Bungie makes the best out of an impossible situation with Destiny 2’s Commander Zavala

polygon.com:

Commander Zavala has always been my favorite Destiny character. He’s a dogmatic Paladin whose fervent devotion to his beliefs makes him a rock for his allies — my favorite archetype. And, most importantly, he was voiced by Lance Reddick, an actor I’ve loved since I first saw The Wire in college.

When Reddick unexpectedly passed away last year, Guardians like myself set up a kind of vigil by Zavala in the Tower, standing watch in memory of our fallen commander. I cried then, and I’ve cried multiple times writing this piece. It was a devastating loss for the entire Destiny community, not only because Lance was an avid enjoyer of the game, but because Zavala’s story wasn’t finished yet. With this first Destiny saga so close to the end, how could Bungie ever hope to resolve Zavala’s arc without the man behind the voice?

Thankfully, it’s a challenge Destiny’s writers seem to have taken in stride, and one his replacement — the legendary Keith David — took to heart. The narrative team could’ve just written Zavala out of the story and left his decade-long arc in the dust, but instead, they did what they could given the situation and used our collective loss as a storytelling device.

[Warning: this post contains very light spoilers for The Final Shape campaign, up through the Liminality Strike.]

Since Guardians started toying with the Darkness in Beyond Light, Bungie has slowly been moving Commander Zavala down what I’d call a “crisis of faith” storyline, which is often a critical fork in the road for dogmatic characters in fiction. As Guardians began to move toward the Darkness, Zavala pushed back, diving further into his belief in the Light. He ultimately grew cynical over The Traveler’s silence.

Every step Zavala has taken over the past four years has eroded him. And while he’s spent this entire time standing tall like he always does, he’s weaker on the inside than he seems. So when Zavala finally gets the chance to venture into The Traveler itself and evict The Witness