Destiny 2: Beyond Light

Lore & Background

In Beyond Light, players travel to Jupiter's icy moon Europa to confront the Fallen Kell Eramis, who plans to use the power of the Darkness to save her people and take revenge on the Traveler. The player's Guardian obtains a new Darkness-based subclass called Stasis, featuring ice-based abilities that can freeze enemies. The expansion sees the return of the Exo Stranger from the original Destiny's campaign, as well as Variks from the House of Wolves expansion, both guiding the Guardian on Europa. The expansion added missions, player versus environment locations, gear, weaponry, and a raid. Beyond Light was the first expansion of Destiny 2 to be released on the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S platforms, and Bungie described it as the beginning of a new era for the franchise. On June 4, 2024, the Beyond Light campaign became free-to-play, including access to Stasis, with the rest of the expansion's content repackaged as the Beyond Light Pack.

Reader's Guide

Beyond Light introduced a fourth elemental damage type called Stasis, rooted in the power of the Darkness, with each class receiving a new subclass: the Warlock's Shadebinder, the Hunter's Revenant, and the Titan's Behemoth. These subclasses offered customizable Aspects and Fragments, which game director Luke Smith described as an 'experiment' for future Light class updates. Stasis powers were modified multiple times after release, notably in player-versus-player matches to reduce freezing effects. The expansion also marked the first major revision to the game universe, with five destinations—Titan, Io, Mars, Mercury, and the Leviathan ship—and associated content placed into the Destiny Content Vault (DCV) to reduce install size. A new destination, Europa, and a subset of Earth's Cosmodrome from the original Destiny were added. The expansion had four seasonal content offerings for Year 4: Season of the Hunt, Season of the Chosen, Season of the Splicer, and Season of the Lost, which lasted over six months due to the delay of the next expansion, The Witch Queen. The Bungie 30th Anniversary Pack was released in December 2021, adding a new dungeon, a six-player activity, and gear inspired by Bungie's previous games. With the release of The Witch Queen, most seasonal content was removed except for the Battlegrounds activity from Season of the Chosen and the 30th Anniversary Pack content; the Astral Alignment activity from Season of the Lost was re-added in December 2025 as an arena activity.

Did You Know?

• The expansion introduced Stasis, a Darkness-based subclass with ice abilities that can freeze enemies.
• Five destinations from the first three years of Destiny 2 were placed into the Destiny Content Vault with Beyond Light.
• The Beyond Light campaign became free-to-play on June 4, 2024.

A Decades-Long Production Odyssey

From the moment a five-film deal was struck with Paramount Pictures in 1979, a fifth Indiana Jones adventure existed as a promise. That promise took nearly four and a half decades to fulfill. George Lucas began exploring potential plot devices as early as 2008, and by 2016 David Koepp had been brought on to draft a screenplay. The writing room saw further churn when Jonathan Kasdan replaced Koepp in 2018 before eventually departing the project himself. What was initially slated for a 2019 release was derailed by successive rewrites and then the global disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2020, Steven Spielberg, the franchise's longtime director, stepped away from the helm, and James Mangold assumed the role. Principal photography finally commenced in June 2021, with crews shooting across the United Kingdom, Italy, and Morocco before wrapping in February 2022. The result was a film whose development spanned more than four decades of studio planning, talent turnover, and unforeseen global events.

The Story of the Dial

In 1969, a weary Indiana Jones is preparing to retire from Hunter College in New York, still carrying the grief of his son Mutt's death in Vietnam and a long estrangement from Marion. His goddaughter Helena Shaw, an archaeologist, arrives unexpectedly, drawn to a fragment of Archimedes' Antikythera mechanism — a device that reveals fissures in time. Meanwhile, Dr. Jürgen Voller, a former Nazi scientist now embedded at NASA under the alias Dr. Schmidt, pursues the same artifact with a darker purpose: traveling back to 1939 to reshape World War II. What begins as a retrieval mission spirals into a globe-spanning chase through Tangier, Greece, and Sicily, where Jones reunites with old allies Sallah and Renaldo. The climax unfolds not in 1939 but in 214 BC, at the Siege of Syracuse, where Archimedes himself reveals the Dial was built to summon future allies to defend his city. Jones, moved by the ancient mathematician's story, wishes to remain in the past, but Helena strikes him unconscious to prevent a paradox, bringing him back to 1969.

Creative Team and Musical Legacy

James Mangold directed and co-wrote the screenplay alongside David Koepp, Jez Butterworth, and John-Henry Butterworth, bringing a fresh voice to a franchise long defined by Spielberg's vision. Harrison Ford, Karen Allen, and John Rhys-Davies returned to their iconic roles, while the cast expanded with Phoebe Waller-Bridge as Helena Shaw, Mads Mikkelsen as the antagonist Voller, Antonio Banderas, Toby Jones, Boyd Holbrook, and Ethann Isidore. Anthony Ingruber provided the physical performance for a de-aged young Indiana Jones in the 1944 prologue, with Ford's likeness and voice layered over his movements via CGI. On the musical front, John Williams returned to the franchise, composing a score that earned him a Best Original Score nomination at the 96th Academy Awards and a Best Score nod at the 66th Grammy Awards. His piece "Helena's Theme" went on to win the Grammy for Best Instrumental Composition, a rare honor for a film composer.

Release, Box Office, and Legacy

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny had a high-profile world premiere, screening out of competition at the 76th Cannes Film Festival on May 18, 2023, before hitting U.S. theaters on June 30 under the Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures banner. Despite the franchise's cultural cachet and the star power of its returning cast, the film ultimately collected $384 million at the global box office. That figure, while substantial in absolute terms, fell far short of expectations given the production's status as one of the most expensive films ever made, leading industry observers to label it a box-office bomb. The commercial underperformance stood in contrast to the film's artistic recognition: John Williams' score earned major award nominations, and the Cannes debut signaled Disney's intent to position it as a prestige event. The result was a bittersweet sendoff for a series that had defined the action-adventure genre for nearly five decades.