So I sat on these thoughts for a bit after watching the teaser for The Final Shape and I already see you all have your theories running wild here so I thought I’d chime in here. I can see 1 of 3 different reason why Cayde is back. 1. He isn’t back. He’s still dead and for some reason his soul is trapped in The Traveler. He can’t leave this place (this mainly comes from visual cues on his eyes and gun). I’ve seen it said here in the forums already, he’s a force ghost for Ikora. 2. He’s not even there like we think he is. This could very easily be The Traveler supplying Ikora with a vision dream. This cutscene could go much further and reveal lots of stuff about how what you see isn’t Cayde and it’s just The Traveler talking to Ikora. 3. He IS The Traveler. This is my most hoped for situation because when you give it some thought, you start to see connections. We now know that both The Witness and The Traveler are not gods. They are beings of immense power and universal manipulation sure but not gods. I guess one could compare them to hyper evolved Ali and that may or may not have come from somewhere other than what we know. But what we do know about The Traveler sort of matches up to Cayde. Since these aren’t beings of Light and Dark now and just beings that utilize it, what if Cayde has been The Traveler all along? But it was a lot like how Bandhee is Clovis. He’s unaware but deep down his subconscious knows. Take for example his personality. The Traveler is described as a being of Light. But what if this was a play on words. Light? As in light hearted. Cayde always finds the fun in the most dangerous situations. The main was trapped by the vex in a situation that would likely have been impossible for someone else to get out of. Yet there he is making jokes. Lore on Cayde is even always hinting that Cayde knows a lot more than we think he does. I’m excited no matter what happens but these are my initial thoughts after seeing that trailer. But I really don’t think he’s back the way we all want. He’s probably just gonna be back in the same sense that Titan has returned to us now…