Kojima Productions published the first teaser for Death Stranding Isolations tonight, 45 seconds of hand-drawn animation that carries three things last November’s announcement did not: a tagline, “My mom became a crater”, a 2027 date card, and Hulu branding. The teaser on the studio’s YouTube channel opens and closes on the Hulu logo, puts Disney+ on its final card, and its description says the series will stream “exclusively on Disney+ or other Disney Services in 2027”. When the show was announced at a Disney+ event in Hong Kong in November 2025 it was a Disney+ exclusive with a working title. The working-title tag is gone.
Watch the short YouTubeThe lead is a girl who chooses isolation after Sam reconnects America
The synopsis places the series in North America immediately after Sam, the protagonist of the first game, reconnects the continent through the Chiral Network. The Death Stranding itself is described as “a catastrophic series of explosions caused when the dead crept into our world and collided with the living”, and in its wake a young girl is forced into isolation, grows to prefer it, and shuts out “all opportunities for real human connection”. Chance encounters then pull her into a world she does not recognise.
She is not alone in the cast. Kojima Productions lists “a wise old man who connects people through a method that defies all reckoning”, “a female soldier ensnared in a cycle of war and destruction”, and “a boy who seethes with rage at the absurdity of his life”, all of them walking “a different path to the one chosen by Sam and his Bridges comrades”. The renewed connections that rebuild America, the synopsis says, “bring about new and unforeseen consequences”.
A porter on a crater rim, a SLEEP visor and BT handprints: what the 45 seconds show
The teaser opens on a lone porter with a cargo pack standing on a ridge above an enormous crater, a chiral beam rising from a small structure at its centre. It cuts to a shelf of figurines and cans, then a blonde girl asleep in a bunk wearing a visor that reads “SLEEP” in red dot-matrix letters, a burst of black handprints pressing through a surface, a tangle of dark tentacles, and the girl bolt upright and gasping in a storeroom lined with green-lit jars. The animation is traditional 2D with painted backgrounds, and the final cards read “2027, coming soon”.
E&H production animates, Takayuki Sano directs, Tow Ubukata writes
The teaser’s credit card confirms the staff. Hideo Kojima is executive producer, Takayuki Sano directs, Tow Ubukata handles series composition and screenplay, Ilya Kuvshinov is original character designer with Sayaka Koiso as character designer, Yann Le Gall is colour script and art director, Ami Kutsuna colour designer, Tomohiko Kan 3D department manager, Jumi Lee compositing director, Keisuke Yanagi editor and Shuhei Abe sound director. The animation studio is E&H production, which Kojima Productions credits for Ninja Kamui, Bullet/Bullet and the Magic Knight Rayearth television series.
Early reaction on r/DeathStranding was thin but split. One of the first replies called the tagline “wild”, another found the art style disappointing. The teaser arrived the same night Kojima Productions named its Niantic Spatial AR project, Death Stranding Odradek, two days before the studio’s Beyond the Strand 10th anniversary exhibition opens in Tokyo on October 31.
