Destiny 2 seems like it’s going to be pretty mysterious about season 18, similar to what happened with season 17, only this time it’s because a giant showcase is happening on the day of season launch, and we’ve been promised little actual big news before then.

But we do know what thing, that Bungie has promised to bring back yet another Destiny 1 raid like they did with Vault of Glass, which remains the game’s only free-to-play raid at the moment. But it will be joined by a second, and there are only three options: King’s Fall, Wrath of the Machine and Crota’s End.

Really though, only two options.

Bungie has ruled out Crota’s End as the returning raid. Previously, when this topic came up, Joe Blackburn dismissed Crota’s End without saying its name specifically back in September 2021:

“I’m going to give you the really boring technical answer. We know we want to bring back a banger. So it’s really about the complexity of bringing the raids from D1 to D2. I think by saying it will be one of the big raids, that takes one out of the equation.”

So with Crota’s End “out of the equation” that only leaves two. And while the last time I did this, I think I predicated Wrath of the Machine, I’ve changed my mind. I think it has to be King’s Fall.

To start, why not Wrath of the Machine? It’s a beloved, underrated raid, but it has a number of things working against it. For one, it was introduced in the heavily SIVA-focused season, which included a host of SIVA-infected Fallen. While they were not entirely new enemies, they were heavily modified, so this would require Bungie either changing them to boring, regular Fallen, or doing all the work for bring back SIVA Splicer Fallen just for this raid. That seems…somewhat less likely.

Past that, Bungie has already said they are not expanding the Cosmodrome any further, and this raid takes place in the Plaguelands there. Granted, this isn’t like adding new patrol space, per se, but it does imply Bungie kind of did what they wanted to with the Cosmodrome and are moving on. This would be adding Plaguelands without adding the actual Plaguelands onto the map, which is kind of weird.

Finally, Bungie has already given us the main raid exotic from Wrath of the Machine, Outbreak Perfected, the evolved form of Outbreak Prime. They’d have to make an entirely new raid exotic, whereas King’s Fall has Touch of Malice, and hell, given the Hive theme, it could even take Necrochasm if it wanted to, perhaps.

King’s Fall is viewed as one of Destiny’s all-time best raids among many players, and I just have to believe that in addition to the anti-Wrath of the Machine reasons above, it’s just a priority to get it back into the game as it’s almost as iconic as Vault of Glass. It also has a lot of sections that would work well with updated mechanics, and I’d argue its loot pool is more classic and coveted than Wrath’s, even past the potential exotics.

What I don’t know is if Bungie cares about the “theme” of the season in which these reprised raids are reintroduced. As in, Vault of Glass, the Vex raid, arrived during a Vex-focused season, Season of the Splicer. But it did not have any direct connection to the story or new relevance to the plot. So for instance, I think you could debut King’s Fall in a Vex or Fallen focused season, if we weren’t immediately going to do more Hive one season after Witch Queen. I’m just not sure it matters, given that it probably isn’t going to connect to the story. This discounts one of my past ideas about Wrath of the Machine accompanying a SIVA/Rasputin season which has been teased a bit, as I just don’t know if that’s high on Bungie’s priority list. I think they just want to do the raid they want to do without needing it to “race match” the active season. These raids are permanent, F2P additions to the game that will carry on long past the season they’re introduced.

So, I think it’s King’s Fall. Next week, we have heard that we will get information about raid launch timing. We have not heard whether or not they will for sure tell us which raid it is, however. We’ll see.

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