The New Elden Ring Shadow of the Erdtree Story Trailer Is Way More Revealing Than You Think (2024)

Bandai Namco released a perplexing new Story trailer for Elden Ring’s Shadow of the Erdtree expansion on May 21st, 2024. It’s a bit of a headscratcher, but I think it gives us enough to piece together the main storyline.

We’re now exactly one month out from the launch of Elden Ring Shadow of the Erdtree, and the game’s publisher, Bandai Namco, released a new “Story” trailer for the game’s one and only expansion.

For those of you who aren’t familiar, Bandai Namco is the publisher, while FromSoftware is the developer. Publishers handle funding, marketing, distribution, etc., whereas developers actually make the games and are akin to the author of a book. Development studios are sometimes owned by publishers, but sometimes they’re independent.

If you walked away from the trailer more confused than you went in, you’re not alone! The actual story for the Shadow of the Erdtree took a backseat (or, more likely, got stuffed in the trunk) while the marketing department had the steering wheel.

The trailer’s narrative (not the game’s) is meant to generate hype, discussion, and excitement and ends with a clear call to action.

The story of the Shadow of the Erdtree is the backdrop but comes into focus once you filter out the marketing department’s motives (and rewatch the trailer a thousand times like I have today).

Truly, this trailer gives us enough information about the story that I believe I’ve cracked the case wide open, as wide as the openings on the basket-head men in Messmer’s army.

Of course, FromSoftware’s stories are always vague. I tried my best to reconcile and integrate my grand theory with the lore from the base game as I have learned it, but please leave me a comment if I missed something!

Messmer, Miquella, and the Cocoon of the Empyrean

There is controversy about whether Messmer and Miquella are related, but I am doubling down on my breakdown of the first Shadow of the Erdtree trailer. They are alter egos of the same person, just as Radagon and Marika are.

The fact that Messmer speaks of Miquella in the first trailer as another person doesn’t prove that they are different people. Rather, it speaks to just how different they are.

We never hear Marika and Radagon speak, though we know from the description of Marika’s hammer that they have diametrically opposed objectives, breaking and repairing the Elden Ring, just as Miquella and Messmer seem to have in the shadow realm.

The footage of Miquella, mostly at the beginning of the trailer, depicts him breaking out of a bloody, bony place by ripping open a gateway to a very different location.

The close-up shot also confirms that the individual walking up the stairs is, in fact, Miquella, but it is clearly also meant to remind us of Marika, drawing yet another parallel between the duos.

We zoom out to see the gateway, which is the most symbolic aspect. Its overall shape is reminiscent of a tree trunk. It is made of bodies and divides a land of golden light and bloody darkness. The crack is of the same sort we see on the Cocoon.

Those bodies create a frayed appearance, also reminiscent of the Cocoon and (dimensional portals to the Upside Down in Stranger Things), emphasizing that this is some sort of tear.

Such violent actions are a deliberate element of the Bloodflame Incantations, meant to represent gestures that rupture its outer god, the Formless Mother.

In the second trailer, we get another clear shot of Messmer wielding the Bloodflame, this time with less orange and more coagulation, reinforcing the notion that Messmer is linked to Mohg, the Lord of Blood. Later in the trailer, we see Miquella having stepped through the gateway.

These shots weave so much imagery and metaphor that I believe it is not meant to be a literal depiction but rather a symbolic one that simultaneously represents multiple events, including:

• Miquella’s emergence from the Cocoon
• His arrival in the realm of shadow
• Breaking free from his body of flesh and blood (and bone), leaving Messmer in control

It’s worth noting that the detailing of both Messmer and his bracer we see in the first trailer bear resemblance to Miquella, who is shown wearing a serpentine bangle on his wrist in the second trailer.

There’s also some symbolism in the first bit with the gold dividing the pale skin from the red hand illuminated by Bloodflame.

Wait a minute, if this is supposed to represent the inside of Miquella’s Cocoon, and he spent considerable time with Mohg after being seduced…

WHAT IS HE WIPING OFF OF HIS HAND WITH THAT RAG!?

Oh, thank the gods, it’s just hair!

Factions in the Shadow War and Narnia

The battle depicted in the trailer seems to be a major event in a war between Messmer’s forces and those of the Gloam-eyed Queen.

We know the player visits this new realm after the war has ended, and we see a lot of enemies from the first Shadow of the Erdtree trailer, with the more spectacular ones featured prominently as likely bosses. This reinforces the notion that the remaining numbers will likely be the enemies and bosses we fight in the new area.

Elden Ring contains many worlds, and the Elden Beast shows you a forest of Erdtrees, each representing a world conquered by the Greater Will. This forest is likely inspired by C.S. Lewis’ Wood Between the Worlds from the “Chronicles of Narnia” prequel, “The Magician’s Nephew”, which has a pool at the base of each tree that leads to another world.

The Wardrobe in “The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe” leading to Narnia was built from the wood of the tree of Narnia’s pool. The Witch was a queen that came from a different world in the Wood Between the Worlds.

I suspect that Miquella may have actually opened a rift connecting the Lands Between to a completely different world, the one with the Gloam-Eyed Queen. Messmer would then be attempting to purge the world for himself.

If the Gloam-Eyed were purged, or just because they’re not from there, it would also explain their absence in the Lands Between, with only zealots like the Godskin Apostles wielding the Black Flame of the Gloam-Eyed Queen.

The religious practice of godskin peeling along with wearing or changing it sounds like a ritual one might perform to reenact or recreate something done by a god (or godlike figure). Sounds pretty similar to Miquella ripping himself out of his physical body and ending up in the world of the Gloam-eyed, doesn’t it?

Sites of Miquella’s “Grace”

Halfway through the trailer, the music changes to a(n IMO fantastic) new song that is likely Miquella’s theme. We are shown this repeated icon of a circ*mscribed cross anchored into the ground by Miquella throughout different environments.

The story and path through the DLC world will retrace Miquella’s steps through this Shadow realm created by Miquella. Given that we see all of the Tarnished gathered around one of these icons, the most likely explanation is that these icons are meant to be the Sites of Grace (bonfires) for the Shadow of the Erdtree.

Thus, the shots with these bonfires depict several locations we’ll visit in the expansion. I think they all depict spots around the war-ravaged city inhabited by the Gloam-Eyed Queen and her subjects.

That being said, DLCs and expansions tend to be a bit more bespoke and hand-crafted rather than created systematically, and the same is absolutely true for FromSoftware’s games, so we’ll have to wait and see.

I also want to touch on the altered appearance of Miquella’s bonfires compared to the Sites of Grace in the base game. It makes perfect sense to do this, and I think it should be expanded in the base game.

The Guidance of Grace has specific ties to Marika and the Erdtree, yet you can renounce the Golden Order and spurn the Erdtree by becoming a Recusant and joining the Volcano Manor. Similarly, you act on your desire to burn all that divides and distinguishes when you inherit the Flame of Frenzy.

What if the appearance of bonfires changed with choices like these? Perhaps you lose access to Sites of Grace upon becoming Recusant and don’t get them back until you meet Rykard.

Perhaps Sites of Grace are replaced by intrusions of the Frenzied Flame after inheritance unless and until you insert Miquella’s Needle at the heart of the storm beyond time?

Another Erdtree

The Erdtree has been more of a puzzle, but now that we’ve seen it up close, it seems clear that it isn’t the Erdtree we know and worship.

The tree only bears a passing resemblance to the one that’s been incinerated by the Flame of Frenzy, though that wouldn’t make any sense because the rest of the world is also not burnt to a crisp.

Given everything else, it makes sense for what we see to be another Erdtree, more likely burnt by the god-slaying Black Flame of, that’s right, the Gloam-Eyed Queen!

The gold dripping from the tree may have something to do with Miquella, but it’s definitely not his bonfire insignia, nor does it match any known iconography from the black flame or Messmer’s cloak.

It’s far more likely to be sap dripping from the Erdtree, though there’s definitely more to the story. Little pieces of the buildings in the burning city are flowing up into the sky as what would be sap also defies gravity.

Miquella and Blue Dancer

On a final, less related note, there’s this talisman you get from Highroad Cave at the northernmost point of the river that flows into Agheel Lake in Limgrave. It’s one of the few items in the game that refers to the Blue Dancer at all.

The story then goes that Malenia is the blind swordsman who sealed away the ancient God of Rot (within herself) after being bestowed a flowing sword (the prosthetic sword arm of unalloyed gold) by Miquella the fairy (hate speech), represented as a dancer in blue.

However, with so little information, making any remotely solid inferences is hard. There’s also the Shaded Castle and House Marais, both of which also have a connection to the twin prodigies and Eochaid, an entirely separate domain, and Nokron, both of which have weapons that are a better fit for the description of the flowing sword than the actual Flowing Curved Sword.

The Eclipse Shotel at Castle Sol is almost certainly relevant too, especially as a Legendary Weapon. We still don’t know much about the Lake of Rot beneath Liurnia or its relationship to Malenia as the Goddess of Rot either, especially if there was once another Goddess of Rot.

There’s also this red dancer in a field of blue flowers from the first trailer, but we’ll have to wait another month before we can begin to make sense of smaller details like this. Shadow of the Erdree releases on June 21st, 2024, the first of this year’s Solistices.

In the meantime, I highly recommend starting a fresh playthrough of Elden Ring if you haven’t already, and if you do, be sure to check out our growing collection of Build Guides and our Walkthroughs for Quests and Endings.

If you’re hearing about the game or the expansion for the first time, I suggest checking out our breakdown for the first Shadow of the Erdtree trailer and Shadow of the Erdtree Editions Guide.