Death Stranding 2 is finally here, and if you’re here, too, you probably just finished the game (or at the very least, just want to know how it ends). Hideo Kojima’s games are frequently very strange, and it can be easy to get lost in the nitty gritty details. However, Death Stranding 2 is arguably one of his most coherent and straightforward games, partially because the first game laid so much of the groundwork with its lore. Still, things aren’t completely clear until the end of the game. There’s an underlying mystery revolving around the character of Neil, Sam’s past, and much more, all of which is kept fuzzy for quite a while.
Major spoilers for Death Stranding 2: On the Beach follow below.
At the beginning of Death Stranding 2, Sam is in hiding near the Mexican border with his now former bridge baby, Lou. Although he was ordered to destroy the baby as it was deemed equipment, he broke the baby free of its container to father it himself, eventually learning that it was a girl. However, a tragic incident occurs when Sam is out completing a mission and returns home to discover that Lou has been killed under Fragile’s watch.
Hours later in Death Stranding 2, Sam is sucked into this darker, alternate world filled with death. In there, you meet a Solid Snake-looking guy named Neil who fights you with some spooky squad of soldiers. The reason for the conflict is left pretty unclear, and despite winning, things feel very unresolved. Once you wake back up in Australia, you come across a young blonde girl (played by Elle Fanning) who you bring back to the ship so that Fragile and Tarman can examine her. She possesses some kind of powers allowing her to float and even rapidly age things by simply touching them.
Eventually, the group gains her trust and name her Tomorrow. They teach her, almost like an infant, how to speak and behave. She becomes a significant, valuable part of the group despite her general existence being a bit mysterious. As the game goes along, Sam continues to encounter Neil and learns more about him. He was a porter that worked at the same facility as Sam about a decade ago and would traffic pregnant women in from Mexico so that Bridges could turn their babies into bridge babies. The intensity of this job weighed on him, prompting him to seek counseling from Lucy,a woman at the facility who’s also Sam’s spouse.
The two eventually realized they shared a special connection and began having an affair, but Lucy tried to call it off once she became pregnant. In the present day, Sam was under the impression that the baby wasn’t his, but he learns that she lied about it to protect the child. Lucy believed that Bridges would’ve tried to take her baby from her since it was the spawn Sam who possesses a variety of special powers.
Death Stranding 2 Ending Explained
In the penultimate chapter of Death Stranding 2, the villainous Higgs comes aboard the ship to capture Tomorrow and reveals that she is actually Sam’s biological daughter, which means she could be used to bring forth an extinction event and end humanity as we know it. After a massive battle ensues on Higgs’ beach, Higgs is defeated, and Tomorrow is reclaimed. As the group is returning back to their world, we finally get one last flashback to Neil’s life.
Out of fear that Bridges was on to the truth about her baby, Lucy asked Neil to smuggle her out of the country. He reluctantly agrees, but the two are stopped by Bridges security and eventually shot and killed. Personnel are able to recover the fetus from Lucy’s body and send it off to a different facility to become part of the BB program. However, Neil’s body quickly began to necrotize and triggered a voidout, causing a massive explosion that killed everyone in the area.
The full truth is now known about Neil — but that’s not all. On the ship, Sam learns that Fragile is dead … and has been dead since the start of the game. She died protecting Lou and used her teleportation powers to send the baby away from danger. Her body and soul were separated, but she was able to more or less posses her body like Deadman does with Heartman to keep Sam motivated on his mission.
When Fragile teleported Lou to save her at the beginning of the game, it was thought that Lou was dead. However, Lou went on to grow up in this alternate world where time moves differently and eventually grew to be a young woman who we know as Tomorrow. It’s not too dissimilar from something like Interstellar‘s ending, only much less tragic. Not only that, but a series of clues also reveals that Sam and Lucy’s baby is Lou AKA Tomorrow. Sam has had possession of his biological child this entire time, and now, she has grown into a young woman. The two embrace as they realize the truth and accept each other as father and daughter.
How Death Stranding 2 Sets Up Death Stranding 3
In a post-credits scene, we get a glimpse of the future. It reveals that Tomorrow will eventually become a porter herself, carrying around her old BB container as a box of mementos. We’re not sure how far into the future this may be, but it seems to be maybe a couple of years at most. Sam is absent from this scene as she appears to be traveling alone, for reasons unknown We see her approaching a plate gate, a giant structure that allows people to teleport between continents, where she will presumably go on her own adventure. A second post-credits scene also shows Tomorrow’s BB container filled with fresh apples, indicating she has controlled her ability to age things rapidly.
Hideo Kojima has said he doesn’t want to make Death Stranding 3 himself, but he does have ideas for more games and would be open to allowing someone else the chance to make it. He even noted that the plate gates would allow for stories in any location they want, making it easier to establish new settings for future games. Whether or not someone else feels bold enough to make Death Stranding 3 with Kojima only serving in some kind of producing role remains to be seen, but the door is clearly being left open to having Tomorrow as a playable character in a future game.
The post Death Stranding 2 Ending Explained (And How It Sets Up a Third Game) appeared first on ComicBook.com.
