Valorant Cinematic ‘Duality’ Released: Detailed Explanation, Lore Breakdown, Mirrorverse Theory

Riot Games has released a new Valorant Cinematic called ‘Duality’ which joins a lot of loose ends and gives us more solid information about the game’s lore. Duality is the third Valorant Cinematic, preceded by Retake which released with Episode 2 and Dualist that launched along with Episode 1. This 3 minutes and 51 seconds long cinematic is set on the Valorant map Bind and features the following agents: Killjoy, Phoenix, Viper, Jett, Cypher, and Yoru. This is perhaps the most crucial and important lore revealed for Valorant so far, as it finally helps us understand the premise of the previous cinematics while also confirming a lot of fan theories that have been doing the rounds for quite a while now.

So let’s take a closer look at the Duality Valorant Cinematic and try to piece together the lore that has been revealed to us so far.

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Complete Explanation of Valorant Cinematic Duality - What Does it Mean?

Main Lore

The lore starts off following the events shown in the first Valorant cinematic ‘Duelists’ with news reports showcasing the destruction of a part of Venice in Italy, along with the photos of Jett and Phoenix who are wanted in connection with the incident.

This is followed by Killjoy frantically running from an unknown shooter who is chasing her on the Valorant map Bind. She takes cover behind a box in the ‘B Site’ site and places her Turret to provide some cover fire. Soon support arrives in the form of Viper and Phoenix, while we can see Killjoy analyzing a Spike planted in front of her. Viper at this point in time is handed a gadget by Killjoy as she goes on to say that “It is stealing radianite from the environment. How do we stop it?”

Killjoy quickly gets back to work in a bid to figure out how the Spike can be defused, when Viper provides her assistance saying that “You’ll need a Radi-Core to power the heat signal”. While this discussion is going on the Turret breaks and Phoenix goes behind the unknown shooter, only to find out that the mysterious attacker is an identical Phoenix.

While Phoenix stands frozen in shock, the identical Phoenix has a smirk on his face. At this point in time, Viper runs in to fire a shot towards the alternate Phoenix who manages to escape. Meanwhile, Killjoy who is still trying to defuse the Spike is unable to do so, thinking that the power source which is also fueled by radianite does not have enough charge in it. This is when Viper comes forward and says that “It needs to be superheated”.

Phoenix steps in to save the day by superheating the power source and Killjoy successfully pulls off the defuse. The three agents can then be seen heading back when Viper reveals to Killjoy that Phoenix got a look in the “mirror”, to which a still surprised Phoenix says “How come they look like us? And what do they want our radianite for?” To which Viper responds by says that she will have a talk with Brimstone as it was time that they filled them in on the information.

End Credit Scene

In the end credit scene, we again get a look at the identical Phoenix who meets the alternate Jett from the first Valorant cinematic ‘Duelists’, as he goes on to say “You know they’re bringing whole teams now, right?”

This is when three more identical agents walk in Viper, Yoru, and Cypher, as they load their weapons and we get to see earth splitting into two. One of them being the original earth and the other a mirrored version of it.

Detailed Breakdown

Now that we know the story so far, let’s break everything down in detail through a series of  points,

• The chronology of the lore so far is as follows, the third Valorant cinematic ‘Duality’ comes after the first Valorant cinematic ‘Duelists’ and before the second Valorant cinematic ‘Retake’.
  
  Duality directly picks off after Phoenix is unable to stop Jett who is running with a Spike, successfully planting it in Venice, Italy and as a result of the destruction giving rise to the Valorant map Ascent, which we are all too familiar with.
  
  
• After Jett, this time the attack is carried out on Bind by Phoenix which we soon find out is a mirror or an alternate Phoenix, as he comes face to face with the original one. An important thing to note here is that while the original Phoenix is dumbstruck at this point in time, the alternate Phoenix has a grin on his face, which means that he was aware of the dual existence.
  
  
• We also witness that this is the first time Killjoy is coming across a Spike. This is evident by the way she is testing it, trying to figure out what it does and how it works.

• During the course of Duality, we learn a lot of things related to the Spike all of them through Viper. She tells us that start the Spike is used for stealing radianite from the environment, it can only be defused using a radianite fueled power source, and this radianite power source needs to be superheated in order for it to work against the Spike.
  
  
• After defusing the spike, Viper refers to the alternate Phoenix as “mirror” and we also get to know that she along with Brimstone already know what is going on, as she prepares to reveal this information to everyone else.
  
  
• The duplicate Phoenix after escaping goes to some dark realm where he comes across the alternate Jett (now that we know about their existence) from ‘Duelists’ and they start arguing. This is when Phoenix reveals that he had to face a whole team, to which a mirrored Viper responds by saying that “Then so will we,” followed by the revelation of an alternate Yoru and Cypher as well.
  
  It is following this conversation that the mirrored trio of Viper, Jett, and Cypher attack Icebox as shown in ‘Retake’, where their plans are once again thwarted by Phoenix and Yoru.
  
  
• Finally, talking about the Mirrorverse theory, it is definitely the leading theory right now. There are multiple proofs like, the first look at several mirrored agents and the earth splitting into two (one being a mirror image of the other) in the end credit scene.

In conclusion, the Mirrorverse theory is definitely leading right now with all that is shown in the latest cinematic backing it up. On top of this, David Nottingham who is the Creative Director of Valorant has himself come forward to dismiss the clone theory, which was another plausible theory that has now been dismissed.

Lastly, another huge revelation was the confirmation of the year when the First Light event occurred on Earth, “10 Years after First Light, new questions arise” was a running headline below one of the news channels. As the incident in Venice occurred in 2049, that puts the occurrence of the First Light incident around 2039.

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