‘Destiny 2: Lightfall’ ending, explained

Warning: the following article contains spoilers for Destiny 2: Lightfall.

Destiny 2: Lightfall has finally arrived, and what was supposed to be an Avengers: Infinity War-level event for Bungie’s nearly decade-old shared world shooter has left its fanbase with a fair few more answers than questions, with even the most switched-on lore bugs in the Destiny community left feeling a little short-changed after completing the campaign.

Perhaps it was the palpable hype generated by the epilogue of the Season of the Seraph that sent fan expectations soaring through the roof for the brewing cosmic conflict between the forces of the Last City and the Witness. Or it was all of the trailers alluding to it. At the end of the day, Lightfall’s campaign ended up being more of an isolated story about discovering new power and taking down one of the Witnesses disciplines. 

Between the Witnesses arrival in Earth’s orbit at the beginning, and their communion with the Traveler at the end, everything else was focused on the Cloudstriders, Calus, and the Guardian and Osiris’s journey to mastering the new subclass, Strand – which a lot of people aren’t vibing with, given the gravity of the events happening in the Destiny universe.

One looming question in particular which fans were expecting to have addressed mostly surrounded The Veil – what it is, and how exactly it plays into the Witnesses’ endgame. Here’s everything that happened at the end of the campaign, as well as our take on what it all means.  

What happened at the end of Destiny 2: Lightfall?

After Rohan predictably sacrifices himself to destroy the Radial Mast and its connection to the Veil, all sides of the conflict on Neomuna fall back to regroup and prepare for a huge final battle. Osiris and the Guardian take to the task of mastering Strand, Nimbus shores up the city’s defenses, and Caiatl rallies her Cabal forces – all the while Calus prepares for a full-scale assault on the Veil.

The Guardian, with the help of Caiatl and her Cabal partake in a battle of epic proportions on the doorstep of the vault which houses the Veil, until Calus arrives on the scene. Caiatl holds the line, allowing the Guardian some time to head down into the vault to protect the Veil from Calus and the Witness. 

Caiatl is eventually overpowered, and Calus meets the Guardian in the vault for a final showdown. After a grueling battle, the Guardian comes out on top and kills Calus once and for all. As Caiatl and Nimbus arrive on the scene, Ghost once again becomes possessed by the Witness (as it has in expansions going as far back as Shadowkeep), only this time – it seems to take control of ghost’s whole shell.

The Witness pulls Ghost towards the Veil in order to make the connection it needs to commune with the Traveler. Caiatl implores the Guardian to shoot their Ghost out of the air. The Guardian pulls out their Khovstov rifle (poignantly, the very first gun they found after Ghost resurrected them in the Cosmodrome) and aims it at their helpless companion, but they can’t bring themself to do the deed. Nimbus swoops in on his hoverboard and grabs Ghost out of the air, but by that point, the damage was already done. 

A beam of light shoots out of the Veil and across the solar system, stopping right in front of the Traveler where the Witness lies in wait, and seemingly becomes imbued with the Veil’s power. When a dazed and confused Ghost asks what just happened, Caiatl declares that we have lost. The Guardian radios in to Zavala, who is back in Earth’s orbit aboard the H.E.L.M, observing the following.

With its newly acquired power, the Witness carves a triangle-shaped portal into the side of the Traveler, tells it to ‘be free’, and disappears inside the extraterrestrial object. Back in the Tower, Zavala declares the Traveler is ‘gone’. An odd choice of words, given that the Traveler is still in Earth’s orbit, albeit with a big purple triangle in its side with the Witness inside. By ‘gone’, he likely means it has been subjected to the will of the Witness, sparking the beginning of the Sol system’s end.

What happened to the Traveler at the end of Destiny 2: Lightfall? 

What we’ve just seen play out was most of a prophecy foreshadowed in the Vow of the Disciple raid shortly following the launch of The Witch Queen, which spelled out something along the lines of: 

“The Hive and the Scorn love the darkness and worship the Witness. The pyramid fleet will arrive on earth and stop the Guardian. The Witness will commune with the Traveler and drink the light. The Witness will kill (unknown).”

By successfully linking with the Veil, the Witness has carried out this prophecy right up until the last sentence – it is currently inside the Traveler, presumably communing with it and drinking its light. By the time The Final Shape rolls around next year, it is expected to emerge from the Traveler imbued with a bountiful supply of both light and dark energy, to go on and “kill” whatever it is seeking to kill. 

How the Veil played into the plans of the Witness is unknown, or what the Veil even is. The closest description as of right now, came from Rasputin’s final recording in the Season of the Seraph, which describes it as ‘an object of immense paracausal power, one that is linked to the Traveler’. 

There are many interpretations to be gleaned from this – perhaps the Veil is the dark antithesis of the Traveler. After all, in the Destiny universe, it is hypothesized that the Light governs the world of the physical, while Darkness governs the metaphysical. Given the Traveler is a solid orb in the sky, and the Veil appears to be a swirling vortex of chaotic matter, this might not be too far-fetched. 

Another possibility is that the Veil serves as an energy source of sorts for the Traveler and vice versa, one cannot function without the other, and further to that, we cannot understand one without understanding the other. As little as we know about the Veil, there’s not a whole lot more we know about the Traveler. This may be why the Witness was unable to access the Traveler using its power of Darkness alone, and needed the knowledge afforded by the Veil in order to carry out its plan. 

In any case, the story of Destiny has thrown itself back into the realm of vagueness after last year’s more straightforward and exposition-laden The Witch Queen campaign. If we want more answers beyond what’s currently in front of us, we’ll likely need to keep up with the narrative events of the Season of Defiance and beyond, with the majority of answers likely to come when The Final Shape drops next year.