Okay, this is going to be a looooong ride.
I’ve noticed that almost no one is talking about the Saddler Sanctuary and the things RE4R has established about the mysterious leader(s) of Los Iluminados. But that’s okay, because… I have theories. And a lot of them. (Yes, I realize that Separate Ways might make all of this obsolete with just one tiny note or remark, but still, it is so much fun to speculate.)
What does the game establish?
- There have been 15 leaders of Los Iluminados, Osmund Saddler being the latest and Adam Saddler being the first. We also know full names of Hester Saddler and Keenan Saddler, leading to the conclusion that the leader of Los Iluminados has always carried the last name Saddler.
- The first names of the leaders correspond to the letters of the alphabet - i.e., O as in Osmund is the 15th leader, A as Adam was the first, J as in Joseph was the 10th, F as in Francis was the 6th… etc.
- There are 15 statues in the Saddler Sanctuary, one for each leader - and they all look the same.
- We know of two former leaders who have tombstones with epitaphs outside the Sanctuary: Hester Saddler and Keenan Saddler. Hester Saddler is - most likely - the one who was in charge when the cult was banished to the island because his epitaph - from the year 1741 - reads “we find ourselves in exile” and generally talks about the cult having been banished to the “barren” island.
- Hester’s tombstone appears to have been completely abandoned while Keenan’s is accompanied by an old shrine where you can find the Staff of Royalty treasure. (In the OG game, that staff was found inside an old grave inside the mines, so, that theme continues here.)
Now… these facts lead to one massive question: How does this entire line of Saddler leaders work?
Of couse, the first and maybe most obvious theory is that this is some kind of family-based monarchy cult reign. The eldest Saddler son always takes over the cult. However, there is no indication of biological sons - and since this is a religious cult that seems to heavily reference the Catholic church, I am somewhat hesitant to go down that road. The old verses from the Iluminados Bible refer to the leader of the cult as “the master” (a nice throwback to the OG game where Osmund refers to himself as “the master of this fine, religious community”) and there is another line that basically states that the villagers gave him some of their children. This might imply that one of those children is then chosen to be the next leader and gets the last name Saddler and the next-in-line first name that corresponds to the next letter of the alphabet. Still though, while being a viable and plausible theory, there is no concrete evidence for this in the game. (It also kinda clashes with Las Plagas being deadly to children but since we don’t know if the villagers ever even got plagas back in those days I’m gonna leave this one up for speculation.)
The second theory is rooted in what I already said - Los Iluminados are very much reminiscent of the Catholic Church in some ways (this comes as no surprise, given how the people of the region were Catholics before they turned to the cult). The leader carries a staff, just like the Pope, he walks around with a posse who are basically attendants - again, just like the Pope - and he is the one (a) god speaks through… just like the Pope. It might therefore be logical to assume that the new leader is chosen in the same way a new Pope is chosen - by elders (Los Iluminados do appear to have a rank system of some kind) who elect one of their own who will then become the new leader and assume the appropriate name of Next-Letter-In-The-Alphabet Saddler, much like the new Pope gets to choose a name for himself.
But STOP in the name of love! Wait!
Before I go on… I know, I know - what happens when they run out of letters for the first names of the latest Saddler? What happens once they’ve reached the letter Z? I might have an answer for this. There might not actually BE a letter Z. A heavily used symbolism in the Catholic Church - which, remember, appears to have been used very heavily as a basis for a lot of things related to Los Iluminados - is the use of Alpha and Omega as in beginning and end. In the transliteration of the Greek alphabet into Latin, omega becomes o. Which gives us A and O - Adam and Osmund. This might also explain why there is no room for another statue in the Saddler sanctuary: Osmund is meant to be the last leader of Los Iluminados; but not because the cult is done. No - because Osmund is supposed to rule the world for all eternity. This might also be why the Iluminados Bible that can be found next to the altar in the Saddler Sanctuary has the final page of the Iluminados story open. (Yes, I know, isn’t this fascinating so far?)
This little excursion now brings me to my final theory as to how the Saddlers have managed to rule Los Iluminados for so long. Ready? Ready.
My third and final (and favorite because it’s the most out there but also the most Resident Evil and, funnily enough, also the one that is most backed by evidence in the game) theory is… that Adam Saddler and Osmund Saddler are the exact same person, only reborn again and again thanks to the powers of Las Plagas.
This would explain a lot of things the game establishes, most notably why all the Saddler statues in the Sanctuary look the same. And why Osmund talks the way he talks - old-fashioned and seemingly oblivious to any kind of modern speech patterns. It is also backed by one piece of evidence in the game - Keenan Saddler’s epitaph from 1827 that states “we die only to be reborn; we live on through eternity“.
Now, of course, this raises questions. We know that Las Plagas were banned and sealed under the castle when Hester Saddler was in charge of the cult. So how could the leaders continue the rebirth? My theory is that the leader of Los Iluminados has always had the dominant plaga that Osmund has. (Luis Serra’s note states that it is different from all the other plagas due to an extra “organ”… no I’m not gonna go into THAT one now, lol.) Adam Saddler discovered Las Plagas under the castle in 1554, as the Provenance Monolith in the Saddler Sanctuary states. So, what if he found the dominant plaga back then and became its host? It is known that parasites can reproduce through basically cloning themselves. What if the plaga, once the “speaker” is no longer viable enough, cocoons itself and then self-replicates while the previous one dies? This could be the “rebirth” that Keenan Saddler’s epitaph speaks of. And yes, Las Plagas were sealed. But since Hester Saddler was obviously with his cult on the island… what if his dominant plaga went with him? Whatever the “new leader” ritual is, it must have continued on the island. The cult prevailed on the island. Las Plagas themselves might have been sealed again under the castle, yes, but what about the plagas that were already inside the cult members? Were they all killed? Or were they all banished to the island? The game clearly mentions that the latter was the case - Los Iluminados were banished to the island, Las Plagas themselves were sealed underneath the castle. But nobody mentions what happened to the plagas that were already inside the cult members. Only that the cult was banished to the island. Which makes me assume that their plagas simply went with them, including Hester’s dominant plaga. Which also supports my “rebirth” theory - the rebirthing process continued, leader after leader, until it had reached Osmund, the O, omega, the end. Osmund then found out about Ramon Salazar being a sick child who had an incredibly strict father (there is a note referring to Salazar’s mother inviting “the devil” into the house to cure her son from his illness AND “the devil” also murdered Salazar’s father, which means Osmund murdered him) and to him this must have seemed like a prophecy coming true - he convinced Salazar to unseal Las Plagas and then he hired scientists to improve and enhance his control over Las Plagas, to ensure that he would be able to take over the world and rule for all eternity as the final and eternal leader.
Of course it is also equally possible (I guess this some kind of 4th theory) that Osmund Saddler - like in the original - is an outsider, a bio weapons research chief who heard about the myth of Las Plagas and simply walked in and, in this version of the game’s story, assumed the identity of the next leader of the cult to achieve world domination. This would be the fastest and simplest explanation, I guess - and is also a very likely one since it’s the closest to what the original established. It would kinda diminish the whole cult backstory, however. I mean why go to such lengths to establish such an elaborate cult backstory when the idea is “and then one day some dude walked in who was just a really good actor with a silver tongue and there was identity theft and suddenly world domination”.
Anyways. These are my Los Iluminados Lord Saddler theories. Yes, this was a long essay. But hey.
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