Why The Witness is Not The Winnower 

I was going to add this in the video, but instead I'll leave it here. I was 100% more serious and confrontational in this video than I normally am, and I want to tell you why. I am not trying to put down anyone's theories or beliefs regarding this lore. I am not trying to predict the events of The Final Shape, and I am at best cautiously optimistic that if this is the Narrative Team's way of separating the two characters, that they won't immediately do the opposite in TFS. The reason for my tone, is honestly because I am used to having people who disagree with me label me as XYZ, while their own beliefs do not have a strong foundation. So I'm not being arrogant, as much as I am wary if that makes sense. As for my confidence in this video, and the domino effect I talked about, I'll show you what I mean. Oh boy this could have been its own video. Let me give you my mindset when I read this lore, and this is something I've explained to friends who both agree with me and friends who rightfully challenge what I think. If you've watched my video dedicated to the Winnower, and you've watched my big boi Unveiling video, then you'll know how deep the Unveiling rabbit hole goes. Keep in mind that when I read this paragraph from Eido, that I am looking at it with that perspective. I mentioned three main interpretations of Unveiling, but it comes down to just two options: Either the Witness wrote Unveiling, and pretended to be the Winnower, or the narrator, a character who identifies with the Winnower in the story, actually is the Winnower. I know I am repeating myself from my Unveiling video, but you need to understand this. The character narrating Unveiling, uses the exact same language as the character who says the "she will bow to me" and the "It is magnificent. Majestic Majestic" lines in the Shadowkeep CE. The same language as the character who speaks to Oryx, and says that the Final Shape of the Universe, one governed by the Sword Logic is "Majestic. Majestic." From this alone there is one fact. The character from the SK CE, Unveiling, and the BoS are one and the same, not surprising since all three are written by the same author. With this in mind, you have your next problem to figure out. Either the Witness is all three, or the Winnower is. This is the logic of the "Majestic" character: "Strong life will live and weak life will die. Conflict is natural and good, and the struggle to survive is the natural way of the Universe. The war is all there is. You cannot escape this cycle of life and death, and should accept that. I truly value you (The Guardian) because you are full of the only thing that matters at all. You are also the Gardener's last argument, and I would love to use you as proof that the Sword Logic is the right way (we abandon her way of defending the weak). When I arrive you can tell me for yourself. I don't need anyone's validation. I don't care. If not interfered with, the universe will die in the end anyway, and I will be proven correct. I care about you though, because not only are you the Gardener's last argument, I also was responsible for your creation, hence why I say I'm full of the only thing that matters at all, and that you are too. (Our umbral center and ability to unleash the Darkness within us.) Only speaks using singular pronouns. Uses the callsign of Majestic. Majestic, whenever possible. Follows the Sword Logic With TFS CE, this is the Witness's logic: "No more life, no more death. We want to break this cycle of life and death, and turn the universe into a perfect, frozen and eternal state. We will kill everything and remake it in our image, but we need the Light to achieve this. We could have Taken Earth during the Collapse, but instead we set the sky on fire and tortured everyone. We want all life to feel pain and despair. We want them to hate the Gardener, just as we do. Speaks using plural pronouns. Has never once said Majestic. Majestic, even though it would be very easy for Bungie to do. Does not follow the Sword Logic (Scorn and Nez are examples of necromancy) + The Worms didn't recognize its authority and Rhulk had to bully them into compliance. Either the Winnower is the same character in these three instances, with the one logic. Or the Witness was this character, but after Shadowkeep Bungie retconned them to have a different ideology. Except, this lore disproves that, as Eido makes a point of using Unveiling to show that the two characters are different. What is easier? Accepting that Unveiling is just a parable, or that the Witness was retconned to have a different ideology, but still wrote Unveiling as someone else (their previous iteration)? The first option, clearly. And this could have been achieved in this lore. All it would have taken, was one sentence. One line saying that HNW wrote the story of the Garden. Or them saying their new form as the Witness would be "Majestic. Majestic." Instead this lore makes things far more confusing/intriguing. If we were two or three expansions away from the end, then I'd be open to it not mattering much. But this is the CE of THE FINAL SHAPE. You do not muddy the waters this close to the end. And then you connect all of this, with the Narrative Team saying that answers about Unveiling will come both leading up to and during TFS. So when I see Eido go out of her way to bring up Unveiling, compare the two characters and all but say they are different, then I have to wonder what kind of answer that could be, but that the Witness is not the Winnower. There are many people, who no matter what will stick to their theories. I'm not trying to put them down, or convince them. This is a world that we are all passionate about, and I wouldn't have it any other way. But if you are someone who is open to having their mind changed, or who cares about having their theories be air tight, then this is what I ask. Watch my Unveiling video. Watch the Winnower video. Take the new perspective given by Eido, and read Unveiling, read Inspiral, and read the Books of Sorrow. I genuinely believe that you will see it clearly. If the Witness is the Winnower, then the lore is not adding up. And regarding the theory that Unveiling was written for the Race way back when, this is the issue you will face with this theory. The text is very clearly a message to us, therefore the only part of Unveiling that could have been made for the Race was the story of the Garden. You still encounter the narrator problem. Regardless of if the Pyramid Race got their own iteration of the Garden story, the narrator of Unveiling acts as if they were the Winnower character in the Garden story when talking to us, so who is the narrator of Unveiling? And second, in my Unveiling video, I track the lore about the OG Garden from D1 to D2, and the key link through all of it is the Tree of Silver Wings. Watch the video and you'll know where I go with that. In conclusion. I've had people watch my Unveiling video, and feel that I am waffling and pretentious. They are right that I waffle, as I have just demonstrated once again. I write many words yes? But I'm not trying to be pretentious. I do not see myself as someone who understands the lore better than everyone else. I don't even consider myself to be a "lore master." I try to solve mysteries, and dig as deep as I need to in order to find the truth. Again, if you disagree with me, that is perfectly fine. If you have counterpoints to what I say, I welcome them. Anyway that's the waffle cooked. I appreciate all of you, and I truly hope that TFS is an incredible story, Unveiling characters or not. But yeah, that's it from me. Thank you! {:0)

The only proof you need is that the Witness would never say the phrase, "My man Oryx" so I'm not sure why it's such an uphill battle convincing people the Winnower is a distinct character.

to be fair, we basically found out that The Witness isn't The Winnower back in The Witch Queen Campaign, when Savathun said it *wears* The Darkness like a cloak

I’m happy that they never fully abandoned the Winnower / Gardener concepts. Imo, they’re just in general much cooler than the witness.

Let. Him. Cook..majestic, majestic.

Being that the Precursors (The Witness' species) had to seek knowledge from the Veil proves that the Witness is not the Winnower. The Witness is a tool of The Winnower. The Winnower and the Gardner predate The Witness' species.

I’m really coping hard that the gardener and winnower will get properly revealed. That winnower concept art that Chris Barrett posted gives me a sliver of hope.

The Winnower is the being represented by the Veil and the Gardener is the being represented by the Traveler. And I think we are chosen by both as we wield both light and dark.

This video was really good. Also I hope this doesn’t get changed. I feel like it’s so much more interesting to have the winnower as a separate character than the witness.

I Really, REALLY hope that Bungie doesn’t fumble with this Narrative. Even if Unveiling is just meant to be Destiny’s Version of The Creation Story, it would be disappointing for the Winnower and Gardener not to Exist at this point. To me, it’s a way they could Expand the Universe in the way that the Pyramid did in Shadowkeep, alongside the appearance of the Pyramid Fleet in Season of the Worthy. With the Pyramid appearing in Shadowkeep, we finally got that “Holy Shit, They ARE Real” moment after two years of Radio Silence after the Red War End Cutscene

My issue with how Bungie is telling the story is if the Winnower is the character that's been built up since the beginning of Destiny, why is the final villain of this saga the Witness? A character that's only been recently introduced with barely any build up unlike the Winnower. Unless they're saving the Winnower for after The Final Shape it doesn't make any sense to me.

I thought that is why the Traveler doesn't like the witness, it saw that it big headed both literally and figuratively. It wants to be the winnower, but that was never their/his role and that's why the Traveler left the first time it was disgusted with them/him whatever the hive/singular mind is.

I would say that compared to the witness, the winnower seems like it would be stoic, possibly even majestic, majestic.

From what I understood about the story. The traveler is the gardener and the veil is the winnower. the witness was just a race like the people of earth and other races that make up the gaurdians, that was blessed with the powers of the traveler. And then decided its purpose in life would be to create the perfect universe. Or at least what the witness believes to be perfect. I also am guessing here. But I thought the garden is the dimension inside the traveler. An ever changing space that adapts to things around it. Obviously I don’t know any of this for sure but that was my personal understanding of the information they have given us. I am excited to see the rest of the story though and finally get answers to these questions. There was also a cinematic where Osiris referred to the traveler as a gardener and the veil as the winnower. That doesn’t necessarily mean he was correct but that is what was said.

I started to speculate a while back when conversations about the veil began to pick up; why is The Witness is called the Witness. I tired to figure out reasons a title could be given to such an entity. Obviously the Witness saw something, witnessed something. What was it they had seen? I began to surmise that the Witness was the first being who saw the winnowing and gardening process, and that they were apart of that process. Anything created before the Witness wasn't conscious of its creation or the process in which it was created. I believe the Witness was the first conscious agent to be created using the Veil. I believe the Veil was a tool to aid the process of the Winnower and the Gardener in their game, Like the Traveler. The Veil was only meant to be used as a mechanism, through para-causality, to keep the rules of the game, with the Traveler being the other side of the coin. The Gardener + The Traveler and The Winnower + The Veil. Those were the teams of the game. Now I don't know how or why, but it seems the Winnower tried to cheat(?) and used some conscious agent created by the Gardener, with the help of the Veil to create the Witness, a conscious para-causal agent. Maybe as some fail-safe or stop-gap, or maybe even a successor. I think when the Winnower seen what it had done, realized it was an abomination and tried to winnow the Witness. If you look at the Witness it looks just like the VEIL itself. You cannot un-see it. Finally, I believe the Witness is bitter it was created and rejected, and is trying to exact its revenge. I believe that the Traveler was also used by the Gardener to create its own para-causal conscious agent in an attempt to stop the Witness, maybe a clone of itself, in a last ditch effort to save the game(universe?). I think the Gardener is dead and hid the Veil beforehand, and gave its life to make the clone using The Traveler. The Winnower and the clone of the Gardener are alive, and on the run with the Traveler from the Witness. The Traveler and the Winnower were trying to find the Veil before the Witness. This is why the Traveler visits civilizations and imbues them with the light to help find the Veil. After all the searching and imbuing the The traveler fell weak and essentially went into a coma after Ghaul. The Traveler is incubating the Gardeners clone and has had to be careful of the energy it expends. When the Traveler shot its Light/Life energy at the Witness's pyramid ships, it was essentially saying it was ready; The new Gardener is ready. i have other ideas about the black garden and what it is/could be. but i wrote enough for today. BTW im not a super Lore guy, just got really interested in the details of the characters behind the scenes, so i could be wrong about many things. just my thoughts.

Damn, woulda been crazy if they actually stuck to their promise and kept this lore IN THE ACTUAL DAMN GAME

Eido is such a real one. Not only is she fantastic of a scribe, she really went out of her way to get us as much information possible just to help us. I can see why Mithrax or Misraaks is just so proud of her, because who wouldn't One thing that I find interesting though. The Precursors had different factions. One wanted to take action like the Witness is doing right now, one wanted to sit back and wait. Isn't that somehow what the Winnower is doing? I mean it's still very different in the case that the Precursor faction believed that they are not worthy to exist when the final shape comes to be while the Winnower just sits back and watches, while knowing he will win the game no matter what he does. So he does nothing, knowing he will win anyway, just enjoying the show

The other thing that's interesting about the passage is Eido's attitude towards Unveiling - "I have tried to reconcile it with how I understand the Light, and what I know of the Great Machine." So her attitude is that it's difficult to believe but she's accepting the possibility that it's true or has truth to it. They have Eido put in plenty of her own thoughts/theories into her findings, but she doesn't speculate on who the author is, which would absolutely be the thing to do if they wanted to plant the seed in the reader's mind that it's all just a parable written by The Witness. I suppose if I try to see the argument from another side, Eido could be pointing out the differences between the two to set-up the reveal that the Winnower is just how The Witness likes to think of itself. But then... they could have had Eido speculate that. And it doesn't sit with everything Eido says about how The Witness treats species touched by the light, it wouldn't even be giving us these transmissions.

if we don’t see a gardener and winnower in the final shape, i will be extremely disappointed

I don't really understand how anyone who reads the lore thinks that the witness and the winnower are the same being. There are so many things that contradict each other from all the communications we've received from the "Darkness". All Oryxes communications with the Deep don't match the ideas of the witness nor does the philosophies of the winnower from unveiling match the witness. Even if the unveiling would be a religious text of the witness race, the ideology outlined in the unveiling is of pure darwinism, while the witness wants everything to stagnate, 2 very different ideas. In fact, the unveiling contains a direct refutation of the witnesses ideals. In the cambrian explosion page the narrator of the book states: "Those who peddle the tired gotcha that all life hastens entropy. They are fatuous little nihilists who pretend to prefer no existence to a flawed one. They bore me." which is directly what the witness is trying to achieve. If the witness were behind the book, why the contradictions and if it's a "religious text" why go against your own religion? What I don't understand is the pyramid fleet and the "winnowers" involvement with the fleet. The season of the deep cutscene, at least to me implies that the witness race created the pyramids but to me the being at the end of shadowkeep that calls itself our salvation speaks in a manner very different from the witness, although this could just be a slight retcon as the design of the witness was likely not complete at the time, but then there are the occasions of the pyramids allowing us to enter and even aiding us in moving through them, like the ones in beyond light. Likewise the lorebook The Singular Exegete from the season of arrivals, which contains Eris' musings of the communications between her and the pyramid ship above the tree of silver wings which is coaxing Eris to use the darkness (stasis) is very unlike the witness. The gifting of stasis could easily be a ploy from the witness to corrupt guardians as happened in the dark timeline, but I still feel like there's something more going on, someone pulling even the strings of the witness.

This has restored some of my hope in bungie writing team, i'm not convinced still and i still think they did pretty dumb things with the whole lightfall delivery, but i'm cautiously optimistic about some good narrative conclusions to the lore

Ive always known that the winnower was not the witness and some info on it/him?(tbh idk what it is lol)but your videos have given me a new perspective on the winnower i just hope Bungie makes him a MASSIVE villain because tbh the witness looks and acts like a dream works villan anyways takes for the video and keep up the good work you're pretty much the new byf

The witness doesn’t say what it is except with cryptic nonsense. The catalyst is needed for growth and nothing is truly lost. Once we understand AND have the full scope of our power, we can be what the witness and its previous failed to be. We grow from them. They saw the future. It was designed by them to unfold in this way. The flower game.

Its officially been revealed he is just one of the winnowers knifes meaning theres others like the witness out there so destiny 3 is all but confirmed at this point.

Maybe the female voice we hear in the trailer is the Gardener's voice, and, after we defeat the Witness, the Gardener will reveal to us the existence of the Winnower. I think the Witness is some sort of avatar of the Winnower, made by influence of the Veil, since both Witness race and Maya's crew were influenced in a similar way by the Veil.

I’m really happy you point out this CE lore. It’s the latest and clearest evidence for the Winnower and the Witness being separate beings (to say nothing of Inspiral’s First Knife, etc. etc.). However, I think there’s another reason to present this lore in the CE like this. It’s not just that the Witness and the Winnower are separate, it’s that our quarrel is with the Witness and not the Winnower. The Witness wants to burn the stars to ash, or however Mara describes its malice, but the Winnower just wants to be proven right. This is a game about shooting things. I think the Witness was created and introduced at the 11th hour because once the narrative team finally figured out what they wanted the Darkness to be, they also realized it couldn’t be the Big Bad. We can’t shoot a philosophy. But we can shoot its most zealous follower. At one point this would have been Oryx, but the Witness and its Disciples have escalated and subsumed the sisters and related threats. The lore of this game has always been about dualities. Light and Darkness. Gardener and Winnower. Traveler and Veil. Guardians and the Witness. The cool thing about dualities is that in their complementarity they create a third thing. I suspect that in defeating the Witness we will have proven our third way and the Gardener and the Winnower will end their conflict.

It’s no accident that Bungie would have Eido making the distinction between the Winnower and the Witness in the lead up to Final Shape. They’re setting us up for what comes after, that much is clear. Something that also occurred to me - I feel like the Witness is going to be one big “I told you so” the Winnower will use against the Traveler/Gardener. The Witness is the pattern that nearly blighted the garden.

The Winnower is the Gardener. Lorebook Insprial page Winnowing says you can’t have a garden without knives and a gardener needs a knife to keep their garden in order. So the Gardener is the Winnower.

Respectfully, after watching several of your videos over the last week, a piece of feedback I have is that it feels like your motivation in making these videos is less to educate/explain the lore, and more to prove you're correct for your ego. I dont necessarily think that *is* your intent, but through your tone/script (I am aware this one didnt have a script) it feels that way

Just to give my opinion on this matter. I agree with you, The Witness is NOT the winnower. (Just to inform this is a all a collective decision between me and the main few people in my lore server) The Witness tapped into the darkness and used its bonding powers to take everyone’s consciousness on their planet and put them into one, of course with the new lore given to use from The Final Shape Collectors Edition, The Witness has possibly the ability to take other people consciousnesses and take them judging by it saying it took their rearranged them and more minds joined. Its goal from what we believe from what we’ve been told and what we’ve seen in the pyramid ships, The Witness obviously wants to calcify everything in the universe but it’s more like a taxidermy if anything, then of course the disciples it’s granted “salvation” are those who will survive its Final Shape. To touch up on this it’s also important to understand what The Final Shape means. The Final Shape is not a random name that The Witness had given its plans, it is its civilization goal, after of course witnessing the truth in the darkness and seeing in its eyes that the light takes and the darkness is the path to its victory (and being the only thing it had) this is its definition, a perfect calcification, a Final Shape. So yes this is our interpretation of The Witness, of course NOTHING you see is true until June but this is our best effort to connect the dots enjoy (:

Because someone I the writer's room changed their mind. That is the answers.

Im surprised other big lore channels haven't picked this up.

This also would make us getting a Darkness subclass post Final Shape make more narrative sense.

If unveiling was some religious propaganda created by the witness, it would have a lot more anger towards the gardener. In the book, though, the only time the winnower shows any anger towards to gardener was in the conversation in the first knife, and even then it is more directed at the suggestion which directly opposes what the winnower personifies. Other than that, the winnower just calmly disagrees with the gardener’s philosophy. Not to mention Eido isn’t a character who Bungie will just go ‘she completely misinterpreted the available evidence’. If she’s wrong, it will be because of some unforeseen variable which will be revealed down the road.

ME AGAIN By the way, unrelated to anything else: the TFS CE lore indirectly confirms Exodus Green/Yang Liwei (the ship that was the progenitor of the Awoken) encountered a Pyramid Ship by way of the Exodus Yellow directly encountering a Pyramid Ship and having the same physical phenomena: phaeton strikes and sterile neutrinos (see Cosmogyre III). It *also* directly confirms -- again -- that the Pyramid ships are known to materially affect gravity in detrimental ways for their targets. Which actually leads me to my next point: considering the source of Unveiling in a physical context. Unveiling was delivered to us by an artifact on the Pyramid Ship buried on the Moon. We now know that those Pyramid Ships are all essentially under the control of the Witness, which means even if the Witness somehow *did not* write Unveiling, it could certainly have *tampered* with it. There's even lore precedent for this, even if not directly by the Witness: The Interference missions in Season of Arrivals. The Winnower not being the Witness directly could then be basic semantics for the same reason that Roland Deschain of Gilead is not Stephen King. But on the other hand... (more in replies, assuming they don't just end up hidden somehow)

Not as knowledge on lore as probably many here so forgive me if this contradicts things or is already known, regardless I have a theory. The Winnower guided the precursor people which lead to the creation of the Witness. In the first conversation we see between the two precursors the idea that destruction is the final shape emerges and that through destruction there is a sort of mercy. This idea at first was obviously not accepted by the Benefic as can be seen with RS's reaction. Something clearly changed and this change was most likely sparked by the Veil. Unlike the Traveler (Gardener) who offers gifts but no guidance the Veil (Winnower) has no problem talking and offering its viewpoint as can be seen with the Unveiling. Upon finding the Veil is it farfetched to assume it talked to the precursors? From Entelechy it's clear the precursors held the Traveler in deep reverence. To find the Veil, an entity the Precursors know is related to the Traveler, and to hear guidance for the first time would spark a dramatic change within the Benefic especially considering that the idea of destruction is mercy wasn't foreign to the precursors. This would also enforce the idea that life equals suffering and chaos. We know that the Precursors before their encounter with the Veil (assuming it was before the Veil) was not opposed to inflict a little discomfort to end greater suffering and we also know they were not afraid to get involved. While these actions are already extreme, hearing a god-like being push for even more extreme actions that's not completely contradictory to the current activities of the Benefic probably amplified their actions and warped their motivations. I believe the Witness's Origins cinematic helps this claim. The Winnower talking to the precursors also adds to why the Witness hates the Traveler. Upon hearing the story from the Winnower of the Gardener's ideology and origin and its leaving of the precursor people its a safe bet that many within the Benefic began to loathe the Traveler. In the Witness's cinematic its after they find the Veil that they look at the Traveler as a source of chaos and suffering. There is a stark difference between that thought, which centers on hate towards the Traveler, and HNW's belief, in HNW and RS's first conversation, which seemingly still holds reverence for the Traveler. HNW's belief assumes that the Gardener and her gifts has been look at the wrong way and that the destruction it caused was intended and merciful. Post Veil discovery the mercy aspect was separated from the Gardener and instead applied to the Winnower/Veil. I'm sorry if this is lacking in some areas or just completely wrong. I just got off work and am a little tired plus writing everything that I wanted would take longer than I have. There is a hole in this that I can think of and that is why didn't the Winnower talk to the precursors earlier? We know the Veil does not need to be near for the Winnower to communicate. Perhaps in our case with communicating with it the statues hold the answers.

Winnower? I just met her!

Savathun confirms this she says the witnesss isn’t darkness it’s left aka the winnower but it gives it a wicked shape as in uses it like we use the light

Literally none of this adds up, in "The Singular Exegete" lore book, who ever is communicating with us is doing so through a pyramid ship, and it takes direct credit for the collapse so it has to be the witness. It later claims to be a force of nature and Eris explains that it upholds the philosophy of the sword logic and unveiling and that it is at least "consistent". So, either the one that caused the collapse was not the witness and therefore it was not the witness communicating to us during the season of arrival, or it was the witness (As we know, by multiple characters confirming the witness caused the collapse) and then it literally has no ideological consistency at all. The retcon of the witness into the story was the greatest disaster to happen to the Lore of the franchise.

I really hope that the witness boss fight is the 4th encounter in the raid and then when we return to orbit it brings us to a special place that we talk to the winnower

Unveiling has always read to me like an allegory, a myth-- no more accurate to how things are than ant other creation myth. What I find most interesting with Destiny and its lore- and by lore, I don't mean narrative, or even the story, but the way we are told of past events- is the mystery, the tantalizing concept of truth that we can't reach. There is this... phenomenon I've noticed in internet discourse that has existed before Destiny 1 and in other games like Warframe, which is an obsession with "canon" and ordering everything into neat little boxes where everything is categorized and understood. I get why these drives exist- they’re the end result of trying to find out things- but they also can be counter-intuitive, because they block new knowledge and viewpoints. There are things we can be certain of in the Destiny universe, primarily things that happened around the Golden Age, the Collapse, and the pre-modern City Age. These possess recorded historical elements that are relatively recent, just as we can look at records from our own past to discern what happened in the last few centuries. But like all records, these will have biases and agendas (and by "agendas", I mean stuff like the way Clovis Bray presented himself as good despite being an egomaniac). Then we have things from the history of other civilizations in Destiny: the Hive, the Cabal, the Eliksni-- the Cabal are imperialistic and would present themselves in the best way possible, as we saw with accounts from Calus. The Hive are religious fanatics, and the Books of Sorrow are more akin to the bible than a history textbook. The Eliksni have lost so much of their original Riisian culture that we can't fully know what it was like before the Whirlwind. And then there's the things that have taken place so far into the past that we can't truly discern fact from falsehood. Anything related to the Witness and its disciples, along with the Vex, must be taken with a grain of salt, because the witness has engaged in historical revisionism. I am not saying that nothing is accurate, or that we should not seek accurate information, or even that games should not include accurate information. It is fun to speculate about the Gardener and the Winnower, and I'm sure we will learn more of the origins of the Traveler and the Veil in the Final Shape. Until then, all we can do is speculate with what evidence we have and to figure out how much of that evidence is reliable. EDIT: In general, I really do not like the word "retcon" because it is often so loaded and used as a way to imply that writers are lazy or incompetent. There are still things we don’t know. Are the Light and the Dark the same thing as the Traveller and the Veil? Are these interchangeable with the Gardener and Winnower? What is Prismatic and Transcendence, and why do we find it in the Pale Heart? Why are the Traveler and Veil linked? I do not see "The Winnower is a concept" and "The Winnower is a character" as mutually exclusive or contradictory. It could be both.

I recommend anyone that feels like the story is pointless and too complex to just trying applying the stories to your own life. Always dozens of lessons shown by the individually crafted narratives we get on screen

I wonder if the Winnower is "The Veil." This theory comes from the idea that Bungie is pushing forward that the Veil and the Traveler were once one being, both from Ahsa and Osiris's research on the Veil. They "lived" as one being in a "Garden" before separating with the creation of the Universe. Then in a clash, the Traveler ends up buried in a random planet where the "Precusor" race discovered it.

well, you are right

Also i dont believe they are exactly "muddying the water". My opinion abiut this confusion is that what we are seeing when we pick out a piece of the story is a real world alagory to how the pattern is in full effect, but each race, or individual is at some other point in their own personal book marker in that repetative loop. Thats why its hard to relate them

First off, we know we can't trust Eidos judgement. Our first interactions with her she came across like a cocky arrogant little brat. Her next major part of the narrative was during Festival of the Lost, where in her search for understanding she followed every story myth/fable down rabbit hole after rabbit hole like it was gospel. Then during the Nezerac storyline she constantly (and undeservingly) berated Mithrax for his past, while at the same time outright ignoring the horrific actions of Eramis' from her past. Almost to the point of making excuses for her. Remember Bungie has tried stating a reason for all the RetCons in the storyline is because the story is always being told from 1 characters point of view, that doesn't mean that's the actual truth of the story (I believe they said that after the big RetCon during Witch Queen to the Hive origins) The description of The Witness you read, sounds more like how Nezarec was written, rather than any behavior we've seen out of The Witness, to date. They need to make The Witness the big ultimate baddie for campaign and raid climax. Something they haven't even come close to doing in the same way they did with Savathun. They wasted the entire year and a half of the Lightfall debacle without fleshing out and building up this storyline. I'm afraid for what might be a bigger letdown (storywise) than Lightfall was.

its funny how the discourse amongst lore people searching for definitive answers is so similar to the witness origins. I enjoy yours and myrzirs content a great deal, but I am still of the opinion that leaving mystery and room for wonder is most important when developing a mythology/story. Elden Ring lore is a great example of this. If there is some big reveal that the gardener and winnower are just gods of life and death exactly as they are portrayed I think (personally) it would be just a little boring. I know bungie will add some naunced twist that we do not anticipate, but there are still many possibilities of the author of unveiling. The cracked lip only existing because of allegory is still a big indicator to the contrary of them being entities. I believe the witness is the pinnacle “darkness” antagonist we will face and I think the inspirations and concepts behind the witness have the potential to be very compelling in the lore in the final shape.

I think its pretty obvious that the Witness isnt the Winnower, the origin of the Precursors cutscene threw that theory out the window

I think the witness is everyone and nothing at the same time. Because it is potentially half of all of us. Its the coagulations of all the souls of all the beings that were split by the firing of a certain ring shaped super weapons. When it split the souls from the real, and the beings in bungies games became simulated, he is the manifestation of space times reset button being hit, and the coagulation of the left over bits. Just my idea haha, makes the witness a lot more terrifying. And what if after the witness entered the portal only to be tortured and fall prey again to the gods that have been running the show, making the beings that killed the precursures the first time, thus the cycle is started there again. Just cutting beings over and over for their formers indescretion. The witness is an inverted negative projection of jesus dying for our sins, or all the killing power exectued from our actions "healing the traveler" aka firing the halo rings just as we saw in the trilogy

Se marcó un triple y se la peló 🔥🐐

Can you explain the majestic majestic lore?

It was already stated in game that the viel is the winnower

The major issue with this video remains the same as the Unveiling breakdown. You still assume that the Winnower is being truthful within the Unveiling text. The Witness has NEVER been truthful with ANY of those it recruits, so if it did write Unveiling, why would it be truthful with us? We see no Disciple given a true understanding of the Final Shape. We've explicitly seen the Witness deceive and corrupt other races into weapons for its own purpose. It even sought to raise Savathun into a Disciple despite having manipulated her into enslaving her entire species. The argument of Winnower = Witness does not rely on cohesion betwee the beliefs of the Winnower and the Witness, in fact it is more about the argument that the Winnower doesn't exist. I believe the Gardener exists and that the Witness and the Prescursors that formed it had ambitions of standing beside their god, perhaps even subverting or replacing it. Thus the framing of Gardener and Winnower as two godlike creators of the cosmos. Because the Gardener has existed in the lore long before Unveiling. The Winnower was only introduced with Shadowkeep and since they admitted that they didn't know what the Darkness was in D1, it was an attempt to call back to the only grimoire card that implied a larger force at work. The main question is whether they knew the direction they were going from Shadowkeep. Was the Winnower the initial plan before they switched over to the Witness? Was this deception always the plan, or simply a retcon because they realised they wanted to go a different direction? Or is it that they have isolated the Winnower as a self-contained piece of the lore, in which case it has.... what? Spoken to Oryx, Kuang Xuan and us. It makes the final line of Unveiling even more confusing: "Don't hurry to deliver your answer. I'll come over and hear it myself." But the Winnower HASN'T arrived. We know the Pyramid Ships are creations of the Precursors predating their encounter with the Veil, so why would it be associated with them? Why is it broadcasting from Pyramid artifacts? Why is Kuang Xuan sketching them in her logbook? The only things that rectify this in my view are a retcon OR the Winnower was always a deception. The extent of that retcon is up for debate.

I like your explanation

So what youre saying is Venextron is actually a writer for Destiny and Eido is his self-insert to once and for all prove Unveiling is true.

Easy answer. The winnower and gardner is light and darkness itself

Now that it is confirmed the witness was the one that spoke to oryx by savathun. Is the winnower more of just an observer then?

My guess is the Winnower is what the Witness/Precursor species wants to be. However, Lightfall shows that it still has emotion, especially rage. There are no pre-universal beings, but just a fancy story the Witness came up with.

I love ya but I think you are wrong. What's going to happen is that D2 will keep being more obscure and confusing about the Winnower and Unveiling, cause obscurity and confusion are more interesting than a straightforward answer. You predict that the Winnower will be the villain of the next saga, but I think that's also wrong. We will beat the Winnower in TFS. How? Very simple. People have predicted that we will debilitate the Witness inside the Traveler to afterwards definitely beat it in the raid (some leaks indicate a mission to defeat the Witness after the raid but for all effects it's the same thing). That makes a lot of sense, but what will really happen is that we will purify the Witness into becoming the Final Shape, the Winnower. Then we will shoot rockets at its face and we will beat it. And then we will have metaphysical discussions about this obscure plot for a long while. How is this possible? If you read Unveiling, you will notice that (I quote): "In the evening, the winnower reaped the day's crop and separated what would flourish from what had failed." So, the Final Shape would be the whatever was pulled out in the day's crop...but it was reaped by the Winnower, thus meaning the Winnower itself would be the Final Shape. Reaping is taking a knife to a plant you cultivated and cutting it to use it. You see farmer taking a knife to reap a tomato he grew, but if you reframe this as a _fight_...isn't the farmer the winner of this fight? Who is more final shape-y, the crop reaped or the reaper? So that leaves a few questions: -Does the Winnower exist? No, the Winnower does not exist except as an idea. We will create it as a being in TFS to finally kill it in a final fight during the raid or a post raid mission -Then who wrote Unveiling? The Winnower -How? Via time travel bullshit, or simply because Unveiling is an idea too, and thus the Winnower as an idea can write it, a long time before becoming a being. If it turns out the Witness wrote Unveiling, it will be through influence of the Winnower ideas and as part of the purifying process. -So what does the Winnower entering the universe in Unveiling mean? exactly that. The Winnower enters the universe in Unveiling and becomes two things: The Darkness (as a neutral force) and the idea of the Winnower. -What does it mean killing the Final Shape, the Winnower: It would mean we become the Final Shape, but by rejecting the ideas of reaping and even having a final shape, we let the side of the Gardener win. Just as we killed Oryx but we didn't take its throne, we will kill the Final Shape but will reject its throne. -But the Winnower and the Witness have different ideologies as Eido said? Eido is right. In the process of purifying the Witness we will align these ideas into the ones that the Winnower has.

People are still coping that the Winnower is an actual entity? That story thread has been abandoned and retconned in favor of the Witness as a new entity.

I know for a fact that the witness is NOT malicious and it’s possible the Witness is the Winnower. I happen to agree that the Witness and Winnower are different, their priorities do not align. However, the Witness is more tricky and subversive than even Savathun, it did lie to her. It may be the Winnower if the Winnower was a persona to obfuscate its real goals. Not saying I believe that, just that it is possible. I believe the Winnower is the subconscious of all living things (like how the Light is in all things). The Winnower is the will to live that all living things must have in order to justify continuing to live. Think “Will to Power”, the Nietzschean concept. Funny enough, Dul Incaru is called “The Eternal Return” and the Dreaming City is stuck in a loop where it’s population has to learn “Amor Fati”, a love of their fate. Nietzsche called this cycle inescapable and the only way to fulfillment is to accept, and even LOVE the cycle. As for the Witness and its intent, it actually truly IS the salvation it claims to be, it wants to save all life from that Eternal Return the Dreaming City is in, the cycle of suffering and pain. That’s why it repeatedly destroys species, it has accepted its fate to destroy. If you go back to the lore for the Whisper of the Worm, it makes mention of a “demiurge”, that is a term from the ancient Gnostic belief. The Gnostics believe that this Demiurge is responsible for all of creation, kinda like the Traveler. They also believe the Demiurge captured Humanity, abducted us to place us in the material world where the Demiurge could tyrannize us. The analogy is that the Traveler is actually the most evil thing, responsible for all suffering by way of exposing Humanity to suffering. The Demiurge STOLE the Human spirit from the true creator, Sophia, the creator of the universe outside of the material world. That being said, Sophia had two parts to the being, the feminine (Sophia) and the masculine (Jesus Christ), and the union of the physical Christ, the Spirit of Christ, and the true creator, is God. The Gnostics also believed that Jesus Christ was sent down from heaven multiple times to save Humanity from its captor, the Demiurge (Traveler). The first time Jesus, came down to offer humanity the knowledge of good and evil, right and wrong, as a serpent in the Garden of Eden. You see how the Darkness relates to the mind and the Light relates to the material? The Gardener did NOT create life, it STOLE life from the Creator. The Winnower is NOT a killer, it is reclaiming the spirit of life from the Gardener. Being taken from existence is a lot like dying in the eyes of the people who are left behind, so seeing the Winnower or even the Eden serpent as representing death is not that crazy of a misinterpretation. To add to this theory, the first rank of spiritual beings Sophia/Jesus created were called Archons, a name for the highest rank of the Fallen chain of command. In early promo material for the original Destiny, there was a feminine apparition flying away from the Traveler on Mars. That apparition is the exact female statue found in the Moon pyramid, GoS final room, DSC before Atraks and the Europan pyramid. The Witness does not have malice, it understands that the Traveler intentionally set up life with rules that always end in suffering. The Witness wants the Traveler gone because the Traveler is a thief and a liar, that accusation is also mentioned in the lore behind the Warlock “Hodiocentrist Bond” which isn’t a real word but “hodio-“ is a latin root word for “deceiver”, think like hoodlum or hoodwink. The book of Revelations has claimed that the AntiChrist would be called “The Great Deceiver” which would track with the Traveler literally being Satan, yknow the one who lied and stole from the Creator and was cast down to hell and to bring suffering to all Humanity, that Satan. Halo has a billion allegories for Christianity, and Gnostic Christian allegories are alllll over the place in Destiny so it’s not a far stretch to call this theory correct given that the guy who wrote the plot of Halo also wrote the original plot for Destiny. side note: I guess if you don’t like the interpretation that jesus was the serpent and the lord was malicious, ahamkara could be the allegory for the serpent, promising everything and lying about it. then again ahamkara is literally the word for the concept of “Making Oneself” or the psychological equivalent of Ego

5:45 We may see it as unnecessary, but we also dont understand what it does. Its teaching us and if we dont learn, we get culled.

Isn't the winnower the veil?

This video is for non destiny players

Spoiler Alert: From known legit leaker Aka Liz If u still want to know look scroll down👇👇👇 The witness right now at this moment while we fight to find a way to reach hin inside the traveler he is drinking the light to unleash the final shape. In final shape, 8missions or 10 i dont remember exactly and the witness will be defeated in the raid in 3 stages each stage in a form of the witness after defeating for good he will retreat and a new cutscene. @venextron this is what i want to let you know after the cutscene we will have 12 man activity fight the witness to severe him from the darkness. In your last video i was connecting the dot and when you said the winnower in the deep i realised the darkness are like the light for the traveler. My point brother, assuming the winnower is not real then if there is no winnower then who is the traveler. My assumption pure speculation right now in final shape we will meet the traveler and she will contact us through our ghost bungie loves to give vessel for dead people or entities to use our ghost and she will tell us her story with the winnower our father btw leaks before lightfall that we will meet the veilled lady and she will help us get rid of the light and darkness because of what the witness did to her as side effect dont know for this one though.

ok i'm gonna rip the band-aid right off. it does not matter cuz TFS is gonna end the light vs dark saga. there will be no time to build upon the Winnower because he is allegorical to the Witness same as the Traveler to the Gardener. they are the same thing.

Destiny sucks