Black Ops 6 campaign ending explained

As you wrap up Case and the rogue gang’s globe-trotting adventure in the Black Ops 6 campaign, you’re left scratching your head. In keeping with Black Ops 6 tradition, it’s a typically opaque and cliffhanger-heavy ending that raises quite a few questions. Did Case die? How is he linked to the Cradle? Who is the shady figure tapping away at a keyboard in the bowels of a CIA building?

In this guide, we’ll have a go at demystifying the events of the end game, though it’s very cryptic by design so take all this with a heaped tablespoon of salt.

Ending explained

After the siege of the Rook safehouse, Case boards Harrow’s helicopter, triggering a tussle between the two that ends with the helicopter crashing into the Black Sea. Harrow says that the Cradle made Case ‘the way’ he is and that he owes ‘everything’ to the Pantheon, harking back to the events of the Emergence mission.

The Cradle breaks, releasing fumes into the cockpit, triggering an aggressive response for Case as he appears to channel some sort of power from the weapon. Case strangles Harrow, spurred on by ghostly voices. The scene ends before we find out if either of them survive, though the fight and the sinking helicopter mean poor odds of survival for both characters. But, we get no definitive answers.

Next, we jump to two weeks late and a secret meeting between Livingstone, the head of the CIA, Woods, and Marshall. He congratulates them on preventing ‘one of the greatest catastrophes of our time.’ Livingstone explains that he’s ready to covertly finance the rogue squad, providing everything they need from accommodation to cash. Pantheon and rogue agents are still active within the CIA despite the gang thwarting the Cradle attack on D.C. Livingstone grants them carte blanche to weed out further compromised assets within the CIA by all means necessary.

Who is the guy at the end?

As the conversation ends, the scene jumps to a mysterious figure working away in an office inside the CIA, presumably Livingstone’s. The implication is that he’s linked to Pantheon and is likely to cause trouble for the gang and the CIA moving forward.

This character is called Jackson Caine. Keen-eyed players will recognise him not just as an Operator in BO6’s multiplayer but also from a brief cameo at the very start of the campaign. He’s the leader of Crimson One, a CIA-backed unit tasked with tracking down and eliminating the rogue Black Ops crew  – Marshall, Woods, Adler, Case, Sev, and Neumann. Beyond that, little else is known about Caine, though his Operator status suggests his role might be fleshed out in future seasons and modes, namely Warzone.

Caine may very well be Case, under a different name. During the Emergence mission in the Kentucky Cradle research facility, there’s overt references to Cash’s role as an early test subject for the bio weapon. It’s suggested that the aim of the research was to develop a drug capable of transforming operatives into souped-up super soldiers. When Cash grapples with Harrow in the crashed helicopter, he imbibes Cradle fumes, which could potentially have activated him as a Pantheon operative, lining him up as a brainwashed double agent with access to the CIA to hack Livingstone’s computer. Another theory is that Caine is another Cradle-activated super soldier similar to Cash. This is purely speculative but a theory to keep in mind.

Does Black Ops 6 have multiple endings?

Eschewing the Black Ops tradition of having multiple endings for players to unlock, as we saw in Black Ops 2, the Black Ops 3 campaign only features a single ending. Associate creative director, Jon Zuk, confirmed as much in an interview prior to release, pointing to the linear nature of the story and there being no need for branching endings to flesh out the closing moments of the narrative. Indeed, having played through the campaign, the ending is pretty definitive in terms of the rogue Black Ops crew putting an end to Harrow and Pantheon’s plans.