Destiny 2’s Crow: A Queer Allegory
Content Warnings for discussion of queerphobia, discussion of domestic abuse, and discussion of violence against queer people in general. Also, major spoilers for Destiny 2’s Season of the Chosen if you haven’t finished it yet.
The Season of the Hunt gave Destiny players perhaps the most divisive character in the series, and gave me a source of comfort during an extraordinarily dark time. The Crow is the name of the person currently inhabiting the body of a man once known as Uldren Sov. Uldren Sov is dead. The player killed him in either an act of justice or revenge, depending on who you talk to. He was a bit of a dick, even before he murdered the fandom’s most beloved Cayde-6, but Uldren’s actions in Forsaken united the Destiny community in a way that hadn’t really been seen before. Out of all of the series’ antagonists, this time it was personal. And whether or not you headcanon your Guardian as being the one to pull the trigger, it’s your actions that resulted in his death. And later, his resurrection.
A few months after the death of Uldren Sov, a Ghost brought him back. But it’s not really him. In Destiny’s canon, all who are resurrected by the Light are stripped of their past. All memories of who they were before are gone, leaving behind their basic personality and allowing them to grow into someone new. For gameplay, this allows the player to insert whatever they want into basically a blank slate of a character. When Uldren was resurrected, he became the Crow. Crow didn’t pick this name, it was given to him later, but regardless of what he’s called, he is now someone entirely different. And that someone has not had an easy go of it.
Here is where the narrative retrospection begins.
When Crow first awakens, he is met with a world that means him harm. He shares a face with the man who killed someone with an army of loyal followers who are still stricken with grief and all of the anger that comes with it. He gets killed. A lot. But thanks to his Ghost, an endearing little drone named Glint with the power to resurrect his Chosen, Crow still lives on. It doesn’t take long for him to hide who he is. Crow becomes a recluse, hiding from other Guardians and never taking his helmet off if he can help it. The alternative is too painful. It’s tragic, and yet all too relatable.
There is an inherent fear of the world around you that comes with being queer, especially in the South. In many states in the US, it’s not only legal for your employer to fire you for being queer, but also for someone to claim that your being queer was enough reason for them to murder you. It’s called the Gay and Trans Panic Defense, and while about a dozen states have passed bills to counteract this, it is still the norm and disproportionally affects trans women and gay/bisexual men. At the time of writing this, another dozen states have proposed banning this defense, but not my home state of North Carolina. Being openly queer means that safety is a luxury. But even when living in a place that has put in the work to make it safe for you to live your life, you never stop coming out. And every time you come out to a stranger is another agonizing instance of wondering whether or not someone will hate you for no other reason than that you exist, or if you’ll breathe a sigh of relief that you get to live another day.
Prefacing the events of Season of the Hunt, Crow found himself indentured in the service of a smuggler known as the Spider. The Spider is an eliksni, one of the antagonistic alien species in the series, and he’s a morally grey character within a series so defined by the fight of Light versus Dark. During Forsaken, he is an ally in the hunt for Uldren and his lackeys. Now Crow, unbeknownst to him, has found himself at the mercy of someone who knows exactly who he was and knows what use a Lightbearer could be in his line of work. Without much of a choice, Crow is named and leashed. For an indeterminate amount of time, for his own safety and the safety of Glint, he is trapped in what is essentially an abusive relationship.
It isn’t uncommon for queer people to wind up in abusive relationships. Sometimes it’s as simple as toxic friendships, but far more commonly it’s familial or from intimate partners. This domestic violence can be either psychologically or physically abusive, but regardless it can be incredibly difficult for victims to get support. Being outed as queer is not only a tool abusers can use against their victims, but having to out oneself can be just as dangerous. Hotlines can’t always be trusted to be LGBT+ friendly. Organizations for domestic abuse aid may refuse to assist queer survivors, and men often aren’t believed to be victims at all. Let alone the difficulty that trans women face, as they are the most likely to be victims and the least likely to get any support at all, especially if they cannot pass as cis over the phone. It traps victims in a cycle of being abused, being unable to get help, and then having no other choice but to stay where they are.
Season of the Hunt begins with our Guardian coming to the aid of one of Destiny’s few living gay characters: a grumpy old man named Osiris who has very recently lost his Ghost and his connection to the Light. Osiris was a near legendary figure in the lore, once leading the Warlocks before being exiled from the Last City, and going on to study the prediction engines of the Vex (another prominent antagonistic alien species) in an attempt to try to glimpse into the coming future. But now, without the Light, Osiris is as weak as any mortal. Luckily, Crow is there! He deals the killing blow on an enemy that’s about to strike down Osiris, Glint gives the old man a stern talking to, and the Guardian is absolutely baffled to see Uldren Sov standing before them. Glint’s presence instantly provides context for how he has come back, but why he’s here specifically isn’t made clear at first. In the cutscenes that follow we get a glimpse into Spider’s relationship with Crow, what he’s done to Glint to keep them here, and what we need to do next. So begins the gameplay loop for the Season and Crow’s eventual rescue.
Osiris is the perfect character to have become a mentor for Crow. His exile and ostracization from the Last City give him a unique experience with other Guardians, notably a hostile one, and he has hidden himself before in order to move through the City without being noticed. Crow hasn’t met many other Lightbearers whose initial reaction, upon seeing his face, hasn’t been to beat him to a pulp. The Guardian and Osiris are his first introduction to what it might be like to safely be himself, and though cautious at first he gradually comes out of his shell. Crow is witty, intelligent, curious, and more than a little rough with the ships that he flies. Partway through the Season, Crow reveals to the Guardian the strange dreams that he’s been having. Visions from the Traveler. Mechanically, this is the introduction for the Season’s Exotic weapon quest, but narratively this is where Crow and the Guardian become closer. It’s also where the player base’s opinions on Crow started to shift.
I started this by declaring Crow the most divisive character in the series. Before Crow had a name, there was a cutscene. A Ghost with a pale magenta shell scans rocks and plants before a body covered by a sheet in the distance gets his attention. The body is none other than that of Uldren Sov. And the reactions were… mixed. It took place just months after players had killed him, most still reeling from the loss of Cayde and the NPCs comments on his death were still fresh in their idle dialogue loops. Many declared that they would kill Uldren again, while others knew that this technically was not the same man that they had shot before. Opinions were mixed. I, personally, was very curious. A little anxious over seeing his face again, but curious nonetheless. When Crow was finally introduced to the players as our companion character for the Season’s story, it didn’t take very long for me to become attached to this awkward young man figuring out his place in the world. But I still saw some people who could not get past their hatred. This all changed greatly after the Exotic quest, The Crow and The Hawk.
The quest takes the player through an (almost) abandoned reservoir and dam system as we follow an avatar of the Traveler to a shard that contains its Light. It’s with this that we’ll reforge a legendary hand canon known as Hawkmoon. Along the way, the player passes through Crow’s old hideout, which Glint cheerfully refers to as his “Crow’s Nest.” There are several things to interact with, from a broken thing that Crow hopes to repair with kintsugi to the silk sheet that he first awoke beneath. He provides commentary on each item, and confides to the player in these little moments. He understands that whoever he was before must have been someone terrible. He wants to be better than that, and he’s willing to put the work in to prove it. After this quest went live, I noticed that the overall fan reaction to Crow had grown much softer. It does help that the lore attached to the gun received at the end of the quest details an evening of celebration shared between Crow and the Guardian, in which they drink entirely too much wine around a campfire. It is very charming and does a great deal to endear the audience to his character.
I mention all of this to lead into the continuation of this analysis. Because at the end of Season of the Hunt, the player defeats the boss that we’ve been after this whole time and avenges the death of Osiris’ Ghost. And then we free Crow, taking the chance to twist the deal given to us by Spider if we were able to finish the job. It takes the completion of Hawkmoon’s upgrade quest to truly finish Crow’s first arc here, which finds him becoming more comfortable with being one of the Traveler’s Guardians and deciding that he will come to the Tower in the Last City.
And so begins the Season of the Chosen.
This current season is considered so far to be one of the best in Destiny 2’s run. The story has been wonderful, with a fantastic antagonist and an enjoyable gameplay loop that puts the loot into this looter shooter. It also continues the story of Crow. Now in the Tower, Osiris has properly become this young man’s mentor figure. Their interactions are often delightful, though there is still some tension between them. For one, Osiris has known from the start who Crow was, the same as the player. He even sends us a message in the beginning, telling us essentially to leave old grudges behind in the interest of furthering common goals. Now he speaks to Crow with a bit of familiarity beneath the professionalism of being his superior. Osiris’ advice is in some ways counterproductive, but understandable. The Tower still mourns Cayde, and the remaining Vanguard Leaders would recognize Crow’s face in an instant. And so he is given a mask to wear. It isn’t the strangest thing for a Guardian to wear casually, though a helmet would be more acceptable. And though I’ve never had to wear a physical mask, I understand why such secrets might be kept and the harm that can come from it.
Being closeted is the term used to describe queer people who have chosen to not publicly disclose their identities or orientations. Being in the closet is almost as agonizing as being outed around the wrong people. Performing as a false self is both physically and mentally exhausting, and the stress of this can have lasting consequences on one’s health. It strips away your personhood and reduces you to an image of what other people expect from you. To be forced to stay in the closet is a miserable experience, regardless of what safety may come from it.
The Season carries on with a great deal of dramatic irony. Character development for Crow continues in a similar fashion to Hunt’s, where the new gameplay loop provides conversations between characters at the end of each event where they elaborate their feelings on the story’s narrative. A few conversations bring up Cayde, and it was a harrowing experience wondering how close Crow was to learning the true events of Forsaken. It was delightful hearing him make friends with a side character, Amanda Holliday, and her inviting him out to drinks in the City. It was also a joy to hear Crow’s insistence that the City’s enemies weren’t inherently evil and that there might be a chance for a real partnership if only they could come to an agreement. In a game where you plow through hundreds upon hundreds of nameless enemies on a regular basis in the name of ~Loot~, it was refreshing to think that perhaps someday we might be able to make real allies in the fight against the Darkness.
And then halfway through the Season’s story, Crow’s identity is nearly discovered by the Titan leader, Zavala. In a moment without his mask on as he was trailing behind the Commander, he warned of an incoming assassin, then hurried away before he could be found out. The Commander was saved, but for Crow it was too late, of course. Zavala saw his face and instantly recognized him, though he passed it off as a stress induced hallucination. Osiris was not happy, resulting in an argument between him and Crow that resulted in giving the young Lightbearer a job as the Commander’s new bodyguard, with instruction to not speak nor take his mask off. In a quiet moment afterwards, Crow confides in the Guardian that he thought he felt safe enough to drop the act, but understands the mistake. Regardless, he doesn’t regret acting.
The story continues. There’s more commentary in the gameplay loop, there’s deeper lore to be found by scrounging through the lore sections of all the new weapons that foreshadows the coming events. And Crow keeps hiding. This Season is so filled with secrets, with the Guardian and Osiris helping to conceal Crow’s identity from leadership, that the stress got to me at times. Despite the fact I knew that Zavala would understand better than most that Crow is his own person now, I still feared his unacceptance, however irrational it may have been. It hit so close to home. Things had been going so well so far. Crow was finally free of Spider’s shackles and his personality had come out enough for him to epically burn one of the Iron Lords who had joined the Vanguard’s war council for sitting out the original campaign’s conflict. Crow was a delight to watch grow and become more comfortable, and yet despite it all, he was still not truly himself. Because no one is really free when hiding beneath a mask, or inside a closet.
The narrative understands that living this way isn’t viable. The first close call is a clear indication that before things are over, for better or worse, things are going to come out. And fantastically, it is for the better.
The final story chapter for the Season places Zavala and Crow at what is essentially the setup for a peace treaty, with a one-on-one battle to take place between the Commander and the Season’s antagonist. In but a moment everything is turned on its head, as an assassination attempt on Zavala temporarily renders him Lightless. Crow intervenes, protecting him and getting hit hard in the process, before the once antagonist steps in to finish the job. She becomes an ally in an instant, with honor prevailing as she demands her followers find the assassin to take him to task.
As the dust settles, Zavala turns to Crow. The young Lightbearer finally faces him, his mask broken in the conflict, and all is realized.
It’s two words, but it’s everything that the story has been leading up to for months. Beyond mere confirmation that he’s all right, Crow is facing Zavala with the admission of who he really is. No more mask, no more hiding from the truth.
For a heartbeat the question of acceptance is asked, agonized over, and then quickly answered. Zavala extends a hand to Crow, a gesture with a mixture of meanings from the basic offer of assistance to undeniable and unequivocal acceptance. At least here, he says nothing, letting actions speak louder than words. And it’s everything.
What queer people need most in this world is allies. The search for safe spaces is unending, and finding an LGBT+ alliance on a college campus or a gay bar that hosts drag show nights can be so freeing, but while living daily life is where that support is needed the most. Having someone who can stand up for your right to personal freedoms, who accepts your identities and validates your experiences, is powerful. I finally came out to a few of my family members as nonbinary when I was 17 years old, after nearly two years of hiding and keeping to myself. Before this point I’d been out to all of my friends. Even my teachers knew of my preferred name. They didn’t question it, and it was empowering. But I was still terrified. Despite my liberal family and their support of the queer community, I still couldn’t be sure that they would accept me for who I am. That fear is paralyzing, but there is nothing like the feeling that comes with the love of those who care about you for who you are. Not all of them ‘get’ it, but they use my name. Years have passed and they’re still working on the pronouns, but not having to be afraid is like breathing fresh air for the first time. I am extraordinarily lucky to have good people around to support me.
“The weight that’s been hanging around my neck since I woke up in this body… It finally feels a little lighter.” -Crow
Out of all of the things I’ve detailed of Crow’s journey, this quote stands out to me as being the most blatantly queer analogous thing about it all. Because it’s euphoria. The opposite of gender dysphoria, which is the distress and discomfort felt by trans/queer people due to their identity not matching the body they have, gender euphoria is an emotion felt when finding something that helps solidify one’s identity and is so affirming that it all feels worth it. The pain and fear falls away to allow for the embrace of freedom and love. The ability to feel seen and accepted by those whom you respect, and to feel like yourself despite all of the societal pressures that insist that you are not, is exhilarating.
Obviously, Crow’s situation is very different and unique to the story in which he is a part of. The trauma that he has gone through on his journey of acceptance is light years away from what an average queer person will go through, with different contexts and outcomes. And yet, it’s still all so familiar. There’s a reason why some feel that calling him Uldren Sov is akin to using a trans person’s deadname, though it’s far more literal within the lore of this narrative. The struggle to be seen as who you are, and not what others believe you to be, is painfully relatable. The allies who mean well but do more harm than good are present, too caught up in old habits to realize that things aren’t are damning as they once might have once been. And the relief and safety of finding care and love in the right places is resounding.
Crow was always going to be a complicated character, especially as one that forces the player to come to terms with their own prejudices and assumptions in order to accept this new truth. His character arc is a darkened mirror of the queer experience and the fight for personal freedoms, but also highlights the importance of allyship. Without support, it’s all too easy to become guarded and to hide behind a falsified identity, suppressing feelings that might otherwise allow for the embrace of euphoria. It is exceptionally hard to feel safe and trust is difficult to give, but like Crow, it isn’t impossible to break free from societal expectations. His character arc shows that all it takes is a few people who believe in you to make a difference in your life.
This story is far from over. No doubt, there will be more to Crow’s character as Destiny 2’s Seasons progress towards our inevitable fight with the Darkness. But it brings me so much joy and hope knowing that we have such brilliant Lights joining us along the way.
