Ethan Winters is a bit of a blank slate, isn't he? Or at least, that’s what everyone said back in 2017. When Capcom shifted to first-person, they risked losing the "superhero" vibe of Chris Redfield and Leon Kennedy. Instead, we got a guy in a beige sweater looking for his wife in a swamp. It was gritty. It was gross. Most importantly, the characters of resident evil 7 felt uncomfortably human compared to the boulder-punching action stars of the previous decade.
You’re not playing as a trained operative with a tactical vest. You're Ethan. He’s just a systems engineer. That vulnerability is exactly why the Baker family works so well as antagonists. They aren't just monsters under the bed; they are a perversion of the American family unit.
The Baker Family: Not your average slashers
Jack Baker is the first thing people think of. He’s the patriarch. He’s terrifying. But if you dig into the lore notes scattered around the Dulvey plantation, you realize Jack was actually a kind man. He was a veteran. He rescued Mia and Eveline from a shipwreck out of the goodness of his heart. That’s the tragedy of the characters of resident evil 7. They are victims long before they are villains.
The "Mold" didn't just give them regenerative powers; it stripped away their agency. When Jack is stalking you through the hallways of the Guest House with a makeshift axe, that’s not really Jack. It’s a biological puppet.
Marguerite and the horror of the domestic
Marguerite Baker handles the "body horror" side of things. If Jack is the brute force, Marguerite is the skin-crawling revulsion. Her obsession with her "babies"—which happen to be giant, mutated insects—is a twisted take on motherhood. Players usually remember the Greenhouse fight as a peak mechanical moment, but the dialogue is what sticks. She genuinely thinks she’s providing for her family. She’s making dinner. It just happens to be made of human remains and black sludge.
Then there’s Lucas. Honestly, Lucas is the worst.
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Unlike his parents, Lucas wasn't entirely mind-controlled. Redfield’s DLC, Not a Hero, confirms that Lucas was working with The Connections (the criminal syndicate behind the Mold) and had been given a serum to keep his personality intact while retaining his powers. He’s a sociopath who used the disaster as an excuse to build Saw-style deathtraps. He’s the only one you don't feel bad for killing.
Mia Winters and the weight of secrets
Mia is a complicated character. For the first half of the game, she’s the damsel in distress, but then the script flips. We find out she wasn't just on a "babysitting" job. She was a handler for a bio-weapon.
This creates a weird tension in the player's relationship with her. Do you save the woman who lied to you for years and inadvertently caused a massacre? Or do you pick Zoe? Most people pick Mia for the "canon" ending, but the guilt is baked into the narrative. She’s responsible for bringing Eveline into the Bakers' lives.
The game forces you to reckon with the fact that the person you're trying to save is technically a corporate criminal. It’s messy. It’s not a clean "good vs. evil" story, which is why the characters of resident evil 7 feel so much more grounded than the caricatures in Resident Evil 6.
Eveline: The weapon that just wanted a mom
Everything comes back to Eveline.
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She’s the E-001. A bio-organic weapon designed to look like a ten-year-old girl so she could infiltrate enemy territory easily. Her power isn't just physical strength; it’s pheromone-based mind control. She forces people to love her.
If you look at the "Old Lady" in the wheelchair who pops up throughout the game, you’re looking at Eveline. Because she was a prototype, her body aged rapidly. She’s only a few years old chronologically, but biologically she’s eighty. Her entire motivation—the reason the Bakers are "together"—is that she wanted a family. She didn't want to be a lab rat.
It’s a classic Frankenstein trope. The monster isn't the girl; it’s the people who made her. The tragedy of the characters of resident evil 7 is that almost everyone involved was just a casualty of corporate greed.
Why the "Ordinary" Ethan Winters matters
A lot of critics complained that Ethan lacked personality. "He doesn't react enough to his hand getting chainsawed off," they said.
Maybe.
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But Ethan represents the player's sheer persistence. In a world of literal gods and monsters, he’s a guy who just refuses to die. By the time we get to the end of the game and Chris Redfield drops out of a helicopter, the contrast is jarring. Chris looks like a tank. Ethan looks like he needs a nap and a tetanus shot.
That shift in perspective saved the franchise. By focusing on a small cast of intimate, deeply flawed individuals, Capcom moved away from global bio-terrorism and back to what made horror work in the first place: the fear of the person sitting across the dinner table from you.
How to experience the Baker story properly
To truly understand the depth of these characters, don't just rush the main story. You have to be a digital archeologist.
- Read the Journals: Specifically Jack’s journal in the attic. It changes how you view his boss fights.
- Play the DLC: Daughters is a prequel that shows the night the Bakers found Eveline. It is heartbreaking. It shows them as a normal, happy family before the infection took hold.
- Watch the Tapes: The VHS segments aren't just puzzles; they provide the backstory for the victims who came before Ethan, like the "Sewer Gators" crew.
- Analyze the "End of Zoe": This DLC gives closure to the Baker legacy through Joe Baker, Jack’s brother, and proves that the family wasn't inherently evil—they were just unlucky.
The real takeaway from Resident Evil 7 is that horror is most effective when it’s personal. It’s not about the end of the world; it’s about the end of a family. When you step back into the shoes of Ethan Winters, remember that you aren't just fighting monsters. You're fighting the remnants of people who were once just as human as you are.