The second trailer for Death Stranding 2 has us wondering if Lou is dead. Sam directly accuses Higgs of killing her, but in this world, being dead isn’t necessarily as big an inconvenience as it is in real life. After all, we found out at the end of the first game that (at least one) BB can live outside its pod despite all the warnings to the contrary. We’ll look at the evidence that Lou is dead or alive (or something in between) below.
Is Lou dead in Death Stranding 2?
Lou is almost certainly dead in Death Stranding 2. Sam’s accusation toward Higgs is the most significant piece of evidence for that conclusion, but the first trailer also contains clues that BB is no longer living. In it, we see Fragile attempting to escape an attack on a prepper shelter, sometime before she forms Drawbridge, with a child, which is most likely Lou.
Fragile manages to exit the building and hop on a motorcycle, but a gunshot causes her to fall off. During this, Lou falls to the ground, and Fragile passes out before she can reach her. It was a pretty nasty spill, and even though we see Lou crying, it’s not a leap in logic to assume the forces pursuing them kill her.
We see Sam return to the bunker, presumably after the incident, and find Lou’s BB pod. When he approaches, a BT appears, indicating that Lou is dead. Later in the first trailer, we see tentacles appear in the pod similar to the ones associated with larger BTs.
However, we hear a statement from Deadman in the second trailer that seems to indicate that this might not be the first time Lou died and that her origins are more convoluted than they seemed:
“You see, after you left Bridges, I decided to do a little digging. Now, according to them, BB-28 was flagged for disposal and subsequently incinerated four years ago. Long before you and Lou first met.”
So, either Lou died once before as BB-28 and somehow came back, or someone snuck her into the system using a decommissioned Bridge Baby’s information. If this is the case, she may have powers we don’t know about.
We also see that despite Sam’s claims that she’s dead, a wooden toy appears in both trailers that indicate she can somehow influence the real world. We see the toy moving around on its own and hear BB’s signature laugh as it does so. Perhaps this means she’s stuck between worlds like Mama’s baby was? Who knows, Elle Fanning’s mysterious character could be Lou all grown up somehow.