Destiny 2's Story Arc Concludes With The Final Shape Expansion In 2024

Bungie's expansive Destiny 2 showcase brought a ludicrous number of reveals, announcements, and details about the game's future. And Bungie also showed off one new bit of information we didn't have before--the name of the expansion to follow Witch Queen in 2022 and Lightfall in 2023. We now know 2024's expansion will be called The Final Shape, and that's a doozy of a name.

First, some context. Destiny 2 is currently running through the last chapters of what Bungie refers to as "The Light and Dark Saga," the story that kicked off with the original Destiny in 2014. The Final Shape will mark the end of that story arc, Bungie says, concluding the 10-year journey the developer had in mind when it first released its shooter MMO. It won't mean the end of the Destiny universe, Bungie says, but it will be the conclusion of Destiny's current narrative.

So we have no idea what the future might hold for Destiny 2 after a few years. But we can speculate on what The Final Shape will mean. That's a phrase that recurs in Destiny 2 lore, especially around the Hive, the death-worshipping Darkness-loving bad guys of whom Savathun, the Witch Queen, is the current major leader. If Lightfall sounds like it'll be devastating for Guardians, the player superheroes who wield a physics-defying force called the Light, The Final Shape sounds like it could be even worse.

We know from Hive lore, specifically their evil Bible-like origin myth, the Books of Sorrow, that the species' entire deal is an attempt to craft the universe into "the final shape." The Hive worship death because they think that only the strongest life in the universe should exist--everything that can be killed should be killed in a drive toward perfection. The Hive calls this the Sword-Logic and it's a big way they derive their seemingly magical power. So The Final Shape, in this context, is the final shape of the universe--the life that survives all other battles to become the strongest possible, the pinnacle of evolution. To borrow a phrase about another sci-fi monster, it would be the perfect organism.

This is the Hive's goal, and we've heard the phrase "the final shape" bandied about in their mythology, but it's also the drive of the Darkness as well. That's the force that exists opposite the Traveler, the big machine god-thing that gave Destiny 2 players their Light powers in the first place. The Darkness and the Traveler have two opposing philosophies: The Traveler wants to give life a chance to grow and become different (even if that means weakness thrives and that weakness ultimately leads to some suffering), while the Darkness believes in this final shape idea, where weaker life should die (and which it believes helps to minimize suffering--it's a whole gray area morality thing).

So The Final Shape undoubtedly refers to some final showdown between the Light and the Darkness, to some degree, and it seems very likely it refers to a final showdown with the Hive. Then again, don't discount the Vex, the time-traveling alien robots whose motivations are often seemingly unknowable. We know that at least some subsets of the Vex worship the Darkness, and the Vex's whole deal is about remaking the universe in their image. They're working hard to become "the final shape," to the point of converting whole planets into their machines, even if that phrase isn't ever really linked to them.

There's a lot to speculate about where Destiny 2 is going in the future, but we can absolutely expect the current conflicts to heat up even more. With the Witch Queen showcase, we now have more context about Savathun's plans--and the fact that the Hive have apparently "stolen" the power of the Light. It sounds like, between Lightfall and The Final Shape, things are going to get worse, and probably a lot more complicated as we consider who the good guys and bad guys are of the Destiny 2 universe.