2 years after its reveal, The Witness has failed as a villain in the eyes of Destiny 2 fans

It’s been a difficult few months for Destiny 2, with a brutal round of layoffs at Bungie followed up by the game’s weakest season launch to date. Now, with The Final Shape expansion set to release this year, dwindling community sentiment has reared its head toward the upcoming expansion’s antagonist.

Savathun is a far stronger franchise villain than The Witness—that was the argument originally laid down by Destiny Bulletin in a post yesterday on X (formerly Twitter). The post picked up steam fast, with many community members and content creators expressing their disappointment with The Witness’ narrative buildup heading into The Final Shape. It isn’t a promising sign; The Final Shape is supposed to wrap up the last decade of Destiny’s storytelling with the Guardians’ final battle against The Witness, but the community doesn’t appear thrilled at the prospect.

The Witness was first revealed in a post-credits scene at the end of The Witch Queen expansion in February 2022. While Guardians had begun to interact more with the Darkness as an entity throughout Beyond Light, this was the first time a face behind it had been unveiled. Since then, many believe The Witness simply hasn’t been fleshed out enough for players to forge a proper rivalry with it.

“The backstory for The Witness was told to us by a giant space whale in an unrelated season,” content creator Skarrow9 said. “We’ve heard The Witness talk like twice and we know nothing about its personality. Its main weapons are weird looking dudes and a fleet of empty ships. [Savathun] clears by a mile.”

The backstory in question was unexpectedly delivered during Season of the Deep last June. Despite The Witness’ presence throughout the Lightfall campaign, Bungie refrained from diving into the antagonist’s backstory at all until week five of the year’s second seasonal entry. It was a perplexing choice made worse by how poorly received the Lightfall story was, with The Witness’ lack of impact being a major factor in a plethora of criticisms.

That lack of impact and buildup comes up again and again in comparisons to Savathun, with one popular response saying The Witness is a “generic evil bad guy” that has forced the story “to bend 500 times” to include it. In contrast, Savathun was an antagonistic force established as early as the original Destiny with The Taken King. As part of the original three Hive siblings alongside Oryx and Xivu Arath, she had eight years to be foreshadowed before her central role in The Witch Queen expansion. In the four seasons between Beyond Light and The Witch Queen, she even possessed Osiris, a plot twist players spent the whole year unraveling.

“We give Megamind five minutes of screen time and see it only wave its hands and expect it to be a better villain?” wrote Destiny 2 YouTuber evanf1997, further adding to the universal criticisms. “The Witness is the most formidable foe we’ve faced—I just don’t think Bungie has done enough to SHOW it,” lamented FPS streamer Makowski as well. “The season building up to The Final Shape hardly has any memorable Witness moments.”

It’s difficult to imagine that the community’s opinion on The Witness will have a chance to turn around before The Final Shape launches in June. The final season of the year is already starting to wrap up and it’s had little to do with The Witness, instead focused on our efforts to follow it through the portal opened in the Traveler due to the events of Lightfall. With very few narrative threads left for players to uncover before the final showdown, The Witness’ role in The Final Shape will have to be something special if it’s to go down in Destiny history as a worthy adversary to cap off the Light and Darkness saga.