Mars Remains Enigmatic As Ever Leading Up To Destiny 2 The Witch Queen

Destiny 2 players will revisit Mars with The Witch Queen expansion–despite the fact that the planet was removed from the game with the Beyond Light expansion. Rumors about Mars returning to Destiny 2 began when the first The Witch Queen trailer showed Ikora glaring at her evidence board of photos, maps, and alchemic signs while surrounded by red terrain. Fans later noticed a Destiny 1 Mars map on her board which is easier to see from Bungie’s teaser clips that gave a closer look at the board. The Game Awards live-action trailer explained that we revisit Mars for the first mission and meet the Light-bearing Savathun. It seems similar to how we ventured to Phobos, a moon of Mars, at the start of Destiny 1’s expansion, The Taken King.

We’ve dug into what we’ve seen of The Witch Queen and the lore of Mars to run down every lingering lore thread and story tidbit that you might need to know about heading into the expansion.

In the lore of Destiny, Mars has been a beacon for the Light and Darkness for centuries, but the live-action trailer creates more puzzling connections between the two. Firstly, I noticed the out-of-place crop field on Mars within a boundary that reminded me of the dark Taken splotches, which have a bright outline. Remembering that I’ve seen this crop field before, I looked up The Witch Queen’s Collector’s Edition and found that the photo of the Martian crop field is there as well. It seems like whatever is happening within the boundary is not from the present day–and if that’s the case, then this is most likely an image from the Golden Age on Mars.

In Year 1 of Destiny 1, a pre-Golden Age opening cinematic showed three astronauts during the Ares One mission witness the Traveler in person for the first time while it was terraforming Mars, making it another habitable world of the solar system. Habitable conditions led to colonies, including agriculture. A Golden Age agriculture container in the wreckage of the Nessus colony ship proves that crops were a part of colonizing. Like Mercury, Mars could’ve been a completely different place when it was first terraformed. Even some Destiny concept art shows a different type of Mars during early exploration, including an area that looks like a swamp.

An old postcard from the Martian city named Freehold illustrated it as one of humanity’s great achievements: a home away from home in Meridian Bay. But then the Darkness came and swept the Bay under the red dunes and led the solar system into the Dark Age. A sparrow ride through The Buried City, the remains of Freehold, revealed historic signage of Clovis Bray, Daito, and the Off World Transit (OWT) railway. With the absence of Earthlings, extraterrestrial enemies grew their presence on Mars with their Vex structures and Cabal zones.

The Vex created a gateway with the Darkness using portals to the Black Garden. In the lore piece Legend: The Black Garden, a Guardian named Pujari tells their vision of the Garden. “The Traveler moved across the face of the iron world. It opened the earth and stitched shut the sky. It made life possible. In these things there is always symmetry. Do you understand? This is not the beginning but it is the reason.” Pujari is referring to Mars as the iron world and signifying its mysterious relation to the Black Garden.

A Ghost scan in The Cistern on Nessus says, “A Conflux that’s directly connected to Mars. The Vex there are having a heck of a time with the Red Legion, it seems like. ‘Garden gate gone. Bay lost. Bastion fallen.’ Huh.” The Vex lost their strongholds on Mars while fighting Red Legion forces during the Red War in Destiny 2. It might be why we see Red Legion Psions and Cabal ships aggressively attack Savathun’s Dreadnaught-looking ship in the live-action trailer.

Destiny 2’s Warmind expansion took us to the icy caps of Hellas Basin, where something ancient lurked beneath Mars. Warsats crashing into the planet freed the banished son of Oryx named Nokris and the Hive God Xol–both were trapped under the Martian glaciers by the AI Warmind called Rasputin, whose core sat at BrayTech Futurescape. Ana Bray called Rasputin the most powerful weapon in the entire solar system so Xol sought to destroy the AI while Nokris commanded his Hive. Yet, we don’t exactly know what attracted them to Mars.

A lore piece from Season of Arrivals may give a clue. During one mission, Ana Bray thanks the Guardian after you return an item to her called Helsom’s Journal. In real life, Matt Helsom worked with Vicarious Visions and Bungie as senior environment artist and passed away in 2020. In the game, Helsom was a Golden Age xenoarchaeologist. Bungie’s tribute to the artist through Ana Bray contains an interesting phrase about Mars. “He believed there were instances of contact between extrasolar species and humanity, long before the Traveler.” Evidence from the Shadowkeep lore book Revelations proves that Darkness existed in our solar system pre-Collapse, hidden beneath our Moon’s surface.

With the arrival of the Black Fleet, it was time to say goodbye to Mars and Rasputin, for now. In the view from Braytech Futurescape sat a gargantuan Pyramid ship. Season of Arrivals was about the new Tree of Silver Wings within the terraformed Cradle known as Last Eden on Jupiter’s moon, Io. Ikora told our Guardian during the Red War that the Cradle and Io still had remnants of the Light since it was the last place the Traveler touched. Savathun interacted with Guardians for the first time during this season when she brought us into her Ascendant Court–preventing us from seeking the Pyramid ship’s gift, the Seed of Silver Wings. It seemed like it was a different seed than the one from the Forsaken expansion where we received a Seed of Light through trees that grew from the Traveler’s Light pulses on Io. This is relevant to the upcoming expansion because a perplexing scene in the live-action trailer showed a Cradle on Mars.

In the Tenebrous Tunnels mission on Mars, our Ghost says, “This rail system was endless. It connected colonies, dig sites. I’m even detecting a line that runs all the way up to the Cradle at the North Pole.” However, this may conflict with the fact that Clovis Bray’s research facility on Mars is also called the Cradle of Invention. Knowing that the Pyramid ship was viewable from BrayTech Futurescape, both of these Cradles might be near one another. The Exotic Titan armor called Ruin Wings from Destiny’s Dark Below expansion says, “In the Garden grows a tree of silver wings. The leaves are ruin, the bark disaster. Of the seeds we do not speak.” This may indicate that there are more seeds out there in other Cradles.

Myelin Games tackled many of the clues about the Cradle on Mars in their video covering the trailer and its themes. A cryptic Chartres-inspired labyrinth design seen recurringly related to the Light or the Darkness was shown at the center of the Cradle. I also noticed this symbol on The Singular Exegete lore book that had the labyrinth design inside Eris Morn’s symbol and on the Psychometer Replica that holds the Hive Ghost shell in The Witch Queen Collector’s Edition. Myelin also pointed out that Savathun’s ship sits above the Martian Cradle like the Pyramid ships on Io in Season of Arrivals and how Savathun could have taken the Pyramid ship from Mars and placed it inside her Throne World. Removing a Pyramid ship could also free Mars from the anomaly that has hidden it, which would explain why we can reach the planet in The Witch Queen.

Mars, Io, Titan, and Mercury were taken by the Black Fleet by the end of the Season of Arrivals. A lore book called Captain’s Log from the Season of the Chosen’s Presage mission mentioned that in place of Mars lies an anomaly. In Presage, we discover that Cabal Emperor Calus was onboard the Glykon ship with his crew, heading to the anomaly. He was using the Crown of Sorrow, created by Savathun, to run experiments on the Scorn by merging minds as a way to communicate with The Entity, the intelligence that seems to be behind the powers of the Darkness. Interestingly, a scan from Presage reads, “It recounts a descent into the anomaly…Gravitational oscillations broke and reformed the Glykon many times over. It is as if every permutation of the ship’s existence collided in one space.” The Glykon was rearranged after contact with the anomaly, which suggests that the same thing could happen with Mars. We could be seeing various parts of Mars’s existence becoming mushed into one.

In Season of the Lost, a conversation between Lord Saladin and Valus Or’ohk in the Peacebond lore tells us that there are Hive tombships near the Mars anomaly. Although the conversation turns towards Xivu Arath, those ships may be Savathun’s preparations for her next trick at the end of the Season.

Even though we know Mars is returning, we don’t know where the first mission is set or if we’ll get more of Mars after that mission. However, we do know that Savathun’s Throne World will be an explorable destination with many secrets.

Destiny 2 The Witch Queen launches on February 22.