Space Marine 2’s ending has massive implications for the wider Warhammer 40K lore

While Space Marine 2 begins with the unstoppable Tyranid horde sweeping across the galaxy, consuming planets as they go, the solution to ending their rampage could be even more terrifying for humanity. Be warned, huge spoilers for Space Marine 2 lurk below.

Warhammer 40K was the franchise that coined the term “Grimdark” so if you expect the grim darkness to ever let up in this series, you’ll be disappointed. However, it makes for some excellent storytelling, and not only did the ending of Space Marine 2 deliver a satisfying conclusion to this chapter of Titus’ story, but it quietly set the scene for something even more sinister.

Below, we’ll break down the Space Marine 2 ending and explain what it means, but we’ll also explain how it connects to the wider Warhammer 40K lore, particularly, something known as the Pariah Nexus. You see, the Tyranids and Chaos have also become a thorn in the side of the other sentient races in the galaxy and their plans to expunge these threats could be more bad news for humanity.

Focus Entertainment/Games Workshop

Space Marine 2 story

Space Marine 2 begins with the Ultramarines mobilizing to combat the threat of Hive Fleet Leviathan which is the largest and most dangerous army of Tyranids in the galaxy. While the Tyranids have been beaten back (eventually) in previous invasions, Leviathan is starting to become a real problem – and not only for humanity. In the lore, the Necrons, Eldar, Tau Empire, and even the forces of Chaos are becoming concerned by the rampaging dino-bugs.

The menace isn’t ended in Space Marine 2 as Games Workshop is unlikely to let one of its main 40K antagonists be defeated in a videogame side-story. So just know that the Tyranids are still a dire threat, even after Chaos upstages them in this game. But upstaged they most certainly were. Chaos, namely the Thousand Sons Traitor Legion, took advantage of the Tyranid distraction to put their plans into action, which is what dominated the latter half of the game’s story campaign.

Chaos is a malevolent force that comes from “the Warp” or “Immaterium.” This is a hellish mirror dimension that exists alongside our own and has been overtaken by the four competing Gods of Chaos who feed on the suffering of life. As humanity is numbered in the trillions in 40K, we’re an all-you-can-eat buffet to them. Half of the Space Marines turned to Chaos in the backstory and became the Traitor Legions, as Chaos offers great power to its followers.

The Tyranids hate Chaos as they’re unable to consume demonic or Chaos-tainted biomass. On the other hand, Chaos hate the Tyranids because they’re unable to corrupt and feed off the souls of creatures controlled by a Hive Mind from another galaxy.

Ending explained

Toward the end of the game, a Martian Techpriest discovers a Necron (an ancient alien civilization that predates humanity) artifact that reduces the influence of Chaos in the galaxy. By using this technology the priest hopes that Chaos can be defeated, as he knows that the Necrons used it to defeat an ancient foe known as the Old Ones millions of years ago. It’s also possible that Necrons have defeated Chaos before using this method in a war forgotten by time.

However, this is all a clever manipulation by a Chaos sorcerer, as when activated, the artifact has the opposite effect. Rather than pushing Chaos out, it creates a rift where the Warp bleeds into realspace, unleashing Chaos on that region. Their plan is to use it on the whole galaxy, giving Chaos the ultimate victory.

Titus and the Ultramarines are able to reverse this by using the artifact as intended. They also enter the Warp, rescue the legendary Ultramarines Chapter Master, Marneus Calgar, and put an end to the Thousand Son’s schemes.

However, the threat of Chaos and the Tyranids is still ongoing, what’s even more worrying is the hints the game drops about the Necrons waking up on the very Tomb World where the final battle takes place.

While players explore the Tomb World, they can find a dataslate that reveals some Necron constructs have been hunting and killing the Martian Techpriests. These guardians have been defeated and their bodies can be seen in the game, but the damage is done and the sleepy Necrons may be waking up.

A Necron Tomb World houses millions of sleeping Necrons who have long since forsaken their flesh and become a race of living metal beings. Their goal was to sleep through the Warhammer 40K setting and reclaim the galaxy once all the other races had wiped each other out, but this plan failed. Many of the Necrons yearn to return to being flesh and blood and some consider humanity to be the key to this. That means the Necrons can’t have Chaos corrupt humanity fully, or have the Tyranids eat them all.

The game heavily teases that the Necrons will be the next main antagonist should a Space Marine 3 be made and that ties into the current wider 40K setting in a neat way.

The fate of Titus

Titus proves his worth to himself and his Chapter at the end of Space Marine 2 and earns the respect of his men and all who doubted him. After being accused of corruption at the end of Space Marine 1, Titus was forced to serve among the Deathwatch (sort of like prison for Space Marines) until Marneus Calgar learned of this and brought him back to the Ultramarines.

It turns out that Calgar was unaware of Titus’ predicament and was quick to rectify it once he was able. After slowing down the Tyranid advance and defeating a nefarious Chaos plot, Space Marine 2 ends in the opposite way to Space Marine 1. This time, Titus is hailed as a hero and is sent on a new mysterious mission.

It turns out that the Chaplain who’s been giving Titus a hard time throughout the story is none other than Leandros, his rival from the first game. It was Leandros who told the Inquisition about Titus which led to him being assigned to the Deathwatch. It’s a Chaplain’s job to root out heresy and corruption in the Chapter, and Leandros still suspects that Titus is tainted, although, we as the audience know this isn’t the case.

Titus is a creation of the Space Marine games but has become an important figure in the overall lore of 40K. He was the one who watched over his Primarch Robute Guilliman as he slept, but now that the Ultramarines Primarch is awake and ruling the Imperium as regent, this changes everything for Titus. We expect he and the Primarch will come face to face in the next game, should it come.

Wider lore implications

The current lore of 40K has a lot going on, Hive Fleet Leviathan is consuming whole worlds and the threat of Chaos has been increased by something called the Great Rift.

Humanity has discovered that the Necrons once built massive monoliths called Black Stone Pylons all over the galaxy, likely to reduce the Old One’s ability to use the Warp against them before it was overtaken by Chaos. These Pylons continued to work long after the Old Ones were gone and gave the galaxy a degree of protection from Chaos after they gained control of the Warp.

One theory is that the Necrons once defeated Chaos and closed a powerful Warp storm called the Eye of Terror. However, when the Eldar race accidentally birthed the Chaos God Slannesh, the Eye of Terror was ripped back open, letting Chaos flood into the galaxy once more – and this time the Necrons were all fast asleep.

After half the Space Marines turned traitor and lost the civil war known as the Horus Heresy, they fled into the Eye of Terror to escape the wrath of the Imperium, where they’ve remained for ten thousand years, twisting in their Chaos corruption.

The current Warmaster of Chaos, Abaddon the Despoiler, has been working in the shadows to destroy each of these Black Stone Pylons, spreading the influence of Chaos bit by bit. He’s done this while disguising his motives behind his “Black Crusades” which previously only appeared as attempts to destroy the Imperium.

After attacking and destroying the Imperial world of Cadia, he deactivated enough Pylons to split the galaxy in two, creating the Great Rift. This now means that half of Imperial space is cut off from the other – and is at the mercy of Chaos.

However, various Xenos factions in 40K have had enough of Chaos, namely the Necrons, the Eldar, and the emerging and technologically advanced Tau Empire. While the Eldar have an uneasy truce with the Imperium since the fall of Cadia, as both sides work to push back the daemonic hordes, the Necrons have turned back to the technology that originally powered the Black Stone Pylons.

It’s also worth pointing out that a Necron Overlord called Trazyn the Infinite was the one who alerted humanity to the purpose of the Pylons – and even helped them defend Cadia, while the Eldar rescued the survivors of the battle from Abaddon. There have also been other instances where the Imperium has worked alongside the Eldar, Necrons, and Tau to combat a shared threat, usually the Tyranids.

The Necrons have since developed something known as the Pariah Nexus, which once activated, limits the influence of the Warp, essentially de-buffing Chaos and potentially even disrupting the Tyranid’s link to their Hive Mind. It’s like the Black Stone Pylon’s ability but concentrated on one small region of space. While it was never explicitly referred to in Space Marine 2 as a Pariah Nexus, the artifact that was used to power and then banish Chaos works in a very similar way.

Since the fall of Cadia, the Necrons have been experimenting with the Pariah Nexus activating them in different regions of space. The only problem is, that humanity and the Eldar are innately psychic creatures in 40K and every one of us has a small connection to the Warp and needs it to survive. Human and Eldar worlds within a Pariah Nexus are at grave risk and the Necrons don’t appear to care. This has led to an escalation in tension between humanity and the Necrons with both factions becoming increasingly aggressive.

We suspect this conflict will continue in the main 40K setting, either until the Imperium destroys the Necron technology, or the aliens grudgingly agree to be more careful with it. But what’s more likely, is that Chaos will steal it and do exactly what they did in Space Marine 2, but en masse. We also suspect that could be the plot of a potential Space Marine 3, allowing the Necrons to initially serve as the next antagonists, only for Chaos to upstage them as they did to the Orks and Tyranids.

The sad truth is, that if factions like the Imperium, Eldar, Necrons, and Tau could set aside their differences and focus their efforts on fighting destructive factions like the Orks, Tyranids, and Chaos, they could quite easily win and share the galaxy between them. Alas, this peace is unlikely to ever come to pass, as in the grim darkness of the far future, there is no time for peace. There is only war.

Until then, though, here’s everything you need to know about the Space Marine 2 DLC plan.