"Welcome to the family, son." - Jack Baker, Resident Evil 7
Jack Baker is the patriarch of the Baker family in Resident Evil 7: Biohazard. He is the husband of Marguerite Baker and the father of Lucas and Zoe Baker. Between 2014-2017, Jack is responsible for a series of kidnappings and murders in Dulvey, Louisiana. This is due to him and his family being controlled by the humanoid bioweapon Eveline.
Biography[]
Early life[]
Not much is known about Jack prior to being infected by Eveline. Before Eveline's arrival, the Bakers lived a simple life on their farm in Dulvey, Louisiana and seemed to be a tight-knit family unit. Photographs found in the Bakers' house indicate that Jack once served in the U.S. Marine Corps.
Infection[]
In October 2014, the Dulvey area was hit by a hurricane and Jack and his son Lucas tried to reinforce the house after their old house had been destroyed. Around this time, a heavily damaged ship had washed up in the bayou and Jack found two survivors from the wreck: a young woman and a ten-year old girl. The Bakers rescued the two survivors and provided them shelter in their house. Little did they know that the girl, Eveline, was actually a human bioweapon capable of controlling the minds of others.
As soon as she awoke, Eveline infected the Bakers with her mold, triggering mutations within their bodies and manipulating them to see her as part of the family. From then onward, Jack and his family had turned completely insane and were utterly devoted to Eveline.
Dulvey Incident[]
After being infected and driven to madness by Eveline, the Bakers withdrew from the community altogether. The local parish declared them dead, but occasionally sightings of Jack were reported that led to rumours cropping up stating that the Baker residence was haunted.
Over the next three years, Eveline became more obsessed with expanding her family and the Bakers were enlisted in abducting tourists and homeless people. Jack was responsible for killing, dissecting, and skinning the victims, whose bodies became the Molded, while Marguerite used their organs as a source of food. Zoe attempted to communicate with the victims and help them escape, which caused Jack and his family to disown her. During this series of killings, only one captive managed to escape from the Baker ranch alive, but his attempts to alert the authorities weren't taken seriously since the police found he was carrying LSD in his pocket.
Ethan's arrival[]
In July 2017, Ethan Winters - husband of Eveline's handler Mia Winters - travelled to Dulvey in search for his wife. He found her in the Bakers' guest house, but she was possessed by Eveline and she attacked Ethan with a chainsaw. Ethan was wounded and then knocked out by Jack who "welcomed" him into the family. When Ethan awoke, he was tied to a chair and sat around a dinner table where the Bakers were dining on human organs they had harvested from their previous victims. When Ethan refused to eat, Jack started stabbing him with a knife. Before he could deliver a fatal wound, a police deputy came knocking at the door. The Bakers left the table to deal with the deputy, giving Ethan time to free himself and attempt to escape.
"I got the gift running all through me! All through me!"
As Ethan tried to find his way out, Jack spotted him and pursued him around the house with a shovel. Ethan managed to escape through a crawlspace that took him to the laundry room, but would run into Jack again after entering the garage. The police deputy David Anderson had gotten inside and tried to question Ethan, but Jack suddenly appeared from behind and killed the deputy by scalping him with his shovel. He then grabbed an axe and chased Ethan around the garage. Ethan tried to stop Jack by shooting him with the officer's gun, but Jack appeared to be unfazed thanks to his enhanced strength and regenerative abilities. Finding a pair of car keys on a nearby table, Ethan enters the parked vehicle and uses it to run Jack over multiple times. Although Jack is seriously injured, he still manages to pick himself up and hijack the car, driving it into a pile of loose metal scaffolding in the hopes of impaling Ethan. However, Ethan survives this by ducking his head under the scaffolding and escaping the car, which then explodes. Although Jack himself collided with one of the protruding metal bars and was badly burned in the explosion, he immediately recovers and continues to chase Ethan. Jack grabs Ethan's handgun and points it in his mouth, telling him that he is about to witness something "wonderful" before blowing a hole through his own head.
Second encounter with Ethan[]
Later on, a visibly burnt Jack surprises Ethan in the second floor bathroom, his head injuries now partially healed, and begins stalking him throughout the house once more. Jack also takes a marble dog head piece with him to the dissection room in order to ambush Ethan, knowing that he would need it to escape the house. After a small skirmish, Jack grabs an oversized, man-made pair of chainsaw-shears, while Ethan grabs a normal chainsaw. Showing resilience and endurance, Ethan holds his own against Jack, chainsawing him multiple times and ultimately exposing his growths. Eventually, Jack gets chainsawed to the point where his upper body explodes, leaving only his legs intact. Despite this, his legs start to stand and walk, but eventually fall to the ground, once again, seemingly dead.
Final showdown[]
Even after losing his whole body above the waist, Jack still survived and regenerated, coming after Ethan again as he frees Zoe and Mia from the boathouse. At this point, Jack no longer resembles a human being, his body consisting almost purely of mold and having grown to gigantic proportions. Confronting Jack inside the ruined boathouse, Ethan takes advantage of Jack's tremendous bulk to run around him, avoiding his attacks and targeting the multiple orange eyes that have grown all over his body.
Ethan defeats Jack by taking out his eyes, causing him to retreat into the flooded section of the boathouse. Seconds later, Jack ambushes Ethan from underwater and begins to swipe at him in a confined space, inadvertently allowing his final eyeball to be exposed and destroyed. Jack's carcass begins to rot away, and Ethan tries to escape with Zoe and Mia. However, Jack grabs Ethan once more, readying for another fight. Zoe tells Ethan to use a dose of D-Series serum on him. When Ethan does, Jack crystallizes completely, killing his body for good.
Aftermath[]
Shortly after escaping the Baker house, Ethan is knocked out and captured by Eveline, being held within the ruined tanker ship she had escaped from. Suspended within a pillar of mold, Ethan experiences a dream where he meets Jack one last time. Jack, now free of Eveline's control, expresses deep remorse for his actions, revealing to Ethan that his family were corrupted and did not wish to harm anyone. He explains that Eveline, whom they found in a wrecked oil tanker, had infected them with her "gift" and made them into her own "family". Jack then begs Ethan to save his family from Eveline, right before Ethan wakes up from the dream. While not expressly stated, it can be reasoned that Eveline possesses some form of "hive mind" which holds the memories and personalities of the people she controls even after their original bodies die. This would explain how the figment Jack was able to tell Ethan such details regarding Eveline's manipulation of him and his family.
End of Zoe[]
The Swamp Man
In the DLC add-on End of Zoe, it is revealed that some part of Jack survived even after Eveline's destruction. His cells had been altered to such an extent that even the D-Series serum couldn't destroy him entirely, and he was reformed as a tall, imposing humanoid creature somewhat resembling a common Molded. Without Eveline controlling him, Jack had become rabid and would violently attack anyone within his sights.
After Umbrella had quarantined the Baker property and the surrounding bayou, several of their personnel fell prey to Jack. Unsure of who or what this creature was, the mercenaries began referring to it as the "Swamp Man". Still possessing some small degree of his former humanity and memories, Jack finds the shack belonging to his older brother Joe and burns it down, taking his still-living daughter Zoe away.
Joe embarks on a journey through the bayou to save Zoe, using only his wits and his bare fists to survive against the Molded that are still prowling around the quarantine zone. During this mission, he encounters the Swamp Man multiple times, unaware that the creature stalking him is his own brother Jack. With the guidance of some surviving Umbrella troops and the equipment they left behind, Joe manages to obtain a serum that will reverse the fungal crystallisation taking over Zoe's body. He also obtains a hi-tech gauntlet that Umbrella have built to augment the strength of their soldiers, allowing him to deal devastating blows to the Molded and the Swamp Man during their final showdown. At this point, Joe realises that the Swamp Man is Jack after tearing away a layer of Mold obscuring his face. Seeing that the monster before him is no longer his brother, Joe finally kills the Swamp Man in a fist fight, tearing off the creature's head and splattering its mutated brains all over the floor of the Bakers' lounge.
Personality[]
Prior to Eveline's arrival, Jack Baker was a family man. However, he was not above physically disciplining his son Lucas, once having slapped him for using his cellphone at the dinner table. Under Eveline's influence, Jack is a highly sadistic and violent individual who wears a manic grin most of the time, and was willing to attack anyone who had angered him at the slightest provocation. He is very abusive towards his son Lucas, even slicing his arm off at one point (with Lucas himself implying that this wasn't the first time it happened). He's also verbally abusive towards his wife and made a motion with his hand implying that he was going to hit her. Even under Eveline's influence, however, it is revealed that he ultimately still cared for his family, as he was genuinely angry that Ethan tried to get Zoe to turn against him (even though Zoe was already against him long before Ethan arrived) and that he had killed Marguerite.
When Ethan meets Jack again in Eveline's hive mind, he shows deep remorse for his actions, and says that he would never had hurt him if it wasn't for Eveline's influence. He showed sympathy for Eveline, telling Ethan that all she wanted was a family, and then begs him to free his family from Eveline.
Abilities[]
- Enhanced Strength - Jack is much stronger than ordinary human beings. He has been shown to lift a full-grown man off their feet with ease as well as smashing heavy furniture and even breaking through walls. In his mutated form, Jack's strength increases in proportion to his size and he is capable of crushing Ethan with one blow from his hand.
- Superhuman Durability - Jack is capable of shrugging off attacks such as bullets or knife strikes. He does not appear to be bothered much by fire, either, showing that he has become impervious to pain.
- Regenerative Healing - Jack is capable of rapidly healing any injury he sustains. He has been shown to recover from gunshots, explosions, impalement, even having his entire upper body destroyed following his chainsaw duel with Ethan. With the amount of damage he suffered from that, Jack wasn't able to completely restore his human form and mutated into a hulking beast made of mold.
- Acid Vomit - In his mutated form, Jack could expel streams of acid from his mouth, much like the Fat Molded.
Weaknesses[]
In his human form, Jack had no specific weaknesses or vulnerabilities. While he could regenerate his wounds, continued repeated damage would overwhelm his healing ability. In his mutant form, Jack had multiple orange eyes appearing all over his body. Ethan was able to defeat Jack by targeting these eyes and destroying them with concentrated gunfire.
External Links[]
- Jack Baker in Resident Evil Wiki.