The Origins of The Witness in Destiny 2

Bungie recently dropped one of the single most important cut scenes in the history of Destiny 2. We’ve speculated and wondered the origins of the Witness for some time, but in Season of the Deep we finally got some answers. Today I’m going to go through the origins of The Witness cut scene that was dropped into the game recently and look at what this means for The Final Shape coming very soon in Destiny 2.

Before we get into it, lets have a look at the cutscene itself.

Destiny is swiftly approaching its 9th birthday and the conclusion of the Light vs Darkness Saga. Season of the Deep was always going to be a great opportunity to tell us more about The Witness, and Bungie had to really considering The Final Shape is approaching rapidly. With that said, it was still slightly surprising to see one of th emore important cutscenes in Destiny 2 drop in Week 5 of Season of the Deep. This cutscene looks at the origins of The Witness, gives a little more explanation to The Veil plus some more details about The Traveler.

First of all, we get introduced to The Witness’ home planet, who people were suffering until The Traveler emerged from the ground. The Travler then brought this planet their Golden Age, improving their technology, improving their lives. They came to call this big white orb The Gardener, bringer of life.

During the Golden Age on this planet, the people there constructed the Pyramid Fleet, the very ships we have been aware of in the Light vs Darkness saga since the end of the Red War campaign 6 years ago. After Eons of prosperity, the people grew tired of the The Traveler’s silence and demanded it give them some kind of guidance or purpose. This led to the people discovering a similar entity that shared a connection with The Gardener, they dubbed it The Winnower – or as we know it, The Veil.

The significance of this lore cannot be understated. We have known about The Gardener and The Winnower for years, and the Destiny lore community have speculated as to exactly what they are, but we now know The Gardener is the Traveler, a being of pure Light, and The Winnower is The Veil, the Traveler’s Darkness counterpart.

The Witness’ people found The Veil, and it taught them about the nature of Light and Darkness. The people discovered that Light is capable of both creation and destruction. The Witness’ people then decided this was a source of chaos, and that it needed to be controlled. The Darkness was their answer to the chaos, as it was shaped by “thought and consciousness”.

They wanted to use the Darkness to contol the Light, believing they could create the perfect universe, which they dubbed The Final Shape. This is significant, given that’s the name of the final Light vs Dakrness expansion, due sometime in 2024.

When The Witness’ people tried to use The Veil to control the Traveler, it ran away. The people then were at a huge loss, unable to comprehend their Final Shape would never come into being, they then used The Darkness to merge an entire population into The Witness. This is why when we see The Witness,they have many faces billowing as smoke out of their head, and they are named the Witness because they have “witnesses the truth in the darkness”.

Since that moment, The Witness and the Pyramid Fleet have chased the Traveler through the universe in an attempt to bring meaning to the universe. At the end of the cutscene we see The Travler and The Veil merging, which is what we saw at the end of the Lightfall camapign.

This is all very significant stuff. We finally got some back story for The Witness, although we still don’t have many details about The Traveler, who created that or The Veil. The Traveler had to be created by something, I don’t think it grew in the ground on The Witness’ home planet. Its unclear if we’ll ever get those details, although we can hope that The Final Shape will answer many of our questions.

Let me know in the comments what you thought of the cutscene, and what are your hopes for The Final Shape as we head towards the conclusion of this saga.