The Women of Evil Within 2 Pt. 2
Continuing our discussion, we examine the women who drive the plot of Bethesda’s horror sequel
In the previous article, I attempted to avoid spoilers for the most part by delving into the monstrous women of the game. For the sake of critical analysis, however, we’re going to have to get deep into the storyline, and that means treading into spoiler-territory. So either watch a Let’s Play or play the game yourself before reading. You have been warned.
Juli Kidman: agent of rebellion
TEW2 (too-too?) brings back the complex Juli Kidman from the original game. She spent most of TEW as a mysterious individual clearly with her own agenda and on her own mission, and the DLC allowed you to step into her shoes and see the game through her lens.
The twist-reveal is that Kidman actually works for the company Mobius that created the STEM machine at the heart of all the havoc within the game, and as their acting agent she is both working with and against the male lead to further the company’s shadowy agenda. When we see the events of the game from her perspective, we realize that she isn’t a villain, but she too is being manipulated by the shadowy capitalists exerting dark influence over their worlds.
In the second-game, she returns to the protagonist Sebastian Castellanos to recruit him to return to the world of STEM with a shocking revelation: his daughter is alive and is being used by Mobius to power this new virtual world they’ve created. Yet again, something has gone terribly wrong. Sebastian has no knowledge of the horror Kidman has undergone at the hands of her employers and abusers her of simply being another of their stooges manipulating and abusing those around her. She bristles at the accusation, but remains focused on the more important mission, rescuing Lilly Castellanos.
Much like the monsters in the previous article, Juli Kidman has been victimized and manipulated by evil men into serving for their agenda. They spend a majority of her storyline attempting to brainwash her and strip her of any resistance she may have to their will. Her story arc in TEW2 is that of resistance, a gradual reveal that they have not broken her, and will come to regret even trying.
We’ll come back to her shortly, and the secret plan to save Lilly and bring down Mobius.
Lillly Castellanos: avatar of male-guilt
In TEW, Sebastian’s driving internal conflict is over his failure as both a father and husband that continues into the second game. His daughter Lilly had allegedly perished in a fire, and when his wife Myra insisted she was alive and had been taken, Sebastian refused to believe her despite the skillful detective instincts that made him fall in love with her in the first place. He simply believed that grief had driven her hysterical, and became consumed with guilt when her investigations led to her disappearance.
Visions of Lilly as a manifestation of this failure are most of our encounters with this child, and she receives little characterization outside that we know she is innocent. She is not here as a character of her own right, but as a reminder of Sebastian’s failures, as in one scene, a fiery avatar of guilt come to haunt him.
Lilly is the “princess in the castle” for the Evil Within 2. She is the damsel in distress, the literal object that is the point of conflict for every character in the game. Her actual innocence is being preyed on by the Mobius company as it makes her a remarkably powerful core component for their STEM invention. The desire to protect and free her from this terrible fate and the guilt over not being able to protect her from it is what unites all the protagonists in the story.
It is unfortunate that in a game with so many well-written women, the most important female character in the storyline is an object who exists mainly for the development of its male lead to angst over. It’s equally unfortunate that the game then absolves Sebastian of his greatest sin in a later scene that while emotional and poignant, bungles what should have been its most powerful moment.
Myra Castellanos and believing survivors
In a vision, Sebastian’s wife Myra tells him to stop focusing on the past. She reminds him that Mobius is the one responsible for the horror happening to their daughter, not him. He couldn’t have saved her from the fire, and he couldn’t have known or comprehended the true threat his family faced.
And yes, it is true. Sebastian is just as much a victim of the machinations of corporate capitalism as the women in his family; however this doesn’t mean that he did nothing wrong. When his wife needed him to believe her, he wrote her off as crazy and hysterical. This prompted her to take actions into her own hands that would eventually lead to her sacrifice. Her death is still on his hands, and yet the narrative absolves him completely.
It’s been difficult watching people come forwards with their stories of abuse and victimization, and still seeing them doubted and mocked. I’ve received my personal share of nasty emails and comments from people after publishing my own story. Sebastian is reassured by his wife, and told that he did absolutely nothing wrong, yes, even him not believing and supporting her even as his daughter was being victimized is absolved. “It was just too unbelievable” he couldn’t have known, see.
This has so many unfortunate resemblances to real-life issues of victimization and abuse. How often have abusers skated by because their actions were just so unbelievable? Whether the abusers are authority figures or family figures, they often get away because even those who should be protecting the victims refuse to acknowledge the horror taking place.
It would have been one thing for Myra to forgive Sebastian for this and accept his aid now, but it’s another entirely for him to be completely absolved. He does not deserve that, and should have been held accountable. It would have sent a much more powerful statement and strengthened the game’s writing from enjoyable pulpy romp into something much more profound.
Tatiana Gutierrez: Depressive Sarcastic Nightmare Girl
Another returning female character, Tatiana Gutierrez is a mysterious figure who exists seemingly within Sebastian’s subconscious in a shadowy asylum. She is snarky and mysterious, observing Sebastian with cool, clinical remarks. Her presence in both games is never rightly explained.
In the second game, her role as an aide to help Sebastian survive in his quest is more explicitly stated. She welcomes him back to her parlor is very clear about her desire to make him once more into the man he needs to be so he can save his daughter. It’s vaguely suggested in optional dialogue that she may be an artificial construct created by Myra as an ally to protect Sebastian while he wanders around STEM hunting for his daughter.
Regardless, much like Lilly, Tatianna has no character arc or plot of her own making, but is solely as a support for the male-lead. She even comments towards the end of the game that following his next battle, he will no longer see her — either because he’ll be dead, or because he will have succeeded. She’s like a depressing Nanny Mcphee.
In that sense, there is little difference between her and Obscura and the Guardian, a female-avatar for male-empowerment. We only learn Tatianna’s name from a brief clipping about a missing nurse in the first game. Most players simply refer to her as “The Nurse.” It’s not that she isn’t cool or interesting or even capable, but that like many women in fiction, her narrative is solely geared towards making the lead character more powerful or interesting. It’s noteworthy that Tatianna is designed to be pleasing on the eyes, and while the main characters express annoyance at her morbid sense of humor and cold personality, she is charming and likable. The ultimate virtual girlfriend: subservient, beautiful, and with just enough personality to make her interesting.
Again: what separates her from the Obscura, an avatar solely for male empowerment and pleasure?
Yukiko Hoffman & Esmeralda Torres: Sacrificial Badasses
Esmeralda Torres is cool. She is badass. She is capable. She has guilt over a shady past and like the protagonist is taking actions to overcome that guilt and make amends for her past sins.
These are things we learn about her, and quickly bond as our first introduction is the two of us fighting for our lives against an assault of the “undead” citizens of Mobius’ STEM experiment. We come to find out she was a Black Ops demolitions expert before she was recruited by Mobius. Through Torres, we learn about Myra’s secret-plan to rescue Lilly and destroy the company from within.
When Myra had originally disappeared, she’d joined up with Mobius to oversee Lilly and prepare her for STEM, all the while plotting the company’s downfall. She recruited Kidman and Torres as allies, and then she recruited Mobius’ recruiter, Father Theodore.
It’s worth noting that Myra and Kidman’s fatal flaw is in trusting a man with their secret plan. He is the one who broke the plan, unleashed the serial killer Stefano, and tried to kidnap Lilly, corrupting all of STEM. Theodore, like Mobius, wants to victimize this little girl, and use her powers within the virtual-world to create a horde of cult-like followers. He preys on Myra’s need for allies, as many self-proclaimed male-feminists do, and then exploits that trust for his personal gain.
When Sebastian confronts Theodore, the cult leader uses Sebastian’s guilt (a fiery manifestation of Lilly) against him, and Sebastian accidentally wounds Torres just before he passes out of consciousness. Despite her wounds, Torres manages to drag Sebastian to safety, and sacrifices her life to save his. We learn after her death that she is the one who set the fire and kidnapped Lilly from the Castellanos home, and her actions up to this point have been birthed of that desperate attempt to redeem herself.
Going to confess here that I really loved Torres. I thought she was a cool character, and I liked that her narrative mirrored the protagonist’s own journey through a virtual hell on a quest for redemption. It feels a waste to me to have her killed off and sacrificed for Sebastian to literally gain a new power-up (he literally takes her assault rifle) and serve as angst for his narrative.
Yukiko Hoffman is another cool female character who is smart, capable, and pretty badass yada-yada, etc. Her narrative and plot-line is almost copy-pasted from Torres’. She is a psychologist who worked for Mobius and feels guilt over what happened to Lilly. While she wasn’t originally a part of Myra’s plan, she takes over in Torres’ stead and uses her brilliant intelligence to help Sebastian literally walk through fire to confront Theodore. Also like Torres, her redemption arc concludes with her sacrificing herself for Sebastian to continue on in her stead.
It was tragic enough that one character fell into this trap, but they did the exact same-thing right after felt just a tad insulting.
Myra’s Revenge and Sacrifice
After confronting Theodore, it’s so brutally satisfying that Sebastian isn’t the one who finally does him in. Instead it is Myra, garbed in a white coat with wax covering her eyes who brutally pierces him through with a milky-white tentacle. Myra is in STEM with us, and she is powerful and terrifying. She destroys the man who intended to victimize her daughter, then steals her further into the world to protect her.
But this isn’t the real-world, this is still STEM, a complete illusion, and it is one that is gradually falling apart and threatening the lives of those still trapped inside. Myra is being corrupted by this world, her own sanity teetering as the dream threatens to collapse. It is on Sebastian to chase after his wife and restore her to sanity and save his family.
I really hate this section. On top of alternating between dull walking-simulator garbage, it has some truly unfun boss-fights that lack the thrill and inventiveness of previous battles in the game. Oh and then there’s the sexism in a game that had nearly convinced me it was a subversive feminist narrative. That sucked too.
Up until this moment, despite the aforementioned sacrifices, the story had revealed that women were driving the plot of this entire story. This was Myra’s plan. Kidman and Torres were her allies, redeeming themselves and also freeing themselves from the control of the men who had manipulated and victimized them. They were going to save Lilly, destroy Mobius, and move on with their lives.
Men fucked it up, but somehow a woman is now too vulnerable and hysterical to be able to take care of her own problems and needs a man to come in and literally beat some sense into her. Oh yes, Myra turns into a giant milk monster with glowing-orange weak-spots and Sebastian has to shoot them several times before she calms down.
Myra is weakened but not defeated by Sebastian’s violent assault (uggghhhhhh) and thanks him for it (UGGGGHHHHH) and then reveals to him the final part of her plan. All of Mobius is connected to STEM, even the higher-ups. It’s how they maintain control of their employees and the virtual world. Myra intends to swap places with Lilly as the new core of the system, and then bring it all crashing down with her inside. This will kill her, and every Mobius employee with a STEM-chip.
She will die, and Sebastian will be able to escape and raise Lilly in peace. This is the third woman in this story who has sacrificed herself for the purpose of furthering Sebastian’s goal and narrative. Otherwise, this scene might have had more impact, and as it is, I was only sad that another really cool female character had been put on the chopping block of male angst after being debased and humiliated before him.
Kidman’s Redemption
Fortunately, the game redeems itself for me in the final moments. We take control of Kidman as she breaks free from Mobius’ control and betrays them. She runs rampage through the company headquarters shooting and killing all who stand in their way. For those who played the DLC of the first-game where these men stalked and preyed on her in horrific nightmares, it is a cathartic moment of raw defiance and easily the most thrilling sequence in the game. She puts Myra’s plan into action, and smiles as she literally watches her boss’s head explode in a geyser of blood.
Lilly is rescued and reunited with her father, and the three of them drive off into the sunset. Kidman has redeemed herself, and broken free of her masters. Her character arc is stronger and more emotionally satisfying than the male protagonist’s. Unlike Sebastian, she is never given a moment where she is literally absolved of all wrong-doing, instead she has to fight hard and earn that redemption. I’m hoping dearly that she will be the central protagonist moving forwards.
The Evil Within 2 hides some deeply complex themes about society and victimization within a pulpy B-movie narrative. There appears to be a genuine attempt to subvert sexist tropes in favor of creating some truly compelling and capable women in its plot-line, but it seems to take as many steps forwards as it does backward. It is a beautiful game with good intentions that sometimes fall flat.
I’m looking forwards to seeing the series continue. Seriously, make Kidman the main character next time. Just do it.
Dorian Dawes is the author of the queer horror anthology Harbinger Island. Their work has appeared on BitchMedia, YourTango, GayPopBuzz, and the Huffington Post. You can support their content at patreon.com/doriandawes
