Whenever it comes to discussing The Gardener, The Winnower, The Garden, the Pattern, and The Final Shape (the original concept described by The Winnower as the end state of how The Flower Game plays out), there seems to be this tendency to apply one particular detail from what The Winnower mentions in Unveiling to a context where it doesn't belong.

Behind all the allegory used in Unveiling to describe the unfathomable state of existence that was The Garden, the Pattern achieved absolute victory in every instance that The Flower Game played out. The Winnower was deeply satisfied by this outcome since everything boiled down to a neat victory where there were winners and losers. For a while, (relative to however you can track any sense of chronological progress in this place) The Gardener played along, but eventually it became rankled by this predictability and ruthlessness and proposed that new rules be added to shake things up. The Winnower, in turn, became rankled by The Gardener upsetting the status quo, so it attacked The Gardener, and this conflict eventually led to the creation of the physical universe.

The physical universe, which is where all of Destiny plays out, is a new state of existence relative to The Garden where the players play by new rules, whether this be through variables like free will, moral considerations, access to paracausal powers, tool use, etc. This is where The Wager comes into play, where The Gardener, now manifested as The Traveler, and The Winnower, now manifested as... uh... a disembodied voice and possibly The Veil (🤔)... hedge their bets about which philosophy will triumph: The Gardener's "Gentle Kingdom Ringed in Spears" or The Winnower's Final Shape.

Amidst all of this, it's important to focus on one vital aspect of how the universe differs from The Garden: the Pattern is no longer the clear, inevitable end state of all things. Whether it ultimately will be, in the end, is central to The Wager, which is still ongoing as of the events of Monument of Triumph.

It's debatable as to what the Pattern actually was in The Garden, and many have argued that the Vex are the physical manifestation of this pre-universe concept. Their emergence and rise to power has been described through various bits of lore as follows:

- Recurring consistencies in the quantum foam of the early universe

- These consistencies slowly building their way up to existing through a biological substrate (radiolaria)

- Radiolaria utilizing and reorganizing matter they come in contact with to build structures to support their growth as a sort of microscopic civilization

- Scaling their assets to eventually achieve the construction of megastructures, thus allowing for stellar engineering and the transformation of entire celestial bodies to support their way of life

- Accessing The Vex Network as a sort of place between places for larger initiatives, such as moving assets across the universe and time travel

Assuming the Vex really are the physical manifestation of the Pattern, we have clearly been shown how the Pattern is no longer the dominant victor in this new paradigm of existence. While initiatives like studying Oryx and attempting to wield Darkness via Quria, The Vault of Glass via Atheon, attempting to hold significant influence over The Black Garden via The Undying Mind, and building a highly detailed simulation engine as The Infinite Forest via Panoptes were all impressive, the Vex haven't seen any meaningful success in a very long time. To Lightbearers, they are essentially elaborate mosquitoes that need to be managed more than anything else.

One big mission for the Vex for the past few billion years has been to simulate paracausality, to which they haven't achieved much, if any success. The most notable instance that could be categorized as a mild victory was the construction of Agioktis, The Martyr Mind, who was successfully able to drain the Light of one very specific Guardian: Saint-14. Meanwhile, Quria, who was once the Vex Collective's best shot at understanding paracausality, was relegated to being Savathûn's questionably effective guard dog, facilitated The Endless Night, and was eventually unceremoniously deposed.

What this all suggests is that The Gardener's new paradigm is highly successful. Complexity, with victories and losses across countless civilizations, is currently winning over The Winnower's favored ruthless simplicity. It even admitted as much when it gifted us Nacre:

> Yes, I never much cared for the change of rules, but here we are, and there's no use in crying over spilled radiolaria. Besides, at the heart of it all, there was a gift. To me.

One could even go as far as arguing that the "spilled radiolaria" doubles in its meaning as the Vex (the physical manifestation of the Pattern) no longer being a good bet. This reinforces why The Winnower now courts us in an attempt to convince us of its vision for existence.

All this is to say that the argument of "(Insert thing) occurred in The Garden" is not valid when discussing what can and does occur in the universe. This state of prehistory, where the laws of physics hadn't even been fully established, was essentially wiped out when the universe was born. Whatever happened there is only valuable to us in terms of explaining why everything exists at all. While this is the ultimate question in IRL philosophy, it's now essentially common knowledge in Destiny. What every living being is constantly concerned with, however, is the practical aspects of living life.

The Wager is actually a sort of catch-22 from The Gardener's perspective, as it can never actually win. The Gentle Kingdom requires constant upkeep to exist, while The Final Shape would mark a decisive victory for The Winnower. Essentially, the best The Gardener can ever hope for is to not lose, which is distinct from clear-cut victory. But that's the thing: The Gardener never wanted absolute victory and to put The Winnower under its heel. It actually respected The Winnower's position to a considerable degree and just wanted a bit more nuance.

In conclusion and to summarize:

- The physical universe differs from The Garden considerably

- The Pattern is no longer the clear end state of how things play out

- The Gardener's introduction of new rules has, so far, been successful

So in the wake of destiny 2s cancellation I've been looking deep into what each factions potential has for a theoretical destiny 3, and to see what really is left for each faction as at this point we've fought a huge number of the threats that each faction has given us.

so to start with the fallen:

house dusk: it seems prior to the games cancellation that bungie was starting to lean into house dusk being a proper antagonist force for the fallen moving forward, during the cosmadrome arms deal house dusk would be there to trade a rebuilt sepiks prime for weapons from Eramis. this is implying that they had a spare prime servitor to trade for said weapons, to me this reads as a set up for house dusk as if they had there own prime it would mean the faction has one of the three leaders of a house set up, feels like they were moving away from the fact that house dusk was only made up of refugees and more towards a proper full scale house.

SIVA: I know that bungie has done and said everything in there power to say siva is dead, but I refuse to believe that the material that colony ships would use to set up said colony's would only ever have one replication chamber that when destroyed would cause all siva to stop working, like each colony ship had its own siva cash (wasn't the one that was on the exodus black missing canonically or was that something I had just heard that someone made up.) and your telling me that clovis bray doesn't have a back up replication chamber on europa with him.

Eramis: at the end of revenant Eramis leaves the solar system with the echo of riis and was still pretty gaurdian hating when she did, but at this point I really hope they don't make Eramis an enemy if we ever go to riis but shes been multiple times at this point so idk

(this is a more fanfictiony idea for something they could do to make the fallen a threat again) something I think could be cool using Eramis to bring the fallen as an enemy faction again is an ahemkara (as the great hunt only happened within sol theres potential that an another ahemkara still lives out there) finding Eramis back on riis and granting a wish to bring the fallen back to power by resurrecting some of the great houses of old (og house of kings, house of stone, etc)

the hive:

the hive still have by far the most to do still with starting with

savathun: last we heard from her she was super pissed at us for destroying the echo of the navigator and planned on going into the vex network to confront taox.

xivu arath: probably the biggest disappointment of where destiny 2 ends is that we never got to fight xivu, last of what we heard about her is that toland is guiding her to take back her throne world after eris had severed her from it, xivu in my opinion is the best way they could potentially open with in a destiny 3 with us going to torobatll to confront her. not much else to say everyone here knows about xivu

the 3 remaining hive worm gods: as it stands the whereabouts of Eir, ur, yul are just completely unknown so there what I would assume the hives story would go after a confrontation with xivu.

the vex:

the vex have always had the problem with being the antagonist in a story as such I don't have much to say as the only named vex that could still be a major threat doesnt belong to this catagory

maya: as of monument to triumph maya has abandoned the echo of command and left the vex network what the plans for her in the future is unclear

the echo of command: as said above maya has left the echo within the network for the vex to use so thats probably whats gonna be going on with them in the future.

quicksilver: with the ornaments that were released with the last update there was what seemed like a season pass set that had he vex infused with quicksilver from neomuna where this was gonna be for is unknown now.

the cabal:

the cabal are only remnants at this point so I don't see how the faction continues as a major antagonist unless they do something like they take a force from a different plannet that the cabal had capture from before xivu destroyed torobatll or something like the defectors that formed the barant imperium.

the taken:

the taken are kinda weird as in heresy we were introduced to a new major taken antagonist with the lord of every nothing, but past that we don't know anything about them other than that they can take and there taken fight different then oryxs.

quria, blade transform: from episode revenant we know that the taken don't truly die just that whenever they are killed they get send to the ascendant plane until there summoned back. Quria is one of the only 4 beings in destiny that we've ever seen with the ability to take it feels like a crime if they're never brought up again in a future story despite this ability (and would make a partial vex antagonist for the fist time since panoptes) (I also a have a crashshot theory that the lord of every nothing is actually quria.) they both have access and control over parts of the vex network and are able to create new taken so it fits for them to be an antagonist.

the scorn:

the scorn are kinda in a rough spot as there last major character was killed in episode revenant, but otherwise they still got skolas.

skolas: skolas makes his escape after resurrecting during episode revenant thanks to revenant totem, you were able to hear him laugh after going into the central airlock so he's just out there as scorn now for a future story (possibly go after becoming kell of kells again)

the dread:

whats left of the dread? after the witnesses death they've just kinda become a faction without purpose just kinda joining up with whoever.

the nine:

we were likely gonna see more of the outer nine in the next few expansions but they've been put on back burner for the foreseeable future now, (even if a destiny 3 were to launch right now I don't think having the nine be part of the base expansion is a good move they'll work better as a future expansion for destiny 3, as a new base campaign will have to be a bit more basic so new players have a better experience getting into the game.)

the dredgens:

last we heard from bael he had been abandoned by VI, and other than him we don't know much about any of the other new gen dredgens

other:

the winnower: as the main antagonistic force of the universe as a whole some type of confrontation with the winnower will happen eventually, tho I don't believe that we will fight the winnower we will instead show it that its side of the flower game is truly wrong

other disciples: its always been a little weird to me we only ever saw 3 disciples of the witness, we know each disciple was given there own pyramid ship and we've seen that the black fleet had many ships with, we're currently under the assumption that most of the fleet was just empty but even so there should be some other disciple who would now be forced to go off and do there own thing following the witnesses death.

Edit 1:

as people have pointed out in the comments nezerec is likely to return

also for the cabal they still have the psion enclave as well as otzot, and possibly Amtec if they survived the almighty

for the scorn: the machinist, mad bomber, and mindbender were brought back by fikrul before his death so the 3 of them are still around as well

Edit 2:

kaliks prime: the prime servitor of the house of wolves is still around but has been missing since the reef wars

anyways thats everything that i've seen or heard about while looking around for the potential threats we can expect to see in the future, I know its a long post so if you read through it all thank you, if there's anything that I missed or details I should expand upon let me know in the comments and i'll make an edit to add it