The “final riddle” was a stumbling block for all fans and players who spent several days playing Resident Evil Requiem since its release. Some hints were found as to what it might be connected to, and a way to decipher the complex password used in the lead researcher’s office was discovered, but the identity of the “sweet couple” supposed to hear the voice remained unclear.
An incredibly complex mystery has stumped players even before the game’s official release, uniting thousands of people from all over the world. Now, however, it appears a solution has been found. At the very least, it may be temporary, or perhaps simply not fully explained. Below you’ll find all the details, but be warned: this article contains major plot spoilers.
What is the “Final Riddle” and who solved it first?
The final riddle in Resident Evil Requiem is a hidden challenge that only appears after completing the game for the first time. The rather vague clue about how to solve it reads:
- “Let the sweet couple hear the voice.”
After completing The Final Riddle, you’ll receive 20,000 Challenge Points (admittedly, not a lot considering how difficult the puzzle turned out to be to solve ), which can be used to purchase new weapons and upgrades.
However, to solve it, several important conditions must be met:
You need to obtain Marie’s doll , a key item located in the research complex beneath the courtyard near the medical center. To ensure the doll appears in the correct location, you must complete a series of hidden actions.
Once obtained, Marie’s doll can be saved and carried between playthroughs, which is crucial, as it’s impossible to solve the puzzle immediately after finding it. Leave the doll in Grace’s item storage. In future playthroughs, it will be available to the protagonist from the very beginning.
During the section where you control Grace—before exiting Rhodes Hill Medical Center and escorting Emily to the courtyard—you must take Emily with you to the lead researcher’s office and solve a secret puzzle. The Marie doll must be in your inventory during this time.
As for the pioneers of the solution, there are several people worth mentioning:
- Our colleagues at IGN, as far as we know, were the first to discover the clues that ultimately led to the solution to this secret riddle (in fact, this is the end of the entire chain, not the initial step).
- YouTuber Gengar Collects posted a video claiming to be the first to fully solve the puzzle. While he couldn’t recall the exact sequence of his actions, he did share some important details. First, he obtained the Mari doll in the research facility beneath the medical center courtyard during his first playthrough. Next, he experimented with the toilets in the medical center. On his next playthrough, now with the doll, he entered the secret code on the safe in the lead researcher’s office while Grace was carrying Emily and the Mari doll was in his inventory.
However, there was a problem : you can inspect and test multiple dolls in the game, but you can’t simply place any of them in your inventory. For a long time, no one understood how to make the right doll appear in the right place, as Gengar Collects had written about.
Following this, avid players created a subreddit dedicated to “The Last Riddle” to share information, debunk theories, and work together to solve the mystery. Finally, YouTuber Kyro, experienced in data mining, posted a video revealing the steps necessary for the Mari doll to appear in the research facility.
How to get the Marie doll
Step 1. Basement under the medical center
The guide below for Resident Evil Requiem’s ”Final Puzzle” is organized chronologically. Imagine you’re playing through the game for the first time, even if you already know the gist of the challenge. Information on obtaining the Marie doll is taken from Kyro’s video. All steps below must be completed in the basement beneath the medical center.
At a certain point, you’ll pass through a security checkpoint filled with hanging corpses, leading to a bloody pool in the processing area. Upon reaching the pool, don’t drain the blood immediately using the vent. Instead, wait at least 15 minutes. According to Kyro, this activates the first “flag”—a trigger that affects the doll’s spawn location (in this case, the number of bodies in the pool). After 15 minutes, it’s recommended to manually save so you can reload if necessary.
When you’re ready, drain the blood and jump down. It’s important to survive the entire episode without killing the zombies with your weapon. They all need to get into the meat grinder alive. To do this, use knee shots and stuns. This will activate the second trigger , linked to the doll.
Note : Kyro’s video doesn’t mention draining the smaller pool of contaminated blood that can be collected. However, I checked personally and didn’t drain the pool.
Step 2. West Wing Restroom
After escaping the medical center basement, you need to return to the restroom on the first floor of the west wing. Once inside, simply flush the toilet in the nearest open stall eight times. This is the third trigger needed to obtain the Marie doll in Resident Evil Requiem.
Step 3. Scientific complex (hematology laboratory behind the center)
You can then continue through the story campaign as usual. After activating self-destruct mode, head to the Collection & Testing area. The core will soon explode, and several infected zombies will transform into bubbleheads. Head to the metal steps on the left, but don’t go up. Marie’s doll should be lying right next to the stairs, partially submerged in leaking blood.
This is how you’ll get the doll in Resident Evil Requiem—that’s the first thing Gengar Collects told you. Since you can’t return to the medical center after this, simply store the doll in Grace’s item storage. It will be saved and carried over to subsequent playthroughs.
Severed Hand and “Let’s Play”
The following sections are dedicated to clues and a code search for the Resident Evil Requiem “Final Puzzle,” first discovered on IGN.
In short, the gist is this:
- After escaping the medical center basement, turn around and pick up the Girl’s severed hand from the floor.
- Take your hand to the laser microscope used to analyze the blood samples. For example, in the blood lab or the office on the second floor of the West Wing.
- After the analysis, a message will appear: “Let’s play.” Something resembling a DNA sequence will also be displayed: GGC – AAG – AUA – ACG – UGU – CAU.
Each codon is associated with nucleotides that form the genetic code, but no medical training is required. These letters correspond to symbols—the Sun, Moon, and Star—used to solve safe puzzles in the office of the chief researcher and the head of security—the three leaders of the Rhodes Hill center.
Hint #1: letter G
The first clue is located next to the analyzer in the hematology lab. The laser microscope you use to analyze blood samples is engraved with “G = 150,000,000.” This is the distance from the Earth to the Sun—150 million kilometers. Therefore, G = Sun.
Hint #2: letter U
The next clue concerns an hourglass in the VIP lounge behind the courtyard and helipad. This is Victor Gideon’s office. If you turn the hourglass over and let the sand fall out, the inscription “U = 380,000” will appear on the top base inside. This is the average distance from Earth to the Moon—380,000 kilometers. Therefore, U = Moon .
Clue #3: Letter C
The third clue is contained in a document called “Grace Ashcroft’s Blood Analysis Report,” found in the labs beneath the courtyard, also at the research center. At the end of the report, it states: C = 4.2 ly, where ly stands for light years. The closest star to Earth after the Sun is Proxima Centauri, located approximately 4.246 light years away. Therefore, C = Star .
Hint #4: letter A
This hint is optional, especially if you’ve already figured out the meaning of G, U, and C. However, later in the story campaign, you might notice an Easter egg in Raccoon City. You’ll be playing as Leon there. On the basketball court is the head of a Mr. Everywhere doll—a collectible from the Resident Evil 3 remake .
If you kick her into the basketball hoop, a message will appear: “No time for games.” If you then return to the Kendo gun shop and examine the headless Mr. Everywhere statue, another message will appear: “Just ignore A.”
This means that the letter A in DNA codons can be eliminated. The sequence then becomes GGC-GUC-GUG-UCU.
Solving a puzzle and children’s laughter
After all the preparation, it’s time to solve the riddle. Let’s recap:
- Start a new playthrough (on any difficulty) after receiving Marie’s doll. Complete the game with the doll!
- Playing as Grace, go through the basement of the medical center, pick up the severed hand and analyze it.
- Place the Marie doll in your inventory, then take it to Emily in the Chief Researcher’s office.
- Using the deciphered clues, enter the combination on the safe: Sun, Sun, Star, Sun, Moon, Star, Sun, Moon, Sun, Moon, Star, Moon.
- After this, a notification will appear that you have “let the sweet couple hear your voice.”
Note : If you complete all the steps without Marie’s doll in your inventory, you’ll hear a child’s laughter, but the challenge won’t be completed. If you have the doll (like Emily in Grace’s arms), the challenge will be completed and you’ll receive 20,000 points.
The Last Riddle’s Clue Connections – What’s the Sweet Couple?
The final riddle in Resident Evil Requiem is astonishing in how seemingly innocuous objects become part of a complex puzzle. However, the key to solving it lies in the clue itself: “Let the sweet couple hear the voice.”
At first, it might seem like the “sweet couple” is the various duets in the game: Leon and Grace, two zombie singers, two fat chunks, or even a pair of infected zombies near the chief researcher’s office (although they might not be there if you kill the enemies right outside the isolation ward along with the doctor with the bone saw; then they simply won’t have time to return there).
But in reality, we’re talking about Emily and Marie. Emily is the girl Grace meets in the medicine cabinet, next to the safe room, at the very beginning of her exploration of the medical center. Marie is the Monster Girl who stalks Grace at several points throughout the center. She’s Emily’s former friend.
A photograph found in the security chief’s office suggests a connection between the girls: they are sitting next to each other, like twin sisters or clones. In one cutscene, Emily also calls Marie by name. Indirect clues in the environment suggest that Marie escaped through a vent and then, in the darkness, transformed into a monster. After killing the researcher in that very room, she continued to wander the darkened areas of the medical center, eventually settling in the basement beneath it.
As you progress through the game, you’ll find various dolls—in the medicine cabinet ( Mari’s cell on the left) and in the basement holding cells where Mari hides Emily. It’s safe to assume Mari retains memories of her connection with Emily. Despite her transformation into a monster , she still views Emily as a “doll” or a sister, so she doesn’t kill her, merely seeking to keep her close.
The clues link the blood pools and the toilet in the restroom.
One might wonder how exactly Marie the doll ended up in the scientific complex and why the toilet needs to be flushed at all. There are several theories.
A massive amount of blood accumulates in the basement’s processing area—the meat grinder behind the security room. Grace then falls through a drain pipe and finds the “Collection & Testing” switch. Once activated, the blood from the basement drains and eventually ends up in this area of the scientific complex.
The toilet seems like a random element, but if you remember the holding cell where Marie kept Emily, it had a bed, dolls, and, of course, a toilet.
The Research Complex also contains a document in which Victor Gideon mentions that Marie is Subject 170. She was injected with hundreds of liters of contaminated blood, but the experiment was deemed a failure, and the subject was to be disposed of.
From this we can conclude: 170 → 1 + 7 + 0 = 8. The toilet is directly connected to the containment chamber. Bodies are disposed of in a meat grinder. The blood of the disposed infected is used in experiments like Marie’s. In real life, bodily waste is flushed down the toilet.
It sounds a bit far-fetched and perhaps a bit far-fetched, but so far these are the only connections found between the clues. In the context of the game, they suggest disposing of multiple bodies and flushing the toilet eight times.
