Savathun
The vibes are bad in the Destiny 2 community lately (not that I haven’t contributed with many of my articles), but I did want to pause the hate train and say that you know what? I’m actually very much looking forward to next season, and I think there are reasons to be optimistic about it.
The next Destiny 2 season is so far unnamed, season 22, but I’m temporarily calling it the Season of Savathun, because the end of the Season of the Deep indicates that we now must turn to our temporarily-dead ex-rival, Savathun, for a way to get through the triangular Traveler portal the Witness went into. Early Final Shape previews have shown that Ikora gets through the portal to find a probably-not-actually-alive Cayde-6, but there are some missing steps in between that.
So, why am I optimistic? Most of this has to do with the story, rather than upcoming activities I just can’t know about yet, outside of a few promising hints. So, let’s go and be positive:
Savathun’s Return – Given that Savathun’s story helped make The Witch Queen a fantastic expansion, her being resurrected seems like it could give the game’s plot the shot in the arm it needs to get back on track ahead of The Final Shape. We should be moving on from Deep being a “epilogue” for Lightfall, something most players would like to forget. I would like to see Savathun is resurrected at the beginning of the season so she can be involved in the whole season, not just appearing at the end. In theory, all we have to do its convince her ghost, Immaru, to reunite with her corpse. This really should not need some eight week-long ritual to complete, so hopefully we can see her right away.
Eris
Eris? Mara? – Given that this is Savathun returning to the story, I am hopeful that two figures that were essential to her return in The Witch Queen and its preceding year will be involved this time around, Eris Morn, who we have not heard from in an extremely long time, and Mara Sov, last seen channeling energy endlessly on the Farm in Season of the Defiant. Eris has been dissecting Savathun’s body after it was recovered, so I’d be amazed if she wasn’t a part of this season, and it’s been too long since we’ve seen her. I also think Ikora and Osiris could be involved, given their history with Savathun. Sadly, it seems that Lance Reddick may no longer appear as Zavala, with reportedly his final lines recorded for Deep.
Savathun vs. Xivu Arath – We have never seen the sisters interact in a meaningful capacity in Destiny 2 yet. One of the best parts of Season of the Deep was the introduction of Xivu Arath as an actual voiced character (with extremely good voicework!). If Savathun is back, and starts to help us, while Xivu remains a servant of the Witness, I am very much looking forward to seeing how that plays out.
Destiny 2
More Veil Containment – Look, I know the delivery mechanism for Veil Containment absolutely sucks because 95% of the playerbase doesn’t know it exists or where it is or what you have to do to start it, but the actual story content there has been fantastic, probably the best of the entire season, and we know more is coming. I am very much looking forward to more reveals if they are on the level of what we’ve seen so far. Just put a giant flashing node on the map so everyone sees it, and remove all prerequisites for it.
Another “Experimental” Activity – It’s true that Deep Dives were a cool idea absolutely trashed by the end of the season with no join in progress, no way to coordinate activating higher tiers in matchmaking and the eventual integration of an exotic quest people would run off to complete. But Bungie has said that Deep and now season 22 would feature “experimental” activities like when Shattered Realm existed or Battlegrounds were first introduced. If they can avoid the bad parts of Deep Dives and do something cool like the core activity, that could be really fun.
Yes, there are absolutely reasons to be skeptical, given the overall state of the game. But I think there are enough puzzle pieces here to form something really cool. We’ll learn more in a few weeks at launch here.
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