Warning: This article includes extensive spoilers for the final hours of Death Stranding 2, which released on PS5 on June 26. Like the first game, we expect it will arrive on PC before too long.
The Death Stranding 2 ending is exactly what you'd expect from Hideo Kojima: a sequence of long cutscenes unspooling twist upon twist and reveal after reveal, paying off dozens of hours of build up.
While Death Stranding 2's finale isn't quite as mind-bending as MGS2's speech about the Patriots or as exhaustingly long as MGS4's conclusion (I beat it in 2009 and that cutscene is still going), there's still a hell of a lot to wrap your head around. Fragile's fate, Tomorrow's origin, the Last Stranding, AI controlling humanity…
Let me help make sense of it all, and address the biggest set of questions I had as soon as those credits rolled: Is the ending a "flash forward" with a significant timeskip, and is it possible to play as Tomorrow in the post-game?
What was the deal with APAS? And what exactly happened on the Beach?
Death Stranding 2's final showdown with Higgs takes place on a Beach, "a place that exists between this world and the other side; between the world of the living and the world of the dead," according to DS2's in-game encyclopedia. Specifically, it's the Beach that Sam and Die-Hardman were pulled to by APAS 4000 (the Automated Porter Assistant System) which is built on the chiral network.
APAS basically powers all the tech in Death Stranding and is the source of its big twist. The number in its name is a reference to "the 4000 people killed in an enormous voidout that struck the UCA" in the past, and it turns out that during that incident, "the souls of the dead converged with the servers of the chiral network on the Beach, forming the APAS program."
The APAS program sentient machine, in other words, a merger of artificial and human intelligence. APAC (the Automated Public Assistance Company that funds Sam's expedition in Australia) is really just a front for APAS to get its way; as the President reveals, the reason the machine hivemind actually wanted Sam to hook Australia up to the chiral network was so that it could control "both the living and the dead, elevating humanity to exist as souls for all eternity. Restricting humanity's freedom of movement would prevent them from evolving and therefore save them from the Death Stranding."
But Die-Hardman knew what APAS was up to the whole time, which is why he used a special Q-Pid device "to sever the connection between APAS and the dead," essentially removing the ghost from the machine. APAS goes back to being just a computer program without the influence of all those dead souls.
All that happens before you return to the beach to fight Higgs, who kidnapped Tomorrow and tried to use her to trigger the Last Stranding.
If you're still like, erm, what exactly is the Last Stranding again? It just means the eradication of humanity, specifically the final stage of the "Death Stranding" which is too complicated to explain in full. But the gist is that a person known as an extinction entity—Amelie in the first game, or Tomorrow in DS2—serves as an apocalyptic catalyst that will cause BTs to wipe out the dominant species on earth (aka all of humanity). While you're dueling Higgs, it seems that, against her will, Tomorrow's presence on the Beach is tearing a hole between realities, which will soon lead to the Last Stranding.
Instead, she transforms into a giant toddler, eats Higgs, and seals the Beach breach, rejecting the Last Stranding. Love and freedom win, baby!!
Wait, so what was Higgs' motivation again?
Higgs was basically just a galaxy-class hater.
He believed humanity is destined to go extinct and wanted to bring about that eventuality—that's what primarily drove him in Death Stranding 1. After he was defeated in the first game, Fragile left him marooned on a Beach (where time passes "dramatically slower" than it does in reality). Higgs spent "tens of thousands of years just wandering," slowly going even crazier than he was before due to his isolation, and he really wanted to inflict pain on Sam and Fragile, who he blamed for his exile.
APAS 4000 located the Beach that Higgs was stuck on and brought him back to offer Sam some resistance in his quest to reconnect the chiral network: "An existential threat to prompt him to seek strength through mutual connections," as the President revealed in his big villain monologue.
Higgs, of course, had his own ulterior motive: "Consumed by revenge, he vowed to trigger the Last Stranding and wipe out humanity."
Someone responded to the first Higgs trailer with this tweet and it's the most accurate called shot I've ever seen
— @jacobgeller.com (@jacobgeller.com.bsky.social) 2025-07-01T18:40:39.598Z
(Don't put in the newspaper that he was mad.)
Is the mid-credits scene, showing Tomorrow as a porter, set years later?
The timing is ambiguous, but clearly months, or more likely years, have passed. There are automated porter robots crossing Australia to deliver packages and roads that have aged and been taken over by nature. Tomorrow looks at a Polaroid photo of Rainy with her baby, who looks to be at least a year or two old; during the events of the game Rainy is "stuck" at seven months pregnant due to stillbaby syndrome (a side effect of the Death Stranding that causes some babies to never be born).
Since the photos Tomorrow looks at aren't shown to be heavily aged, it doesn't seem like this scene is meant to be way in the future. But it does show her standing in front of a Plate Gate like the one Sam opened in between Mexico and Australia, implying enough time has passed for the chiral network to prompt more Plate Gates to occur, and Tomorrow is clearly intent on continuing Sam's work of reconnecting other isolated pockets of humanity.
So is Tomorrow actually playable?
Nope. Maybe in a sequel :( After that great final shot, we're back in control of Sam. While the post-game is clearly set after the events of the finale on the Beach, there's no additional story or "aftermath" to contend with—just the freedom to keep on porting as long as you'd like.
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