Ethan Winters

Ethan Winters is the main character of Resident Evil 7: Biohazard. Ethan is a civilian who was caught up in the incident at the Dulvey Haunted House.

Biography
Very little is known about Ethan's past prior to the events of the game other than that he met and married Mia Winters before 2014. Mia had sent him a video of her telling him about her babysitting job, which was the last video message he received from her.

In July 2017, Ethan received an e-mail from Mia who was reported deceased in 2014. Ethan journeyed out to Dulvey, Louisiana in search of her, taking him to the "Dulvey Haunted House" formerly owned by the Baker family until their own disappearance that same year. He enters the house and watches the "Derelict House Footage" (as seen in the Beginning Hour demo), where he witnesses the Sewer Gators team - cameraman Clancy Javis, producer Andre Stickland and anchorman Pete Walken - infiltrate the house for a rehearsal of their next episode, but ending with Clancy discovering Andre's dead body and getting captured by the Baker family. He travels through an underground shaft, and after discovering Andre's decaying corpse floating in the water, he finally finds Mia. After freeing her, she claims to not know about any message given to him and guides him to escape from the house's occupants. He receives phone calls from a woman named Zoe, who tells him to go to the attic. However, Mia, clearly possessed by infection, attacks him with a knife and later a chainsaw, hacking off Ethan's left hand and forcing him to shoot her dead. As Ethan attempts to escape, Jack Baker appears and knocks him out.

With his left hand stapled (presumably by Zoe) and a codex showing him his health, Ethan awakens in a dining room where he meets the Baker family - Jack, his wife Marguerite, son Lucas, and an unnamed, silent elderly woman who later turns out to be Eveline - all eating human parts. He is force-fed their food until a policeman forces them to hide. He manages to escape his bonds but Jack is still around and starts looking for him. As Ethan tries to find a place to hide, Jack catches him and dismembers the lower half of his leg. He then provides Ethan a strong first aid med that allows him to reattach his leg. Once Ethan gets away for Jack through a passageway under the floor, he later meets a police deputy at a window, who gives him his knife. The two meet in the garage, where the deputy is killed by Jack, who fights Ethan until the latter wears him down and seemingly kills him.

Zoe reveals over the phone that the Bakers and Mia have been contaminated by a mysterious pathogen, requesting that Ethan set out to retrieve the necessary items to develop a serum which can cure her and Mia so that they can escape the Baker residence. She also tells Ethan to meet her in her trailer outside the house, once all materials have been obtained.

Ethan sets out to find the necessary items to leave the main house, only to face off against Jack again, when he was trying to grab one of the Cerberus heads as a key to leave the house. The two engage in combat in the meat processing room of the basement before Ethan seemingly manages to finish Jack off once and for all in a chainsaw duel.

Traveling to the guest house, Ethan struggles to escape Marguerite and the bug swarms she controls, eventually being trapped and forced to defeat her twice. The confrontation leads to his discovery of the mummified corpse of a "D-Series" child, the basis of the serum needed by Zoe. He manages to get his hands on the D-Series Arm Zoe needs for the serum. Afterwards, Ethan goes to the trailer to contact Zoe but instead finds Lucas Baker on the other end of the telephone line instead of Zoe. Lucas has captured both Zoe and Mia and tells Ethan that he can give Ethan the other part, which is the D-Series Head, but that Ethan has to participate in a little "activity". Lucas also tells Ethan to take a peek in the fridge that is in the trailer. Ethan hesitates to at first but Lucas insists. Ethan checks the fridge only to find the Deputy's head inside of it with a note on the back saying, "The pig is waiting for you in the dissection room, bitch."

Ethan proceeds to the dissection room in the Bakers' House and finds the body of the beheaded Deputy with a wooden sign saying, "Prove you're a real man and stick your hand down this pig's throat!" Ethan does so, feeling sorry for the deputy, and pulls out the Snake Key. Lucas tells Ethan that the Snake Key will help Ethan find the two keycards that he needs to join the "party". Ethan manages to get his hands on the two keycards and goes back outside to a room where two keycards are needed, the blue and the red one. He uses the key cards to join the party, which happens to be a series of traps set up by Lucas Baker. One of those traps involved the subject having to insert a lit candle on a birthday cake to escape a room, only for the subject to be killed because of the cake exploding and setting the room on fire (from oil spilled in the room for the subject to obtain a crank and code to solve the "puzzle"). However, Ethan managed to avoid death from that trap by solving the puzzle without spilling any oil in the room, as he watched a previous tape of Clancy Jarvis' failed attempt while in the "party" and learned of the code without having to use the crank.

After succeeding in evading Lucas' traps, Ethan makes his way to the Pier Boathouse, where he encounters Mia Winters and Zoe Baker tied up. While he frees the two girls, Zoe asks Ethan for the ingredients to the serum that would cure both of them, and warns him that her father and Lucas are nearby. Zoe also tells Ethan that after making two serums and using them to cure her and Mia, they would escape through the bayou in a boat parked outside the building. But as Ethan took the serums, the three were attacked by Jack Baker, who crashes through the wall as a mutant creature with multiple eyes on his body.

Although Mia and Zoe are able to get away from Jack Baker, Ethan has to fight him in the boathouse and damage him by shooting his eyes. When he managed to defeat Jack Baker (but not kill him) and destroy all of his eyes, Zoe Baker walks in and tells Ethan to follow her out of the boathouse. Unfortunately, Jack Baker grabs him as he walks toward the door, forcing Ethan to sacrifice one of the serums Zoe made by using it on Jack himself. The serum calcifies Jack Baker and turns him into stone, killing him for the rest of the game. Ethan then meets Mia and Zoe on the pier outside the boathouse, where with only one serum left Ethan has to decide who to cure.

If the player chooses to cure Mia, then despite telling Zoe that he can find another way to save her Zoe just orders him to leave with Mia on the boat. Eventually, as the two propel their boat through the bayou, Ethan and Mia stumble upon the wrecked oil tanker where the Baker family found her and Eveline. But soon their boat gets stuck and consumed by mold, as Eveline capsizes it to prevent Ethan and Mia from leaving the Baker family's residence.

Later, as Mia wakes up and finds Ethan, Ethan's unconscious body gets consumed by mold and taken into the oil tanker by Eveline.

Gameplay
Unlike most previous Resident Evil protagonists Ethan does not have any real combat training. Despite this, Ethan displays proficiency in guns, as is evidenced when he shoots Jack Baker multiple times during any of his encounters with him. Ethan also appears to have an extremely high if not superhuman tolerance to pain, able to press on after being thrown through entire walls and doors, stabbed and slashed in the hand, arm and shoulder several times as well as having his own hand cut off as if nothing happened. He does however show a degree of pain if one of his limbs get cut off during his battles with the monsters and creatures and will bleed out if he does not retrieve his limb and heals himself via the medicine bottles that the Bakers produce.

This is due to the fact that he is also contaminated by the same virus as the Bakers and can regenerate wounds and lost limbs, as seen when Jack cuts off Ethan's leg with a shovel and then gives Ethan a medicine bottle and taunt him about this ability.

Further notes

 * It was stated by Masachika Kawata that Ethan is not the same person as the protagonist of the KITCHEN and Resident Evil 7 Teaser Demo: Beginning Hour demos.


 * In the Lantern Demo, it is implied that there is some form of strain on Ethan and Mia's relationship. During the demo, Mia can be heard saying "I know I can't expect anything from you." Further implication is included in the Bakers tape, where she confesses to having lied to him. It is speculation that Mia lied about being employed by Umbrella and her "babysitting" job.


 * Regarding the Infection Report, it's heavily implied that Ethan is also infected by the bacterium, best known as Mold.
 * According to the report, the initial infection of a person is recognized by the mold ingesting the nutrients of the victim's body, having as a side effect remarkable regenerative abilities. After getting his hand severed, Zoe simply staples Ethan's hand and he uses it as it has never been severed of its nerves, demonstrating remarkable regenerative abilities.
 * Also, if Jack Baker severs Ethan's leg, only with the use of a First Aid Med he could join it to the rest of his body. According to the report, test subjects were submitted to the removal of arms and legs, being able to regrown them in a matter of minutes.
 * Before having his hand severed, Ethan depicted scars on his hands when attacked, not healed even by the First Aid Med. After having it stapled and being asleep for unknown time under the Baker's submission, Ethan's hands could be fully restored if his health was also full.
 * The report also mentions that the mid-stage of the infection by the Mold, when the bacterium reaches the brain, causes the infected to hear things and see hallucinations, due to be directly connected to the E-Series asset. After hours of his journey, Ethan hears Eveline, an E-Series subject, for the first time while recalling Mia's steps in the Old House, and then hears and sees her after getting the samples of the serum for the first time. Until the end, the visions become more distinctive.
 * Another sign of Ethan's infection is the fact he could communicate with Jack Baker, known Mold infected, after his death, in a possible mutual connection with Eveline.
 * If Ethan chooses to save Zoe instead of Mia, and for that receiving the bad ending for the game, it's possible to notice, in the helicopter, that Ethan's left arm, previously severed, is completely normal and not even stapled. It could be an oversight, or another example of his remarkable regenerative abilities.