The most shocking moment of this week’s PlayStation Showcase was undoubtedly the resurrection of Destiny’s long-dead Hunter Vanguard, Cayde-6. A teaser trailer for next year’s Destiny 2 expansion, The Final Shape, revealed that Ikora will reunite with Cayde at the end of the Lightfall campaign, on the other side of a portal carved into The Traveler by Witnesses. Cayde’s mysterious return more than five years after her execution at the hands of Uldren Sov is a huge surprise, and Destiny fans will surely have mixed feelings. I never wanted Cayde to come back from the dead, but I’m so glad he did.
If you had asked me a week ago if resurrecting Cayde was a good idea, I would have said a flat no. For Destiny fans, the loss of Cayde was a huge moment in the ongoing story and a plot point that only became more influential over time. Destiny’s evolving narrative is one of the big things that sets it apart from other live service games, and Cayde-6’s death remains a pivotal moment in the story with far-reaching consequences. Bringing him back to his final form undermines the significance of his death and lowers the stakes for other deaths in the future, but I’m not convinced that’s a bad thing.
Being a lifelong comic book fan, I am no stranger to non-stick character deaths. It’s a cliché to say that superheroes die now. Because everyone knows it’s just a cheap way to temporarily increase book sales. Nobody at DC or Marvel stays dead for long, so their deaths never feel sad and their sacrifices never feel great. This has been happening in comics since the 90s with the death of Superman and is still going on today. Kamala Khan just died in the pages of Amazing Spider-Man, but everyone knows he’ll be back before the year is out, so nobody cares.
When Cayde died in Forsaken, I was devastated, but also recognized it as one of Destiny’s most daring and successful storytelling decisions. Killing Destiny’s most beloved hero was a ruthless decision on Bungie’s part, and we should respect it even if we didn’t like it. People speculated that Bungie had to kill Cayde because he couldn’t afford Nathan Fillion’s cost to play Cayde anymore, but I always saw that as a deliberate choice. His death allowed Destiny to explore grief and loss in a way that no game about immortal superheroes could otherwise, and was the catalyst for Uldren/Crow’s redemption story. Destiny did not fully escape Cayde’s death, even though Cayde’s life was erased from the content archives.
I’m not a fan of content archives, but one positive thing I can say about it is that it made Cayde’s death feel more real and meaningful. Other games have had heartbreaking deaths as well, but they have never truly gone away as their stories still live on. You can always replay The Last of Us to see Joel or spend time with Aerith in Final Fantasy 7, but Cayde is completely gone from Destiny 2. You can’t see him in the tower, you can’t hear his voice, and you can’t replay previous missions while he’s still alive. When Cayde died, he actually disappeared. Now all we have left is our memories and the people he influenced.
But now that he’s back, what does it all mean? By resurrecting him, Bungie fell into a comic book trap. When death is transitory, there is no weight to the loss we suffer and no way to create real tension. Why should we mourn the loss of Amanda Halliday and fear the end of Osiris’s life?
That’s an argument I would have made before The Final Shape’s trailer debuted, but I’m so happy to see Cayde again that I don’t mind compromises. Because I truly believed he was dead, I felt real relief and joy that he was alive. By curbing the urge to bury Cayde and hint that he could return over the past five years, Bungie has been able to explore grief and loss and still deliver this surprising and joyous reveal. A part of my heart is angry that it didn’t stick, but I can’t be mad that my favorite character is brought back to life.
I’d like to think that Bungie planned this from the beginning. We don’t yet know the circumstances of his return, but we’re at a point in the story where something monumental like the Messiah’s resurrection feels fitting. As far as we know, the Traveler’s portal could lead to the afterlife or a world where memories come true, or it could be an illusion created by Witnesses to control Ikora. During Lightfall, we came to understand the forces of light and dark as the relationship between reality and metaphysics. There will be much more to Cayde’s return than just a resurrection. Just because Cayde is here doesn’t mean he’s permanently returned to the story, and despite my misgivings about Lightfall’s story, I still believe Bungie will handle it carefully and responsibly.
But if Cayde has just returned, having somehow been brought back to life by the Traveler’s cosmic magic, I still won’t complain. His death has already served its purpose, and in the end I would rather him live than die. We all experience tremendous loss in our lifetime. It’s just part of being alive. So as much as I appreciate the way Destiny expressed their grief through Cayde’s death, if they want Cayde back to us, I won’t complain.