 February 2021, shows he hasn’t put Louisiana behind him. Zoe, for her part, writes The Baker Incident Report, which Village’s Gold Edition includes as a bonus.
Chris doesn’t accept it. Per the wiki, the BSAA buried Dulvey to hide its Munich failure too. In 2018 he takes command of the Hound Wolf Squad without headquarters’ approval and spends three years hunting Miranda and The Connections. The squad: Umber Eyes (Rolando Elba), Canine (Charlie Graham), Night Howl (Dion Wilson), Lobo (John Perlman) and Tundra (Emily Berkhoff), whose reconnaissance uncovers Miranda’s plan.
On 2 August 2020 Rose is born, the daughter of two Mold-altered parents. The Medical Checkup Report finds her healthy and leaves the fungal tests to the BSAA; the Fridge Memo bans “NO mushrooms”. Rose is exactly what Miranda has spent a century looking for, and The Connections tell her (through a mole in the BSAA’s European branch, per the wiki).
February 2021: the village
Spoilers: the whole Village campaign.
In early February Miranda kidnaps the real Mia and takes her face. In chapter 1 “Mia” reads Rose the tale “Village of Shadows”, which sums up the whole game in disguise: a girl, four lords, a witch and a father who dies so mother and daughter can escape. That night the Hound Wolf Squad bursts into the house and Chris shoots “Mia”. The Mission Briefing gives the orders: eliminate the target, recover the body and take Rose and Ethan to “site C”. Miranda fakes her death, attacks the convoy and takes Rose.
Ethan wakes up by the crashed convoy, on the edge of a snowbound village (chapter 2). The villagers die around him: Grigori, Luiza and the refugees in her house, Elena and her father Leonardo, who turns into a Lycan during the prayer. Miranda has let the Lycans loose on the village, led by the giant Uriaș. The old woman who chants the prayer to Mother Miranda and gives Ethan hints is Miranda in disguise.
By then Miranda has crystallised Rose and split her into four flasks, one per Lord. In chapter 3 Ethan stands trial before Miranda and the four; Heisenberg drops him into the mines “for entertainment”, and at the vineyard the Duke appears, the merchant who stays with him to the end. In chapter 5 the Duke reveals that the flask from the castle holds Rose’s head and that she can still be saved; Eugen’s Diary, by a witness, explains the flasks. Meanwhile the Church Computer shows the Hound Wolf Squad based in the church, searching for “EW” and “RW”.
The four Lords
Spoilers: chapters 4 to 11 of Village.
Dimitrescu (chapter 4). In the castle, Countess Alcina Dimitrescu exports a wine made with blood, Sanguis Virginis, and her three “daughters” (Bela, Cassandra and Daniela) hunt the servants. The daughters were born from Cadou flies that consumed three women, and cold air kills them (Further Observations). In her diary, Alcina jealously wonders whether she isn’t Miranda’s favourite. Ethan stabs her with the Dagger of Death’s Flowers, she transforms (Mutated Dimitrescu) and falls. Ethan recovers the first flask, the Head Flask.
Donna (chapter 6). In House Beneviento, the pollen of her infected plants fills Ethan’s head with hallucinations: the radio with Mia’s voice hinting at a secret about him, and the Baby. Donna speaks through her doll Angie, which carries part of her Cadou; when Ethan stabs the doll, Donna dies. Second flask: the Legs Flask.
Moreau (chapter 8). At the reservoir, Ethan snatches the Arms Flask from Moreau, who fears in his diary that Miranda will abandon him. Chris turns up in a tent and still gives no answers. Moreau turns into a giant fish (Mutated Moreau). In chapter 9, the Analysis Results from Chris’s team close the circle: the village’s Mold is a 99.95 % match for Dulvey’s, and the colony under the village works as a network that stores data.
The Stronghold (chapter 10). The fourth flask, the Torso Flask, is guarded by Uriaș. With all four, Ethan completes the Giant’s Chalice, the Megamycete’s regulator according to Miranda’s diary.
Heisenberg (chapter 11). Heisenberg is the only Lord who rebels. His diary despises Miranda and her experiments, and in his factory he builds an army of Soldat, corpses with a Cadou reactor in the chest, to overthrow her. He offers Ethan an alliance to use Rose as a weapon; Ethan refuses. In the factory Chris finally tells the truth (Chris’s Computer): the “Mia” he shot was Miranda. He gives Ethan a tank Heisenberg cannot control, and Ethan kills him (Mutated Heisenberg).
As soon as Heisenberg falls, Miranda appears. She tears out Ethan’s heart and takes the chalice with Rose.
The ritual and Ethan’s death
Spoilers: chapter 12 and the ending of Village.
Chapter 12 opens with Chris. The Hound Wolf Squad storms the village, overrun by Lycans; Chris clears the way with artillery, beats the Uriaș Străjer and plants a bomb on the Megamycete. Below it he finds Miranda’s laboratory, with the reports, Spencer’s letter and the diary, and frees the real Mia. Meanwhile a BSAA force from the European branch arrives in the village “on its own” and is slaughtered.
Ethan, dead, is in limbo. There Eveline appears to him and tells him what nobody had: he has been dead since Jack killed him in 2017, and he is Mold. That is why he can come back. The Duke drives him in his carriage to the Ceremony Site.
Miranda’s ritual brings Rose back to life, not Eva. Ethan faces Mother Miranda and kills her. He hands Rose to Chris, stays behind and detonates the bomb: the Megamycete and Ethan die on 10 February 2021. Umber Eyes confirms his death.
Canine reports that the BSAA has been using bioweapons dressed as soldiers. Chris: “someone has to pay”. The “Village of Shadows” tale ends over the credits. In the post-credits scene, years later, a teenage Rose visits her father’s grave, an agent calls her “Eveline”, and a figure walks toward the car as she leaves; the game never says who it is. The last line: “The father’s story is done.”
Shadows of Rose, 2037
Spoilers: Shadows of Rose.
Sixteen years later, Rose lives under US government protection, raised with Chris and his people as family (and with Mia, at least for a while; the wiki’s pages disagree). She has the Mold’s powers and hates them: the Little Girl’s Diary tells how she was mocked at school for her “white sweat”, even though Chris explained to the teacher that it isn’t contagious. She wants to be rid of them.
A piece of the Megamycete survived in a US lab. The Megamycete Theorem proposes that someone with Mold affinity could reach the memories of the dead it keeps. Rose goes in, guided by “K”, who seems to be Canine. But that K is made up: a lure by Miranda, whose consciousness is still archived inside.
- Castle Dimitrescu. A castle made of memories, ruled by the Masked Duke and hunted by Face Eaters and the Executioner. A presence called “Michael” leaves her hints and gifts.
- House Beneviento. Donna’s house blends with the memory of the Winters’ home (Mia’s Letter, Rose’s half birthday). Eveline appears, the “dark-haired girl” who, according to the Recently Written Report, slipped into that world and rekindled Rose’s will.
- Deep Stratum and Memories’ Edge. Miranda writes the laws of that realm (On This Realm and Its Laws): dead and absorbed, she still wants Eva, and Rose is still her only vessel. Rose uses the Purifying Crystal to strip away her powers, then takes them back to save Michael, who is what is left of Ethan in the fungus’s memory. She destroys Miranda’s echo, says goodbye to her father and keeps her powers.
Per the wiki, Rose wakes up holding Ethan’s wedding ring and refuses to work for Chris. The ending leads into Village’s post-credits scene at the grave.
Loose ends
Spoilers: Village and Resident Evil Requiem.
The Connections after the Mold. They lose Eveline, Lucas and their partner, Miranda, and the Mold’s root is blown up. Village says no more. It is Resident Evil Requiem (2026) that makes them the main enemy and gives them a history: in 1986 they pay James Marcus, one of Umbrella’s founders; in 1998 they seize ARK, Spencer’s secret lab, and lobby for the missile to fall on Raccoon City; in 2026 they offer a catalogue of bioweapons and boast that they control the BSAA. One of their members, Zeno, says that “the technology to control another’s will already exists”; the wiki reads it as a nod to Eveline.
The BSAA and its soldiers. Village ends with the BSAA fielding bioweapons in uniform. Requiem picks up that thread: the North American branch has gone its own way since 2023, and the Hound Wolf Squad, sent by an absent Chris, rescues Leon and Grace on 9 October 2026.
Echoes. Requiem has a bottle of Sanguis Virginis and a braille copy of “Village of Shadows”, and the journalist behind the Dulvey article is Alyssa Ashcroft. The wiki describes a painting from Miranda in Spencer’s office at ARK, but it is only a caption: it is not confirmed.
The Albert-01. The handgun Chris gets to Ethan is based on Albert Wesker’s design according to promotional material; the game doesn’t say so. H.C.F., the organisation Wesker worked with, appears in the R&D Report as technical support for the E-Series; that Wesker himself had a part in it is claimed only by the wiki. More in Wesker.
What is left of the Mold. The wiki mentions a second root that formed in Dulvey after 2014, and Shadows of Rose makes clear that a piece of the Megamycete lived on in US government hands. Rose, the last Winters, keeps her powers. None of it has been picked up yet. The dates for the whole thread are in the timeline.