Is That Dead ‘Destiny 2’ Character Actually Dead?

During Tuesday reset, Destiny 2 players were subjected to a jarring story beat, the death of a character that was simultaneously pretty clearly telegraphed this season, but at the same time, felt a bit…abrupt.

Spoilers follow.

I’m talking about Amanda Hollidaythe non-Guardian, human pilot that went on a dangerous rescue mission to free prisoners from the Shadow Legion, and ended getting herself blown up because the entire endeavor was a trap, which we more or less knew going in.

Perhaps the comment that sums up many people’s thoughts after this is one I saw in my mentions:

“So, what’s Amanda’s Ghost’s name gonna be?”

The idea here is that Amanda can be resurrected and become a Guardian herself, except…I don’t actually see that happening. There are actually two separate questions here: First, is this something that can even happen in the lore, given recent events? Second, is this something Bungie would writealso given recent events?

The first issue is a little more nebulous. Because of the confusing ending of Lightfall in which the Traveler “dies,” we get a line from Zavala about how the Traveler can’t give Light to any more of our enemies, a reference to Savathun and the Lucent Hive. But what isn’t clear is if the Traveler’s current state affects existing Ghosts choosing new Guardians to resurrect.

While our Ghosts still function, we still have the Light and they still resurrect us every time we die, picking a new Guardian is kind of a separate process, I believe, given that it wipes the corpse’s mind of the person we used to be, which doesn’t happen to us every time we’re rezzed. And yet it’s hard to see that if the Light still exists, that existing, Guardian-less Ghosts couldn’t pick a new body still if they wanted. There’s a line on Neomuna from Jisu about how unattached Ghosts have started showing up on Neptune, presumably looking for potential Guardians. In game “canon,” New Lights are technically newly resurrected Guardians as well. So I think Amanda could still theoretically be resurrected.

But will she? That’s a different question, and one that it’s a little hard to see Bungie writing. We just spent the last few years doing this exact thing with the newly risen Crow where he learns to become a Lightbearer, and it’s tough to imagine that as deserving as Amanda might be (unlike Uldren), that Bungie is going to do that exact same thing over again. And if they did, it’s another memory wipe so new Amanda would not be old Amanda, and all the developed relationships she’s had over the years would essentially be reset. It would just feel like a retread.

The game also just…isn’t acting like she’s coming back. There are loads of new dialogue lines about grief and revenge and moving on, and what appears to be happening is some sort of mirror of Forsaken where now it’s Crow trying to get justice for Amanda, similar to how we pursued revenge against Uldren for Cayde. Not exactly poetry, but I get what they’re going for. Resurrecting Amanda as a Guardian feels like a cop-out, a way to make her death not really mean anything.

There is also a conspiracy theory circulating that Amanda Holliday was originally meant to die in the opening cutscene of Lightfall, but since Lightfall was carved out of The Final Shape and they needed more story to fill space, they decided to keep her alive for the start of the seasonal content. But she still needed to be dead by this time next year, hence why they killed her eventually anyway. I do think her death would have landed harder if she was one of the pilots the Witness personally killed during the opening scene, rather than this weird explosion concept we just saw yesterday. But that’s a debate for another time.

Ultimately, my position is that while I think it probably is technically possible for Amanda to be revived as a Guardian by a Ghost, I don’t think Bungie will have that happen. Though given the nature of the game, so long as her corpse is kept around somewhere, it’s always going to be on the table as a possibility, even if it’s years from now. Given that her voice actress is still attached to the game playing Caiatl, I’m not going to rule it out. But in the near future? Yeah, Amanda’s dead.

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