WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Resident Evil Village, available now.

In comparison to its immediate predecessor Resident Evil 7: Biohazard, Resident Evil Village displays its connections and allusions to the greater Resident Evil franchise more prominently. Apart from the Easter eggs and subtle nods, Village contains several bombshell revelations and plot twists that turn the survival horror video game franchise on its head. One of the most surprising is the development that Village's primary antagonist Mother Miranda and her fiendish plot are actually directly responsible for quietly setting the franchise in motion all along, with links straight to the events of the original 1996 video game.

Miranda reveals that she has been mourning the death of her daughter Eva for over a century, who succumbed to the Spanish flu shortly after discovering the mutamycete mold growing beneath the Eastern European village. Gaining immortality from the strange, mutagenic properties of the mold, Miranda discovered her daughter's consciousness appeared stored within the substance and began conducting experiments on hundreds of nearby villagers over the subsequent decades in order to learn more about the mold and if she could find a suitable host to serve as Eva's new body, effectively resurrecting her daughter. These experiments created many of the monsters prowling the countryside, including the four lords directly serving Miranda, but also a star pupil decades ago assisting with the research: Oswell E. Spencer.

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While visiting the village as a university student sometime in the 1950s, Spencer was rescued from an avalanche by Miranda and learned of her experiments with the mold. Intrigued, due to his own private obsessions in finding genetically engineered ways to stimulate the evolution of the human race, Spencer worked alongside Miranda for a time to learn more about the mold. Realizing their goals were ultimately incompatible but still holding each other in high regard, Spencer and Miranda remained in touch even after Spencer departed from the village to conduct his own experiments inspired by what he learned about how biology and how it mutated from being exposed to pathogens like the mutamycete.

By 1966, Spencer had founded the pharmaceutical conglomerate Umbrella Corporation and began secretly funding experiments to create what would become the T-Virus. Perhaps taking cues from Miranda's own subterranean secrecy with her experiments, Spencer constructed an underground lab below his family estate that would serve as the primary development grounds for the T-Virus, with experiments overseen by Umbrella co-founder James Marcus. Spencer hoped this pathogen would cause life to evolve in his image though it ultimately resulted in transforming those exposed to the virus into ravenous undead monsters that would progressively mutate into more grotesque forms as the contagion continued to proliferate unchecked throughout their body. The Spencer estate itself would go on to be the setting of the original Resident Evil, shortly after the mansion was overrun by those infected by the T-Virus.

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Mother Miranda showed Oswell E. Spencer exactly what horrific mutations the human body was capable of transforming into given the proper conditions provided. Without assisting Miranda in those experiments and continuing to receive her tacit guidance and support, Spencer's sinister ambitions may have gone considerably differently and may not have yielded the T-Virus at all based on the data Spencer acquired in Eastern Europe. Chris Redfield's whole life has been haunted by the shadow of the Umbrella Corporation and his experiences in the Spencer estate and, faced with the revelation of Miranda's role in it all, he has just learned more about the devastating virus' origins.

Developed and published by Capcom, Resident Evil Village is available now for PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PC and Google Stadia.

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