RE6 Was A Shitshow, But I Enjoyed Ada's Route, And I'm Only Now Realizing At Almost 5AM What That Means

RE6 was a shitshow, but I enjoyed Ada's route, and I'm only now realizing at almost 5AM what that means for her going into RE9.

Ada Wong is dead.

For those who don't know because they've only seen/played the remakes, Ada Wong was never this woman's real name. It was an alias she put on as early as the 1998 Raccoon City assignment/incident. We see in an end game panel of the original RE3 an image of her standing in front of a mirror hugging herself saying the woman she used to be is gone now and that she died in Raccoon City.

I use this panel for my interpretation of her that she decided going forward to wear the persona she crafted as Ada Wong like a coat. It's her shield against the world and it's horrors as she helps perpetuate them by continuing her mercenary and spywork underneath the alias.

Ada Wong is untouchable. She doesn't get attached. She plays things fast and loose, and people are only allowed as close as she wants them to be which is not very. You only ever hear about Ada Wong. You only get this surface level understanding of who she is because that's all the alias is. A coat. You see how red the fabric is, but you don't know the year it's made, the fabric it's made of, or how well it keeps out the cold. All you can see is the style and color and nothing else. Not even a dip into it's pockets.

Ada Wong wasn't in Degeneration to see the harm caused by the G-Virus. She wasn't in RE5 to deal with the plaga she helped get out. In fact, the first time we see her deal with the consequence of that action is 5 years later in Damnation where her interaction with the bioweapons is still extremely minimal. The second time we see her deal with these consequences is the aftermath of Simmons getting a little too attached to who Ada Wong is supposed to be in RE6.

Carla keeps saying she's Ada Wong, and she's right. Ada Wong is mysterious and untouchable. She doesn't get attached. She plays things fast and loose, and people are only allowed as close as she wants them to be which Simmons adjusted for his own personal desires. Most importantly, Ada Wong kills indiscriminately with her actions to achieve her goals. We see how she keeps letting these viruses get into the hands of the worst people for a paycheck. Chris' team being killed by Carla is the close up. It's taking the mask off. It's removing the distance the audience gives Ada when she finishes these jobs and putting us where we should be. Angry. Confused. Horrified.

And it worked because everyone was pissed and calling it character assassination, but it wasn't. People just weren't prepared to see it happen to Chris Redfield, but the truth was Chris' team members were just people like all the other victims of bioweapons our Ada helped get out there. They weren't an exception.

Carla is Ada Wong, and our Ada has to face the reflection of the mask she's been wearing like a second skin for over a decade. I've commented in an earlier post that I thought it was strange to rope our Ada into this sort of vigilante role where she saves Sherry and looks out for others a tiny bit while moving forward in the story. However, it's not strange. Her whole route is probably the closest glimpse we see into who she really is separated from Leon. It's familiar, but different because we're still not getting answers, but we're seeing how she acts independently when fighting for herself. And at the end of it all Ada Wong dies.

Carla is shot and falls from that deadly height wherein it's reported to everyone that Ada Wong is dead. When Carla mutates inside that boat with mockery and sureness sprouting from her loud mouth about who Ada Wong is, our Ada kills her. She destroys the mask that's become so ugly and horrific from all these years of turning a blind eye to her own actions and to herself.

She kills Simmons, the person who made the mirror, and she destroys the vestiges of whatever it is Carla made in that lab while wearing the face and persona of Ada Wong. This is our Ada being forced to clean up the mess she made even if it wasn't her pulling all the strings, because it was a facet of her. An idea of her. Her idea of her that she crafted back in fucking 1998 and could never separate herself from. Until now. And it's angry and cathartic and left to blaze into ash until she's finally able to step away from it all.

This doesn't erase anything she's done. It never will, but she doesn't have to be Ada Wong anymore because Ada Wong Is Dead.

I just desperately need her in RE9. I need someone to call out to her. I want them to call her Ada and for her to reply "That's not my name. It never was." And because Capcom still won't separate the two, I think it'd be interesting for that tidbit to get to Leon. I want that line to hit him like a train. I want Ada's delivery to tell him, "You never knew me. You never even tried to find out."