Jesse Faden at the End of Control Resonant

 Yeah, right there we're obviously talking spoiler territory.

I was pretty surprised when Control Resonant was officially announced and we learned that it would be Dylan, rather than Jesse, who would be our player character. Dylan had been the closest thing we got to a primary antagonist in the first game, serving as the mouthpiece for the Hiss, a fact that was something of a twist of the knife for Jesse, whose entire motivation in coming into this world was to find and reunite with her brother.

Dylan, of course, seems a lot better as of Resonant, and watching Gaming University's streamed playthrough after having beaten the game myself, it's remarkable seeing what a journey he goes on over the course of the game - early on, Dylan is deeply depressed and lost, and by the end of it, he's starting to feel a bit more loose and free. Indeed, his friendship with Zoe is a massive indicator of this transformation, as she's initially very cold toward him, but by the end of the game they seem like best friends.

But what of Jesse, the Director?

Well, we need to get into spoiler space here.

Mirroring the end of the first game, our heroic Faden is forced to struggle with the fact that their long-lost sibling is in a coma. Mirrors are one of the major motifs of the game, of course, and much as Alan Wake II used duality as a throughline, Control Resonant plays with this idea of being the second game with a similar theme of reflections and two-ness (is Darling's reveal as an abusive asshole part of that, the way that abusers often seem like two different people, one for the abused, and one for those who don't see what's going on?)

However, post-game materials, like talking with Dr. Florez, or hearing a report by a neurologist directed to Emily Pope, we find some interesting things:

Dylan's coma was, despite its cause, a pretty standard one, in which he was more or less asleep, lacking awareness and wakefulness. While he clearly had some kind of mental space in which he could think and even communicate (my interpretation is that Kieran Estevez visited him not in the actual Oldest House, but within the space that would become The Gap, because otherwise the timeline doesn't work - Dylan didn't wake up until 2026, and his short hair mirrors how he first appears in the Gap) Dylan wasn't really doing much in that state.

But these documents emphasize that Jesse's coma is very different from a typical one. She has signs of brain activity that you'd expect in someone who is awake, and notably lacks the delta brainwaves associated with dreaming.

Therefore, it seems that Jesse's brain is fully at work, even if she physically looks like someone in a coma.

What, then, is she up to? And where?

The Remedyverse is a place of multilayered realms of existence, such as the Astral Plane, the Dark Place, and others that we haven't really had a clear way to identify (are all the Slidescapes their own layers of reality? If that's the case, toss Meadow, Temple, The Hand, the Playhouse, etc., in there).

Thus, Jesse might be projecting (Astrally or not) and might be doing important business or fighting for her life in some other plane of existence.

Now, Remedy has not announced any DLC plans for Control Resonant. Alan Wake launched, if I recall correctly, with explicit plans for two DLCs (on top of the relatively minor, free Final Draft DLC a month after release). Thus, I don't want to hold my breath for any additional content to be added to the game. I know that Remedy is probably working on finishing up the Max Payne remakes due out next year, and I don't know to what degree people on the Control Resonant team have moved over to that (given that they had to be working on them in parallel, maybe the teams are quite separate).

Still, whether it's DLC or another game some time in the future, I do feel like there's a good chance that the next time we see Jesse, she'll be on some crazy interplanar adventure.