Years of lore, worldbuilding, and storytelling just paid off in the biggest way yet in Destiny 2’s latest season-ending mission and cutscene.
Season of the Seraph came to an action-packed, emotional, and terrifying end today with the finale to the season-long quest that leads directly into the game’s next big expansion, Lightfall. And it was worth the wait and build-up, ten-fold.
Before the discussion begins, the cutscene can be watched above. If you don’t want to know about it or want to experience it for yourself, look away now.
After a tense, exciting, and difficult story mission where the player must infiltrate a space station to prevent Beyond Light main villain Eramis from using world-destroying Warsats to take out the Traveler for good, the cutscene above began to play.
With its back against the wall, the Traveler began to flee, as it had done centuries before to the Eliksni homeworld of Riis, years before it came to Earth. All was nearly lost, only until the all-powerful AI Rasputin sacrificed himself and his Warsat network to prevent the Traveler’s destruction, and not a dry eye was left in the house.
Suddenly, the Traveler began its descent back into Earth’s atmosphere, giving players a beautiful money shot of the Traveler floating high above the Earth, as it does in the famous key art from the original game.
The day was saved… but maybe not because the Traveler wanted to return, as evidenced by the ending scene. And that’s where things really begin to get interesting moving forward.
“Why?” Eramis begged, wondering why humanity was not dealt the same hand as her people. “Why does it not flee?”
“Because it has nowhere else to run,” replied The Witness, teasing their arrival in Lightfall, as its fleet of Pyramid ships approached, flying past Jupiter. Whoa.
To summarize, humanity’s biggest weapon Rasputin is now gone, the Traveler, the giver of Light and the power that gives Guardians the ability to resurrect, was trying to flee again but stopped for some reason. And The Witness, the Destiny universe’s equivalent of Thanos in the Marvel movies, is finally here.
There was one last stinger, though: a revelation in a message that Rasputin left Guardians before he sacrificed himself. The hidden city of Neomuna on Neptune is home to something called “The Veil,” described as “an object of immense paracausal power” and is “linked to the Traveler.”
Not only was this week’s story beat and mission some of the best in the franchise, but it’s made even more impactful by the loss of a main character who’s been around since Destiny 1, payoff of years of build-up, and beautiful imagery. It sets up some big expectations for the new expansion.
Destiny 2 Lightfall releases in just two weeks on Feb. 28.
