Death Stranding 2: On the Beach ending explained

The Death Stranding 2: On the Beach ending needs to be explained to everybody at least once, as Kojima's latest finale is the usual surreal onslaught of emotions and ideas that we've all come to expect. Death Stranding 2 has multiple plots and arcs that converge in the final hours of the game, starting to really kick in around Episode 13 or 14, depending on your perspective. Mysteries around Tomorrow, Lou, Higgs, Fragile, APAC, the President, the mysterious Neil, and even Sam himself are all revealed, but it's certainly complex, to say the very least.

I highly recommend you read or read our Death Stranding 1 ending explained guide if you need a refresher, as many of DS2's nuances don't make sense without an understanding of that game's story, and arguably not even then. Still, I'll do my best to explain the finale and ending of Death Stranding 2 below, including a full recap of events, before going into detail about what they mean.

What happens at the end of Death Stranding 2?

Here are all the events that occur at the end of Death Stranding 2, as they occur in chronological order.

• The President admits that his plan is to connect the whole world and thus control them through their dependence on those channels. And that he's dead. The President is actually The Elder from the first game, and also 4000 other stranded souls who died in a city-wide Voidout. Connected in death, they've formed a collective consciousness in a single shared Beach, creating both APAC and the Ghost Mech army for Higgs, so as to motivate Sam and others through fear of the threat he posed. With humanity feeling no need to leave their bunkers, they can be more easily manipulated, as all communication and contact will be regulated by this dominating force.
• Die-Hardman turns out to have been on the ship the whole time and the real identity of Charlie, having been keeping an eye on Drawbridge from the shadows. He steps in to stop the President's scheme.
• The Red Samurai is revealed to have been Higgs, remotely operating both his mech body and the Samurai's to confuse Drawbridge and prevent them from guessing the truth. The Red Samurai also uses Deadman's body.
• Higgs reveals his plan: to reopen the connection to Amelie's beach and trigger the apocalyptic "Last Stranding" to end humanity, just like in the first game.
• Tomorrow is the new extinction entity that Higgs needs for this, and while kidnapping her, he explains that she's actually Sam's daughter. Die-Hardman explains this may be possible via artificial insemination from a sperm sample that Sam (and all porters) had to give years ago.
• Sam and Drawbridge head to the Beach to confront Higgs, with the DHV Magellan fighting off several giant BTs as Sam defeats the Red Samurai.
• Higgs himself admits that thousands of years spent on the Beach (as time passes differently between both worlds) drove him mad, and when the 4000 APAS souls ended up bringing Higgs into their network, he pretended to work towards their goals, while secretly working towards the Last Stranding the whole time.
• Sam defeats Higgs and averts the Last Stranding in an electric guitar duel, obviously. But Tomorrow still falls beyond the veil. However, a giant version of baby Lou emerges from beyond it and kills Higgs, then seemingly seals the hole in reality created for the Last Stranding. After that, a ghostly version of Amelie and Fragile walk out of the sea with a baby, and Tomorrow is reformed.
• Fragile is revealed to have died when Higgs shot her at the beginning of the game, but due to the difference in time flow managed to use her DOOMS to jump herself away from the Beach where she lay dying to live out her extended final moments with Drawbridge, giving her a ticking clock to see the mission completed. Time finally catches up to her as Sam and Higgs were battling.
• Neil Varna is shown in a vision of the past to not be the father of Lou, only that he pretended to be at Lucy's request to hide Lou's true nature as the child of a repatriate (i.e., Sam).
• However, Lucy and Neil are both killed during their escape. Lou is extracted by doctors before Sam can arrive and find out about the child. When Sam does return, he's told that Lucy committed suicide.
• Lou is also finally revealed to be Tomorrow herself. When Fragile tried to jump her and Lou to safety during Higgs' attack at the beginning of the game, Lou's will guided them to Neil's beach. Due to the difference in time flow, she ended up growing up, raised by the lingering remnants in Neil's beach that remained fixated on the promise made to Lucy to protect her.
• Now going by the name Louise, Tomorrow is finally shown in an outfit similar to Sam's, but with Fragile's robotic hands and cigarette, flicking through photos before getting to work as a Porter.
• Rainy is shown in one of those photos with a newborn baby, suggesting that she was finally able to give birth to her child and that Stillbaby Syndrome was resolved.

Death Stranding 2's ending explained

Clearly that's… a lot in Death Stranding 2's ending, not all of which is explained with an emphasis on clarity, so it's worth going over the main talking points in detail so that they can be better understood.

How are Tomorrow and Lou the same person?

At the beginning of the game, we see Fragile attacked by Higgs as she tries to protect Lou. Fragile, though unable to Beach Jump as effectively as she used to, nevertheless tried to hop them to safety – and Lou's connection to the other side is able to help power this jump, ending up on Neil's beach due to the strong power of Neil's promise to Lucy to protect Lou no matter what. Though this still results in Fragile's death, Lou is taken in by Neil and his squad of undead remnants, powered by their protective promise.

As time passes differently on the beach, Lou grows up in this time, and becomes even more attuned to her tar powers (it's unclear if she'd be similarly powered as a daughter of someone with DOOMs if she had grown up normally). As she's spent so long in effectively limbo, when Sam first ends up bringing her home it takes her a while to get to grips with the real world – such as talking.

Is Tomorrow Sam's daughter?

Yes, Tomorrow/Lou/Louise/BB-28/BB-00 are all the same person, and thus all Sam's biological offspring. Lucy was pregnant with Sam's child, but hid the truth because the UCA would desperately want the biological child of an immortal repatriate for study and experimentation.

She convinces Neil Varna, another patient and a lover she's having an affair with, to claim to be the child's father and to smuggle the two of them to safety. However, the two of them are killed during their attempt to escape, and Lou is removed from Lucy's body before being classed as a Bridge Baby. Sam is told that Lucy committed suicide in the first game, and never finds out that the child survived until now. At any rate, it all ends up resulting in a massive city-wide voidout.

Why did Fragile die?

Fragile dies offscreen in Death Stranding 2 – sort of – during Sam's fight with Higgs. Though in actuality, it is revealed that Fragile was killed during the first encounter with Higgs. But because this actually occurred on a beach instead of Mexico, she manages to jump back even as she's dying on the beach, the difference in rates of time giving her a ticking clock to continue her mission in the real world. Eventually, time catches up with her, and as she finally dies on the beach so too does she die in the real world. It's a similar situation to Bridget/Amelie in the first game.

Higgs' plan explained

Desiring revenge after being killed on the Beach in the first game, Higgs is left stranded there for thousands of years (due to how time passes differently) and goes mad from the isolation. At first, he says he just wants to torture Sam out of spite, and to feel connected to him via hatred. But, once again, he ends up desiring to wipe out a humanity he sees as worthless. The first game establishes that the Last Stranding can be triggered by a powerful Extinction Entity, but there isn't an EE anymore now that Amelie is gone.

Or at least, that's what everybody thinks. Being the child of a repatriate and having been raised in the Beach, not to mention sharing some connection to Amelie via Sam, Tomorrow appears to be a sufficient contender for the Last Stranding's EE. Higgs is given presence in the real world by commandeering the army of Ghost Mechs remotely from the Beach (remember, he's being supplied by APAC), and uses that to kidnap Tomorrow and bring her to the Beach to try and trigger the end of everything. However, like the first game, it seems as though the influence of Sam and humanity are enough for Tomorrow to reject the Last Stranding.

The President's plan explained

The President, depending on how you interpret it, is either a single one of 4000 souls or the expression of the collective consciousness they have formed. Either way, his goals are their goals, so it arguably makes little difference. These souls reside on the shared APAS Beach, and control the APAC robots in the real world. They've spent the game using the President as a mouthpiece and urging Sam to connect the whole world through the Q-pid system.

With humanity only communicating remotely with each other and an army of drones handling all the deliveries between settlements, APAS will have control of all meaningful contact and the human race can endure in these bunkers as a kind of preserved species, though at the cost of any real contact or freedom of movement. The President/APAS also provided Higgs with the Ghost Mech army to have a real threat for Drawbridge to respond to, to dissuade humans from going to the surface, and to motivate people to quickly hook up to the Q-pid network rather than risk going outside. The President and APAC's goal are to essentially side-step extinction via a sort of managed stagnation – though you could argue that in itself is a sort of extinction, as indeed the protagonists do.

Death Stranding 2 post-game content

After completing Death Stranding 2, you'll be able to go back and explore the world for the sake of sidequests and clearing up additional content in the endgame, as part of the post-story Mission 17. This is a chance to complete missions and unlock content you missed before, such as finding all the best Death Stranding 2 weapons, or going around and rebuilding infrastructure by means of some classic Death Stranding 2 material farming.

You'll also unlock the following extras:

• Red Mask cosmetic appearance option
• Golden Mask cosmetic appearance option
• Tomorrow Hologram
• Fragile Hologram
• Adult Cryptobiote Patch
• Fragile Things music track
• To the Wilder (featuring Elle Fanning) music track
• The Drawbridge Q-Pid setting option

The Drawbridge Q-Pid is an option you can turn on or off at any time from the settings menu at that point onwards. Leaving it on reduces the game's difficulty where it applies to the Death Stranding 2 BTs and Ghost Mech enemies, while turning it off increases the challenge that they pose. There's no penalty for either option, it's simply a way for you to control the endgame difficulty.

Will there be a Death Stranding 3?

Death Stranding 2 doesn't end with a cliffhanger, but it does end in such a way that totally leaves itself open for future games. Sam is still alive and active as a porter in the game's conclusion, but more interestingly, Tomorrow/Louise also seems to have taken on the same job as her father, now equipped as a porter too.

Not only that, but we see that Plate Gates are continuing to open as predicted, suggesting that there'll be further continents and areas for the heroes to explore and link up in future games.

All of this means that while a Death Stranding 3 isn't guaranteed, the game certainly ends with the implication that "the adventures continue!"

If you made it to the end of DS2, now's the time to go back and find all the fun things you missed! Have you mastered the Death Stranding 2 pizza martial arts? And did you ever find two of the secret settlements that give you two of the game's best weapons: the Death Stranding 2 Inventor, who provides you with a special electrified bola gun, or the Death Stranding 2 Lone Commander, who gives you the classic game-breaking silenced sniper rifle?

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