The immediate concerns of the storyline in Destiny 2 are obvious. We have a trapped Hive Witch in the Dreaming City we would very much like dead, but we know that isn’t happening, and instead she will grab the Light, give it to her Hive, and we’ll take the fight to that brood in her Throne World six months from now in Destiny 2’s new expansion, The Witch Queen.

Destiny 2 has been building up Savathun as an antagonist for years. Pretty much the entire lifespan of the game, and at the very least, since D2 launched with strikes like “Savathun’s Song,” indicating the Hive was calling her to us. This past year has been entirely Savathun-focused, and so will the next expansion.

And yet, no, Savathun is not the big bad of the entire Destiny franchise. I’m not even sure she’ll remain a villain after the expansion, given that we both appear to have a common enemy.

Something…else is out there. Something we have seen whispered about, but for the first time, Destiny 2 is starting to talk about openly. This week, Mara gave it the closest thing it has to a name, The Voice in the Darkness, whom she deemed as a force older and more powerful than the evil things it commands, namely the Black Fleet (the Pyramids) and the Hive Worm Gods.

Before this, we heard that it was also the same something that has tasked Xivu Arath with hunting down Savathun. Savathun herself said that this was an entity between light and dark that had been watching us from the start. We know that right now, it’s in control of the Taken, Scorn and large chunks of the Hive. Before this, with the Black Fleet unleashing the Vex on us, it has some measure of influence over them too. This season we essentially learned that Oryx and the Worm God he killed, Akka, were not the origin of the Taken, but this thing was.

I don’t mean to keep using Avengers metaphors here, but Bungie itself is using that comparison frequently, and essentially, this being seems like it’s going to be our Thanos, a singular bad guy (not like, a giant paracausal shape, I don’t think) that we have to band together with old allies (legendary Guardians, Mara Sov) new allies (Caiatl, Mithrax) and perhaps even enemies (Savathun) to take it on once and for all and get to where Bungie says the series is going, the end of the Light and Dark saga.

This is a long term project, and one that I do not think will kick off in full until after The Witch Queen. I believe that the following two years, the lead-up to Lightfall and then a year until The Final Shape, will reveal The Voice in the Darkness at last, and we will be able to give this some sort of form other than just us, guessing vaguely (the statues in the Pyramids? Is it hiding under those stone sheets?).

But pay attention, this is being built right before our eyes, albeit quietly, in bits of dialogue here and there. Yes, Savathun and Xivu Arath are the immediate threats, and yet Bungie is planting seeds here that will lead to the end of this entire saga in two and a half more years.

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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series, and The Earthborn Trilogy, which is also on audiobook.