#i definitely would've loved if ikora was more of a focus though. she should be

[thefirstknife]

THOUGHTS

My thoughts are that I am insane right now!!!!!!!!

I was in a raid when this happened and then just like a few friends alerted us to come see the channel and we straight up did not believe them. TFS teaser THIS EARLY?? And then they also ofc said "Cayde is there" so we were convinced that they're messing with us.

But then we watched it and like, Cayde being there is the least of my concerns tbh. THE ENVIRONMENT???? It's the other side of the portal! It means we go through at some point in the next two seasons! This was expected of course, but I didn't think we would see anything about it until the actual campaign, definitely not this early. Like, seeing what it looks like on the other side is a huge teaser. I genuinely did not think we'll see a single glimpse before TFS, not even maybe during reveals and trailers later.

But Cayde being there is actually also important. He's not looking right! He has a weird glow on his eyes and other places, including the way Ace of Spades looks; some sort of weird gashes of light-ish tint, almost Taken in nature? But brighter. Kinda reminds me of the way time rifts look on Mars.

The fact that he has Ace in the first place is also suspect; we have Ace. Like, that was very much a huge plot. He can't have it back, not broken up like this, unless some truly WILD shit goes down in the next two seasons and YW like... dies or something. This, alongside the weird lights on him and the gun, seems to be indicating that he's not real. Like, he's obviously him and he is corporeal in some form and he speaks the same and knows who he is, but I think he's a memory that Ikora can access. (more under for length)

Which ties into the place they're at. Me and others have speculated before that what lies on the other side of the portal is the original garden from Unveiling, or some sort of a similar place outside of space and time. This can be neatly tied in with what we know about the Darkness and what has been the most important plot thread since Lightfall: Darkness is memory, emotions, psychic. It's history and time. I've spoken a lot about this recently. Lore has been focusing on it as well, most notably with Inspiral lore book from the raid that showed us two different ancient species that were capable of using the Darkness to access the collective consciousness and the memory of their civilisation, but this has also been brought up before, for example with the Psions who communicate in a psychic way and have an ancient religion that allowed them to contact their ancestors.

This is also heavily reiterated this season with Ahsa who has a similar power, as well as the Pyramid ships, the portal and the Veil who can all affect people's consciousness and give them access to their memories. One particular interesting bit is the ship from this season called Akashic Revelation. In it, we see the Titan, Joxer, making an attempt to pass through the portal. As he gets near, he goes through a massive whiplash of spacetime distortion and ends up having flashes of memories of his life before being a Guardian. The memories continue as he passes through, but we know what happens to him later. He is found outside, bent and broken, fused with his ship and dead. But the portal triggered a flash of memories of his past. Not only that, but the name of the ship is important as well: it refers to something called akashic records, an occult concept of there existing a compendium of everything that ever happened in the universe: all of past, present, future, all memories, events, emotions and people. Joxer seemingly accessed it as he touched and passed through the portal. This is absolutely a wild word to use here, given what we know of the Veil being the "mind and memory of the universe" and everything else I've mentioned.

What I'm trying to say is that the best way to tease about us gaining access to the source of the history of the universe is by showing Ikora speaking to a dead character who only exists as an imprint in the history of the universe. The potential here, if we're on the right track is huge. Not only is this super exciting on its own (a connection to everything that ever happened!), but it also brings the potential that other dead characters might also appear in some shape or form, to help us or tell us more.

It's also wild that this is a teaser. Meaning this is the least spoilery they could get and it's already so wild that it's making me lose my mind. I would definitely advise people not to expect Cayde (or other dead characters) to suddenly "come back" in the sense they expect them to. I don't think he or anyone else will be properly "alive." So in that sense, I don't think he's "back" the way people may think. He'll obviously have a presence in the story, and that makes sense if the story is focused on Ikora. Ikora has never truly recovered from his death and if there was a memory she would access (consciously or not), it would probably be his. She has already involuntarily accessed him as a nightmare.

But given how much we're focusing on the psychic aspects of the Darkness, including right now in this season which is pretty much all about the psychic bond between an ancient creature that has the power to show people visions of the past and the future and Sloane, a bond we have to strengthen to learn more about what's coming and what our enemy really is... The fact that the whole campaign and post-campaign and all lore and quests were focused on explaining the metaphysical properties of Darkness and its connection to the mind, the psychic, the consciousness, the emotions and the mind of the entire universe... Well. It's building up to something. And us being able to communicate with people long dead is not only useful, but might be necessary to understand how to defeat our enemy.

All of this is ofc purely wild speculation. It's way too early to say anything conclusive, outside of just trying to gauge which aspects of the lore Bungie wants us to pay attention to and which aspects of the lore are being focused on. The Veil and the memory of the universe seems to be this year's theme leading us into the Final Shape so for now, that's the direction to go into.

Full reveal will be on 22nd of August, which is the start of the next season. We'll definitely know more then, especially since Deep will be done and most of the new Ligthfall quest audio logs will likely be done too. Until then, I know people will go into wild directions and speculation, mostly because it's Cayde. In the same way that I advise people not to think that he'll suddenly be alive, I'd also ask people not to be too negative about what may happen because we literally don't know. Cayde's presence is not an indicator of either good or bad. I'd also like for people to focus more on the actual important background stuff rather than zero in on a single character, but I know that won't happen lmao.

In a way, I wish Cayde didn't overshadow the completely insane scene of Ikora sitting in a garden-like place on the other side of the portal that nobody has been able to go through before (and those that tried suffered violent deaths after being having visions of everything that ever happened). Because to me, that's the true teaser here. I can't wait to find out more and I'll definitely be looking at the upcoming lore from Deep in a different light. Things are building up and I hope people will pay attention to the background stuff that's been going on about the Veil, memory, history and consciousness.

#destiny 2 #destiny 2 spoilers #season of the deep #season of the deep spoilers #the final shape #cayde-6 #ikora #the veil #lore vibing #long post #long ass ramble about 50 seconds of a teaser #but i know what the major takeaway will be and i want to mention some of this stuff before people hype themselves into oblivion #about cayde being alive somehow. which is like. i'm 99% sure he's a memory in the fabric of the universe as everyone else is #if that's wrong then it's wrong in such a spectacular plot twist way that i am genuinely at the edge of my seat to find out #i definitely would've loved if ikora was more of a focus though. she should be #i feel like this is such a huge tease to drop this early but then again they KNOW what hype it will generate #ask