After the Witness' defeat marked the end of the Light and Dark Saga, Bungie needed to find a way to establish a new threat and a new set of villains for the story afterwards, villains that could coexist with those that remained. After Renegades, I feel confident in saying they succeeded. The Nine have been established as a cosmic force, able to interact with the world in ways the Witness' forces and the Hive cannot, and VI is firmly entrenched as a threat and antagonist going forward. The Lord of Every Nothing has been growing its presence and influence over the Taken, with even IV telling us that VI has been watching and learning from it. But it isn't about making villains bigger and badder than the Witness, doing the same thing on a grander scale with an even more powerful villain. It is about going in a different direction, and Bungie has pulled this off with both Maya Sundaresh and Dredgen Bael. While Bael leads a faction of Cabal, and Maya Sundaresh leads a faction of Vex and others compelled by the Echo of Command, they are both Humans. We've had Human antagonists in the past, most famously Uldren Sov, but he was influenced by Riven's corruption; the Techeuns were Human enemies, but they were also Taken and were saved; Lakshmi-2 was a Human antagonist during the Season of the Splicer, but she died because of the Vex she unleashed upon the city; Clovis Bray was an antagonist in Season of the Seraph, but he was mainly an Act 1 villain, with Eramis and Xivu Arath being the greater threats. Maya and Bael, on the other hand, are both recurring antagonists, and each of them has goals aligned with their views of what Humanity should be. Maya wants a return to the Golden Age, to the point where she kickstarted the Fate Saga by killing III when they could not swap our Earth with a Golden Age version from the past. Bael wants to free the Last City and Humans from Guardian leadership, and he bound himself to VI and attempted to wipe out the Guardians with Nightfall Station and Eclipse energy. It marks a major shift in Destiny's storytelling, and I'll argue that Dredgen Sere is the clearest sign that it will not be limited to just major antagonists. Dredgen Sere is the final boss in the Equilibrium dungeon, and he is a Human enemy, the first Human the player Guardian kills in the game. A Human who wields Taken energy, no less, and he is also not the only Human Dredgen. Alongside all the other changes in how Humans see Guardians in the story, there is a lot of potential. It sets up a new Dredgen faction for a future expansion, and it will be the first faction with Human combatants. It would be a major shift in the status quo and in the direction of the story, if we start to fight more Humans wielding Darkness powers, in the ways Bael and Sere have done. I'm looking forward to seeing how it all plays out.