Destiny 2 Lightfall ending, explained

The Lightfall expansion for Destiny 2 marks the beginning of the end for the saga of Light and Dark that has been going on since Destiny launched in 2014. Unfortunately for many players, the stakes that Lightfall’s campaign and ending set up for The Final Shape next year aren’t exactly as clear cut as they would like.

The Veil, an item of paracausal power, has lain hidden in the Neptunian city of Neomuna since the first Collapse thanks to the efforts of Savathun, the Witch Queen. She separated it from the Traveler and tucked it away in an effort to prevent The Witness from being able to commune. With her powerful deceptions, she was able to send The Witness back out into the stars then and keep the Traveler safe, but now The Witness has returned and humanity does not hold a similar power to send it away again.

When The Witness attempts to connect with the Traveler again at the beginning of Lightfall, it is struck with a vision of The Veil on Neptune. With its location finally revealed to The Witness, it sends Calus to Neptune to find it and set up a connection to it.

How this plot unfolds and the true nature behind many of the aforementioned items, however, has left many confused after the campaign itself played coy with any real explanations.

Explaining the end of Destiny 2 Lightfall

The Witness and Calus originally aimed to utilize an item called the Radial Mast to connect with The Veil, the paracausal artifact no doubt acting like a key to a lock that would otherwise have prevented The Witness from using The Veil as it desired. As The Veil itself was well-protected and Calus couldn’t find its precise location, the Radial Mast when powered up might have opened up a connection point to it for The Witness when only within the right proximity.

Despite the Radial Mast’s destruction thanks to the Cloud Strider Rohan, The Veil’s safety is once again compromised when Calus attempts a final, direct attack on where The Veil is believed to be housed. As the Guardian defends it, it becomes clear that the location that The Veil is set up in is an old Ishtar Collective bunker buried deep underground. This bunker appears to be from the early days of Neomuna’s existence, connecting The Veil and its power to the origins of the advanced society that now lives above it.

The Guardian is able to find the location of The Veil—however, it’s as they do that the outside defenses crumple in the face of Calus’ Shadow Legion. The Witness’ Disciple crashes down through the bunker into a final arena beneath The Veil, and it’s up to the Guardian to put an end to him if they want to prevent him from getting The Witness’ wanted connection to The Veil directly from the source.

Calus falls after a long battle, but it’s in that moment that it becomes clear that the Guardian has actually done exactly what The Witness was hoping for. It’s been long teased, ever since Shadowkeep, that The Witness’s paracausal capabilities allow it to “possess” the Guardian’s Ghost to some degree. Usually this is just to convey a message to the Guardian, but even earlier in the Lightfall campaign, The Witness has shown its ability to fully take control of the Ghost for a brief period.

The Witness takes control of the Ghost yet again. With The Veil only inches away, its able to convert the Ghost into a key in the same way that it planned to use the Radial Mast. The Veil opens up to it, finally giving The Witness full access to the Traveler back in Earth’s orbit. The Vanguard can only watch on helplessly as a massive portal opens up on the Traveler’s surface, and both The Witness and the Pyramid ships that surrounded the Traveler disappear inside.

Where this portal leads or what The Witness plans to do once inside of it remains a mystery, one that will more than likely only be answered in The Final Shape expansion next year.

What is The Veil?

The Veil evades any real explanation as to its function or origin throughout the Lightfall campaign, but there are a few flashpoints in the lore that we can look to in order to get an idea of what it is exactly.

Most pertinent of these comes in the post-campaign Exotic quest to earn the Deterministic Chaos machine gun. With what The Veil is and the reason for the Vex invasion of Neptune being put under a microscope in this side story, it’s discovered that the Black Heart—a paracausal source of power destroyed in Destiny vanilla—was an imperfect recreation of The Veil. It stands to reason that this is linked to why the Vex are on Neptune in the first place, as they hunt for further information on The Veil in hopes of correctly recreating it into a true artifact of power that they can host in the Black Garden.

The Black Heart’s imitative nature, clearly wrapped up in Darkness as opposed to the Light that The Veil is born from, could even suggest that The Veil powers something similar to the Black Garden for the Light. The Cloud Striders of Neomuna have already explained to the Guardian that the city’s technology—including the ArkNet, a digital realm that the majority of its citizens upload into and live within—is powered by The Veil, giving further credence to its utility as a paracausal resource. Both the ArkNet and the Vex network are suggested to exist within the same “quantum wilds,” which also raises questions around the nature of the Vex as well.

The Veil’s power also has a link to the potency of Strand within Neomuna according to the lore on the Final Warning Exotic sidearm. The weapon, which has Strand as its energy type, is believed to function off of the byproduct created by The Veil and its energy signatures. Since the Neomuni knew nothing of Strand as a physical power before the arrival of Osiris and the Guardian who could wield it, it’s a reasonable conclusion to come to. With how Osiris sees Strand as a power of the Darkness though, this also raises questions about the nature of The Veil if its presence enhances something like it.

Ultimately, we’ll get to learn more about how these pieces all fit together in future seasons and in The Final Shape. For now, the inner workings of Lightfall’s central powers are still a mystery for the most part.