Lance Reddick’s love for Destiny can’t save Commander Zavala, probably

polygon.com:

Lance Reddick, the actor behind Lt. Daniels in The Wire and Charon the concierge in the John Wick movies, is also the voice of one of Destiny’s oldest and most important characters: the Titan Vanguard Commander Zavala.

Reddick is also an avid Destiny 2 player. And he isn’t shy about it.

For years, Reddick has regularly interacted with Destiny fans on his personal Twitter by sharing videos of him recording in his closet or recording fan-requested lines using his Zavala character voice. But with Commander Zavala’s recent brush with death in Season of the Chosen — and Bungie’s clear willingness to kill off Vanguards voiced by popular actors — I’ve started to worry about the future of one of my favorite Destiny characters.

In a recent interview for Destiny 2: The Witch Queen, the game’s upcoming expansion, I asked game director Joe Blackburn and project lead Blake Battle about how Reddick’s presence in the community could affect his character. Does fans’ love for him, and his apparent love for the fans, make it hard to kill off the Tower’s commander in the future?

“I think people love Lance Reddick, we love Lance Reddick, we love Zavala,” said Blackburn. “I definitely think that we would always make the choices based off what Destiny needs to do first. But certainly, we love having Lance out there not just as a voice actor for us, but also as such a prominent Guardian. [...] We obviously have plans for Zavala — Zavala could go a lot of different ways — but Lance is a pretty flexible actor in his range. [...] So that leaves the door pretty wide open for us with Zavala.”

Zavala carries a lot of weight in Destiny’s story, playing both immovable Tower bureaucrat and level-headed commander, depending on the situation. It’s hard