There are only a few days left in Destiny 2's Season of the Haunted, and next Tuesday Bungie will hold a showcase to talk more about Season 18 and the Lightfall expansion. Season 18 will not be the one to bridge the gap to the upcoming expansion in early 2023, and instead, it will be followed by another Season that Bungie has not talked about yet. Still, Season 18 will likely play a big role in the story leading up to Lightfall because of how certain events predicted by the ending of the Vox Obscura mission could play out.
Destiny 2's expansive universe is much larger than meets the eye, and that's because of all the details that Bungie has been planting as seeds to something greater over the past eight years, all the way back to when Destiny first came out in 2014. Season 18 will also bring back a major Destiny Raid between Wrath of the Machine and King's Fall, and Bungie's announcement about its release schedule changing to the first Friday of the Season could be a hint at this becoming the new norm in the future as well. Many of these details haven't been officially disclosed yet, but a Destiny 2 dataminer shared leaks about everything coming with Season 18.
How Destiny 2's Leaked Season 18 Name and Raid Fit Into The Narrative
According to Destiny 2 fan and dataminer Josh Hunt, Season 18 will be called Season of the Plunder, and it will come with heavy pirate themes. This is something that several other Destiny 2 leaks in the past claimed was coming, making it all the more likely to happen now that leftover data on Bungie's official website seems to indicate as much. Based on Hunt's research, Season of the Plunder will have a story arc that is possibly called Ketchcrash and another that's called No Quarter, with the former indicating a Fallen-themed release.
This is quite likely to be the case at this stage because the last Fallen-themed Season was Season of the Splicer, whereas all the following releases were connected to Savathun, the Lightbearer Hive, and Calus' return, respectively. Fallen are also Destiny 2's pirates as far as lore goes, as they try to grab as much Ether as possible to grow as a race. Furthermore, Hunt states that the Season 18 activities could be called Hideouts and Expedition, both names that work well for a pirate-themed release.
Season of the Plunder could perfectly fit the aforementioned Vox Obscura hints at events before Lightfall if it ends up featuring the return of Eramis, the Shipstealer, who was defeated and left frozen in Stasis at the end of the Beyond Light campaign. Although the next logical step when it comes to the reprised Raid in Season 18 would be Wrath of the Machine, which was Fallen-themed, Hunt's datamining suggests that King's Fall is coming back to Destiny 2, instead. This is not too surprising, however, as it probably fits better in the current storyline by providing context about Oryx's actions and ultimately his fall, back when Savathun was still one of the Hive Gods.
King's Fall coming back in Season 18 makes sense as well because of Savathun hinting at the return of the Taken King, which is likely not a direct reference to Oryx himself, but to someone new taking on Oryx's title in a new Season -- possibly Season 19. Hunt also mentions some minor data regarding the Lightfall expansion, which is apparently called "Nebula" on Bungie's internal version of the website, and it will supposedly come with a new subclass called "Strand." Although the upcoming Destiny 2 showcase event will confirm or deny these leaks, it's worth mentioning that Hunt also datamined Season of the Haunted's name before release.
Destiny 2 is available on PC, PS4, PS5, Stadia, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
