On the Beach Ends and Potentially Sets Up Death Stranding 3

Now that the dust has settled and all the accolades have been earned, it’s time to dive deep into the story of Kojima Productions’ Death Stranding 2: On the Beach. Or, more specifically, to answer what everyone wonders with every Hideo Kojima game: How does it end? Fortunately, even with its fair share of bizarre occurrences and events (Tommie Earl Jenkins, take a bow), the plot is a lot more straightforward and moves much quicker than the original Death Stranding. That doesn’t mean it’s any less bombastic or packed with revelations.

If you’ve yet to play the sequel, be warned: There are spoilers ahead for just about every major twist and the ending itself.

Much of the plot revolves around Lou, the Bridge Baby that the protagonist, Sam Porter Bridges, adopted and named at the end of the first game. Eleven months have passed since the Last Standing was averted, where Sam’s adoptive sister Amelie, an Extinction Entity, attempted to end all life as we know it. The world is still pretty messed up, though. Timefall is still a thing, rapidly ageing and deteriorating everything it touches; the Beached Things or B.T.s continue to roam unabated (and have even evolved); and new environmental disasters, from earthquakes to flash floods and dust storms, suppress the surviving populace.

Not that this is any concern of Sam and Lou, who reside in the southern reaches of the UCA, staying off the grid. One day, Fragile visits Sam and reveals that she’s started a new company called Drawbridge. BRIDGES is gone, and a new organization, the Automated Public Assistance Company, is in charge of delivering packages across the UCA, utilizing automated robots to deliver packages via the APAS. Fragile is working with the UCA to establish the Chiral Network and wants Sam to venture across the border into the remains of Mexico to do it (with the promise that the UCA will effectively pardon him and Lou).

Fragile stays behind to take care of Lou while Sam sets forth, stopping by to check in on Deadman. Or at least a recorded message of him, which confirms a few shocking things. First, Deadman is gone, having crossed over to his Beach (don’t worry, though – he’s still around in some capacity). Second, he reveals that Lou isn’t actually BB-28. The serial number belongs to a Bridge Baby that was already decommissioned. Where she came from and how she received this number is unknown, but it is some peace of mind for Sam since it means that for the UCA, Lou doesn’t exist.

Any solace from this shatters when Sam learns that his hideout was attacked, and while Fragile escaped, Lou didn’t. We then skip forward a month, and Sam is still depressed at losing Lou. Fragile approaches him once more, this time to join the DHV Magellan and venture into a newly discovered plate gate. These are special entryways emerging in the wake of the failed Last Standing and connect various parts of the world. There’s one in Mexico that connects to Australia, where other survivors reside. Fragile wants to link Australia to the Chiral Network but the APAC’s President, also along for the ride, believes that it should also activate other plate gates worldwide.

Other crew members are pretty much known by now – Tarman, who pilots the vessel; Dollman, a former spirit medium who ends up trapped inside a puppet’s body; the returning Heartman; and Rainy, a pregnant woman who can trigger Timefall wherever she goes (yet somehow, it becomes Corefall in a small radius around here, which de-ages anything it touches). There’s also Charlie, a crash-test dummy who is Drawbridge’s benefactor.

Upon venturing to Australia, Sam encounters a returning Higgs (who is also responsible for attacking his home). Higgs captures him with the help of the new ghost mechs, but Sam is saved by the mysterious Red Samurai. The latter is revealed to be Deadman, piloting a katana-wielding mech from his Beach and assisting Sam wherever possible. There’s also the mysterious Neil – upon venturing to his realm and defeating him for the first time, Sam encounters an equally mysterious girl.

Bringing her back to the Magellan, she’s given the name, “Tomorrow,” and revealed to have no memories. If you saw one of the game’s taglines – namely, “Tomorrow is in your hands” – and thought that there might be a connection with Lou, give yourself a gold star.

It also turns out that Neil was protecting her. As a former smuggler for the UCA, who supplied women for its Bridge Baby experiments, he’s a former childhood friend of Lucy Strand, Sam’s deceased wife. Her baby (meant to be named Louise) was the first Bridge Baby, BB-00, and was abducted by BRIDGES for its experiments. As it turns out, Lucy didn’t commit suicide – after several months of pregnancy, she began suffering from nightmares due to DOOMS. After a trip to the Beach courtesy of Bridget, Sam’s adoptive mother, she eventually realized the former’s true identity and thus attempted to escape with her daughter with Neil’s help.

This ended badly, with BRIDGES killing both Neil and Lucy while Louise was taken. When Sam attempted to reclaim Lucy’s body (with Bridget lying about the suicide), Neil would emerge from beyond as a B.T. and touch her corpse, triggering a Voidout. Sam, thinking he was responsible for the disaster, left BRIDGES and went into a life of solitude as a freelance porter.

Neil retained his identity upon returning to the Beach and effectively served as a ghost. We also learn that Fragile jumped to the Beach at the beginning and, with the help of Lou’s abilities, managed to happen upon Neil. She eventually entrusted Lou to him for protection.

In the final stretch of the story, Drawbridge battles against Higgs to activate the final Chiral Hub and connect Australia to the network. However, Higgs was working for APAC’s President, who’s not actually a human but a collection of souls that died from a Voidout (which includes the Elder from Death Stranding 1). Using APAS to survive, he’s responsible for the ghost mechs and wants humanity to essentially stop venturing out, thus preventing any interactions with the Beached Things and ensuring its survival.

Of course, it’s none other than Die-Hardman, revealed via a slick song and dance sequence to have been Charlie (and even that DHV has another meaning – “Die-Hardman’s Vessel”), that stops him. He proceeds to eject the President from APAS and thwart his schemes, but unfortunately, the rest of the crew doesn’t account for Higgs being his usual chaotic self.

It turns out that Higgs had his own plan and that, at some point, he began impersonating Deadman and controlling the Red Samurai. After waving the blade about and threatening the crew, he reveals his plans to trigger the Last Stranding using Tomorrow, a new Extinction Entity. Tomorrow is also revealed to be Sam’s daughter, and they subsequently depart.

Sam ventures to the Beach to battle Higgs and eventually stops him from triggering the Last Stranding, with Lou suddenly emerging to, er, devour the latter. Fragile also reveals that she was killed at the beginning of the game by Higgs, but her Ka or soul survived, delaying the time that her body or Ha had to live. After passing away, Sam and the crew return to the real world, with Tomorrow learning the truth during the journey.

Yes, Tomorrow is Lou but in grown-up form after accelerated ageing from staying in Neil’s Beach. In case there’s any confusion, Lou is actually Louise, the daughter of Sam and Lucy, taken by BRIDGES and made into BB-00. The B.T. of Lou that materialized in Sam’s pod after her apparent death was just a hallucination Drawbridge created to help Sam get over his loss.

With the truth revealed, Tomorrow tearfully embraces Sam as his daughter and finally inherits her true name – Louise. Post-credits, the camera pans over various locations in Australia before settling on Louise. Wearing full porter gear (and even Fragile’s hand mask-thing that lights a cigarette), she examines photographs of her parents and Bridget from the first game, Rainy with her child, and the crew of the DHV Magellan.

We then see her standing in front of what seems to be a new plate gate. However, this one is different from that in the beginning – it’s more like a pronounced pair of hands, seemingly reaching out to each other.

If Death Stranding 3 ever happens – and Kojima has a pitch for it, even if he doesn’t want to be the one to make it – it seems highly likely that Louise will be the protagonist. As for the plate gates, we’ve already seen how they can connect different continents across the world. Perhaps this new one can go even further beyond and maybe take people to a new planet or somewhere even farther away. With Louise capable of moving through tar (as seen when she dispatches a group of ghost mechs after her first meeting with Sam), she may be able to leverage plate gate traversal in ways that no one else can.

Of course, there are still plenty of questions. Does Louise still possess the ability to act as an Extinction Entity, or did the final battle effectively undo that? What about the Death Stranding and its effects on the world? Will the world continue to be afflicted with B.T.s and natural disasters from the excessive Chiralium? Is the cycle continuing, and what does that mean for Amelie, who stopped the Last Stranding to give humanity a chance? For all the different answers that Death Stranding 2 gave us, there are many more questions left to ponder.

Nevertheless, it’s a satisfying conclusion for Sam and Louise’s journey, providing more background on the fate of Lucy and maybe, hopefully, the end of Higgs. We’re keen to see where the story goes from here, if anywhere at all, and ultimately what else Tomorrow holds.