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While the Cloudstriders handles Calus's forces on Neomuna, The Witness is waging war back on Earth. Numerous people have been captured, and it's up to the Guardian to break them out with the help of Devrim Kay, Amanda Holliday, Crow, Mithrax and especially Mara Sov.
Armed with the power of the Ascendant Scepter, Guardians will traverse the Ascendant Plane to penetrate the impenetrable prisons and rescue the citizens of Earth from their captivity at the hands of the Witness's forces.
Season of Defiance contains examples of:
- Ambiguous Situation: It's not instantly apparent as to why the Shadow Legion are taking prisoners, though that doesn't stop the forces of the Light from fighting to save them.
- A Day in the Limelight: Amanda Holiday from the beginning of the series has been a Hypercompetent Sidekick, a mechanic, pilot and the jumpship vendor in the tower but has always been on the sidelines. A handful of campaigns and story missions might have her get involved, enough to know the Chaperone shotgun is her favored weapon, but she has never taken the lead in a story the way she has in this season. She even gets a stylized cutscene dedicated to her own past. This later turns into A Death in the Limelight.
- Artistic License – Gun Safety: In a cutscene Amanda Holliday is conversing with the Young Wolf and on seeing something move immediately shoots it, which turned out to be Crow. Glint revives him, but it's Played for Laughs despite the fact it could have been a non-lightbearer ally.
- Back for the Dead: Asher's survival is confirmed at the start of //node.ovrd.AVALON// after over two years of no direct correspondence, but the Vex are still chasing him since he is registered as an anomaly in their networks, and it's gradually suggested that something is killing him regardless. At the end of the third week, he is no longer able to outrun the Vex and silently passes away as the radiolaria consumes him at last.
- Bling of War: The Season Pass ornaments, the Techeun's Regalia, is aptly named since it has highly elaborate goldwork on each piece. Even the seasonal weapons are decked out, with parts that seemed to be made of the same blue crystals that litter Awoken structures like in the Dreaming City.
- Brick Joke: In the Pyramidion Strike on Io (which was sunset out of the game with Beyond Light) involves the characters heading deep into the Pyramidian under the direction of Asher Mir. As they reach the boss arena Asher insists on there being a radiolaria lake, which is never seen and Asher just dismisses everyone else as ignorant. In the //node.ovrd.AVALON// mission this season Asher returns to help us into the Vex network to acquire Vexcalibur, with the final boss fight taking place underneath what can be described as a radiolaria lake.
- The Bus Came Back:
- After being Out of Focus since the end of The Red War, Devrim Kay becomes a prominent figure in the Seasonal Narrative.
- Asher Mir was believed lost when the Black Fleet arrived and multiple planets, Io included, disappeared. Lightfall drops hints that he survived inside the Vex network and had somehow fused with it, finally able to communicate to the outside world. He ends up instigating the //node.ovrd.avalon// mission for the Guardians where they can go inside the Vex network and acquire the Vexcalibur. Brakion, the supercharged Hobgoblin and final boss of the Pyramidion strike, also returns as the boss enemy.
- Cessation of Existence: At the end of Week 4, Asher Mir is captured by the Vex at last and disintegrated into Vex data, erasing him from reality. There is a chance he might be able to be reconstituted, but it's functionally the equivalent of looking for a needle in a universe-sized haystack.
- Didn't See That Coming: The Witness's forces didn't anticipate the Guardians using the Ascendant Plane to bypass their defences. Even Devrim admits that he never even considered this as a strategy.
- On the other side, in the Cosmodrome Defiant Battleground, the Psion jailer the fireteam is after ends up forcing them back into the Ascendant Plane partway through the fight. It catches everyone off-guard, given that no other enemy has done that before, forcing the fireteam to scramble back to reality to continue the battle.
- Dimensional Traveler: Building off the story and abilities acquired in "Season of the Lost," Mara uses her access to the Ascendant Plane to aid in countering the actions of the Shadown Legion. They will disappear into the Ascendant Realm, maneuver into the pyramid strongholds and reemerge into the physical plane to rescue hostages. This proves to be an Outside-Context Problem for the Black Fleet, as while everyone is familiar with the Ascendant Plane (the Taken become as such because they are forced through the realm by a Taken "King") it has never been weaponized in this way.
- Do Not Go Gentle: As a counterpoint to Lightfall's Tagline of "Our End Begins", the Tagline of Season of Defiance is Defy Our End. And indeed, while the Witness may be sending its forces to invade Earth, the Guardians are fighting tooth and nail to save it.
- Extradimensional Shortcut: How do you breach a Shadow Legion pyramid with no visible entries or exits? Create a portal through the Ascendant Plane until you're inside it of course.
- Four Is Death: Amanda dies during Week 4 in Mission: Jailbreak. During the same week, Asher ceases to exist as an individual, as revealed in the secret ending of //node.ovrd.AVALON// and the Scribetrace Shell.
- Gambit Roulette: In the first year of Destiny 2, Asher Mir was a Warlock on Io obsessed with the Vex Pyramidion, with multiple strikes centered around him guiding the Guardian deeper inside to further his research. He believed the Vex were hiding valuable data on the origins of the universe and was so committed to the mission he willingly subjected himself to partial roboticization via Radiolaria so he could understand the Vex network more thoroughly. When the Black Fleet arrived and Io was set to be taken, he volunteered to stay behind and Easter Eggs since then implied his consciousness has persisted in the network to some degree. This season and the Avalon mission reveals that through sheer force of will he used the power of Vex simulations to properly map out and recreate the Veil, which is quite the accomplishment as the Vex have never been able to simulate paracausal power. He then invited the Vanguard into the Avalon network, providing Vexcalibur so they can understand what he has found and bypass various security measures. Mithracks, a Master Splicer and otherwise one of the foremost authorities on interfacing with machines, is utterly dumbfounded at what Asher accomplished.
- Gameplay and Story Integration: Two strikes, Lake of Shadows and The Arms Dealer, were given an overhaul in a effort to refresh the playthrough experience. While similar things had been done before, this time it fully integrates the recent story developments to have you combat the new faction type Shadow Legion, new mini-boss checkpoints and even the Mission Control dialogue is updated. The Arms Dealer in particular lampshades the
Recycled Script, implying the boss of the original strike might have been a decoy. - Great Escape: The theme of the season. Citizens of Earth have been captured, and we need to bust them out by sneaking into the prison complexes via the Ascendant Plane.
- Heroic Sacrifice:
- Amanda dies at the end of Mission: Jailbreak, holding a door open to allow Mithrax and the prisoners to escape while the facility counts down to a self destruct.
- It is revealed during "Bring Down the Lake" that Asher was forced to restart his transformation to download the data necessary to research the Black Fleet and simulate the Veil. He gets all of the files to Earth, but finally succumbs to his infection and disintegrates into the Vex's machine code.
- I Know You're Watching Me: In the lore tab of the Guardian's Angel Shell, when Glint expresses discomfort that he and Crow are being watched while on a scouting mission, Crow assures him that only he, Glint, and Mara can see them and everything's fine.
- Infinity +1 Sword: A secret exotic quest in the EDZ, instigated by Asher Mir, leads to a Vex network mission Avalon that emulates some of The Whisper quest. The reward at the end is the Vexcalibur, an exotic glaive that grants overshields when blocking with the glaive shield. It also has the option of multiple catalysts like Revision Zero did. While officially a glaive in the energy slot it has a shorter handle and elongated blade to make it look more like a sword.
- Interservice Rivalry: As a pilot and an infantry scout respectively, Amanda Holliday and Devrim Kay playfully rib on each other's merits during the post-mission dialogue for the EDZ Defiant Battleground.
- Lady and Knight: Mara Sov invokes the imagery of the trope, anointing the Guardian as the first of her new Queensguard as they struggle to free the captives from the Shadow Legion, but declines in playing it straight by not asking for any actual fealty in return.
- Multinational Team: Mara's new Queensguard is composed not just of Reefborn Awoken, but Human, Exo and Earthborn Awoken (both Lightless and Guardians), and Eliksni too, all united in protecting Earth from the Witness and the Shadow Legion.
- No Antagonist: Downplayed. While the Shadow Legion are the main enemy, there aren't any actual figureheads for them that directly engage with the protagonists for this season's story. The Shadow Legion being an army of Empty Shells makes them just exist as another faction of enemies to fight, while their actual leaders are either dead (Calus), not directly participating in the story of Defiance (Nezarec), or having left the setting entirely (the Witness).
- The Paladin: Mara compares our deeds in freeing the prisoners from the EDZ Pyramid to that of her Seven Paladins when anointing the Guardian into her new Queensguard, even employing crusader-like rhetoric in our fight against the Shadow Legion in her mission voice overs, and one of the mechanics for the Defiant Battlegrounds is to banish and destroy Taken Blights and purifying them with Awoken Baelfire. The Techeun's Regalia ornaments certainly calls the trope to mind by invoking White and Gold are Divine.
- Prison Ship: As the name implies, Defiant Battlegroud: Orbital Prison, involves crossing the Ascendant Plane from the Farm to a Shadow Legion warship high in orbit above Earth and freeing the prisoners there.
- Sacrificial Lion: Amanda Holiday is killed in a trap set by the Shadow Legion after she managed to bypass door security so that Mithrax could escort captured prisoners to safety. She has been a continuous presence in the Destiny games since the beginning, making her death especially unexpected.
- Shout-Out: The //node.ovrd.avalon// mission is a condensing of Arthurian Legend and specifically that of Excalibur, where the guardian retrieves the Vexcalibur from a Vex network. Asher Mir takes on a Merlin-esque role and the final boss takes place under a radiolaria lake.
- Skeleton Key: Vexcalibur has a secondary function integrated into it that allows its shielding to erase Vex security protocols. This is required to upgrade its intrinsic perk and obtain its three catalysts.
- Tempting Fate: In Mission: Jailbreak, Amanda is killed in an explosion after bypassing door controls to allow Mithrax to escape with prisoners. Much of the mission, in a contrast to other missions, is treated as fairly routine with them regularly commenting on how this feels easier than normal.
- Took a Level in Badass: Brakion returns in the VexNet, and has gotten quite a few tricks up its sleeve. Alongside its standard tactics back on Io, it also regularly summons tons of other Vex, forces you to break code blocks in the correct order to disable its shield, and puts you through a multi-phase fight, with the arenas gradually growing more cramped. It is also quite curiously Resistant to Magic, meaning abilities are severely weakened (if not outright useless, in the case of Well of Radiance) against it.
- Trap Is the Only Option: Mission: Jailbreak begins with Eramis warning Mithrax to turn back from rescuing the prisoners from the EDZ tunnels because of a trap lying in wait. While Mithrax does express caution, noting Eramis does not have any reason to lie to them, Amanda is committed at completing the mission anyway because No One Gets Left Behind.
- Two Lines, No Waiting: The main quest focuses on the Young Wolf's quest to free prisoners from the Shadow Legion as they invade Sol. At the same time, Asher Mir is being chased by a rebuilt Brakion after stealing a quarter of a googol of files on the Black Fleet* , requiring him to tear open a portal to the EDZ so that the Young Wolf and Mithrax can help him extract his research and undermine the Vex network in the process. Curiously, both end in a major character death during the fourth week caused by being forced to set off a trap for the greater good.
