Three years is long enough... right? (KH3 ending spoiler talk)

     Hey friends, this year marks the 20th Anniversary of one of my favorite series, Kingdom Hearts. To celebrate the special occasion, the other day, Square Enix released a video where they showed off three new trailers for games in the franchise. The first was a continuation of the Mobile game, Union X, or specifically the spin off about Keyblade Masters Xehanort and Eraquis's childhoods, then the second was a new mobile game which is having beta tests later this year called Kingdom Hearts: Missing Link, and then the third one... was Kingdom Hearts IV. I legitimately could not believe my eyes when I saw that logo appearing, I never dreamed that it would be announced only three years after Kingdom Hearts III, but I am so happy about it. There's not much to share on that front yet, other than a few very exciting teases, so I figured out that today would be a good time to finally talk about Kingdom Hearts III's ending, especially seeing how the game came out so long ago, and there are some integral things from the end of that game to understand what Kingdom Hearts IV is going to be about. This post is going to be pretty inside baseball, I'll warn you, as I'll be discussing a lot of lore here, but if you like talking about crazy Kingdom Hearts world building, you're in for a treat today. It's time to face your fears and let your heart be your guiding key!

Together, even in the Final World.

Let's start from the ending!

    Kingdom Hearts III is a great game, I liked it a lot, but a lot of people didn't share that opinion. The story is weird and choppy, honestly most of it doesn't even happen until the very end, and because of that, that's most of what I will cover today. The vast majority of this game's story involves Sora trying to regain the power that he lost following his near defeat in Dream Drop Distance (another game that I'll probably need to elaborate on eventually, but not today). While Sora is doing this, you see cutscenes of what other people are doing in preparation for the final fight between light and darkness that is quickly approaching. Mickey and Riku are looking for Master Aqua, who has been trapped in the realm of darkness for a long time, and Kairi and Axel (now called Lea) are training to be Keyblade Masters with Master Yen Sid. In the end of the game, you rescue Aqua from the Realm of Darkness, who rescues Ventus from what came to be known as Castle Oblivion, but was previously the Land of Departures when she was training to be a Keyblade master alongside her friends Ventus and Terra. We get all seven lights ready to fight 13 darknesses in the Keyblade Graveyard, as the prophecy predicted, but then... a wave of darkness comes through and kills everyone. No, you didn't misread that. Though our heroes struggle valiantly against a ridiculous torrent of darkness, it eventually overtakes them and they fall to it. That's it right? Game over? Maybe for lesser video game protagonists, but not Sora! His soul is swept to The Final World, where he meets many characters who have had their heart and body both taken from them (thus appearing as stars) and eventually, he's face to face with a bunch of different Soras running around, flying around, or dancing, and he has to run around and get all of the pieces of his heart back, then time reverses and he goes back to the moment when everyone dies, but this time he fights back the darkness and recovers everyone's hearts with the help of a light from long ago (from Union X, a prequel mobile game that constantly confuses me). He has to chase his friends' hearts and defeat a Grim Reaper-esque enemy multiple times to free the hearts of his friends, when Young Xehanort shows up and tells him that he will have to pay a great price for what he has done, which we'll get to in a bit.

    You may remember that I mentioned a prophecy a little while ago. The prophecy essentially states that once seven hearts of pure light and thirteen of pure darkness clash, the ultimate Keyblade, known as the Chi-Blade (after the Greek letter), would be created. That has been Xehanort's whole plan this entire time, and he orchestrates it that the clash between himself and Sora would be the last one needed, but Sora refuses to fight him. That is, until the villain captures Kairi and turns her into crystal, seemingly killing her. Sora charges at Xehanort and attacks him, completing the special weapon, which Xehanort uses to summon Kingdom Hearts (not the game, the heart shaped moon which is a sort of celestial entity in this series), which begins bombarding the Keyblade Graveyard in darkness while he teleports somewhere else. Sora is finally able to use the power of waking to teleport after Xehanort into Scala Ad Caelum, which is apparently where Xehanort and Eraquis studied to become Keyblade masters back in the day. Sora finally defeats Xehanort thanks to a surprise appearance of Master Eraquis's heart, which had been hiding inside of Terra for a long time. Xehanort gives up and drifts off to be with his old friend and rival, realizing the error of his ways, as Kingdom Hearts returns to normal. Sora and the other heroes return to the Keyblade Graveyard, but instead of celebrating with everyone else, he has one more job to complete. He's going to find Kairi and bring her back, as he senses she's still somewhere out there, she's not really gone. Mickey warns him that he may not be able to come back, but Riku tells Mickey that it's alright, and that it's clear that Sora has made up his mind. He disappears in a flash of light and it shows the other characters all celebrating, but before we get to the end, there's one more piece to this puzzle, the DLC.

Just a quick Re+Minder...

    Re+Mind was put out about a year after the base game of Kingdom Hearts III and shows exactly what Sora is up to when he disappears in the flash of light. He basically goes through the events of the game's ending once again, but in soul form. He can only get through the memories by reliving the battles through the eyes of the different people who were there, until eventually he can get to Kairi's heart which has been split into pieces in Scala Ad Caelum, and eventually you even get to play as Kairi in a different final boss encounter! It's such a cool DLC and I'm glad that they made it, because without this story chapter, the events that occurred at the end just didn't make any sense. They still don't make sense, but at least the DLC made it make sense in the context of the weird and insane story of this game. The price that Young Xehanort referred to earlier on in the game finally comes to pass as Sora time travels once again to save Kairi, and then in the end, ends up transported to a different place and time, a world beyond light and darkness, instead a world of fiction. We don't know exactly what that means, but I'll get to that later. Back to the ending of the game, then. All of the people that Sora saved are happy, Xion and Axel meet up with Roxas and the Twilight Town crew (Hayner, Pence, and Olette) as well as the reformed members of Organization 13. Aqua, Terra, and Ventus pay their respects to Eraquis, their fallen teacher while a Chirithy (It's a dream cat thing, I can't even explain this without going into Union X) looks out to Ventus, and eventually gives him a hug since they shared some connection in Union X. Everyone is happy and reunited, and they all go to Destiny Islands where Sora and Kairi are sitting on a tree, and then... Sora just fades away. Again, it's a good thing that they gave us the DLC, because I was just horribly confused. In a post credit scene, the Foretellers from Union X appear to talk to Luxu, a hooded figure in the desert, who is then revealed to be Xigbar, who was one of the members of Organization 13. He was an apprentice of the Master of Masters and has apparently been waiting for a long time, hiding in plain sight until he could reveal himself and his master's box. Maleficent and Pete have been looking for this box for the entirety of Kingdom Hearts III, and I assume they'll keep trying to find what's inside as well as locate it as the series continues, because they didn't make any progress in this game.

    In the secret bonus post credit scene, Sora appears to be in Japan, which we now know is Quadratum, the fictional world that I was referring to earlier. This is apparently where he teleports to at the end of the game, and is also somehow the world of the game Verum Rex from the Toy Story level. I still don't understand what this can all mean, but Riku is on his way to Quadratum at the end of Melody of Memory, using his Power of Waking to follow Sora's heart to this fictional world. Kairi, in the meantime, is training with Master Aqua to become a Keyblade Master herself. Kingdom Hearts IV was just announced the other day with a trailer that brings a lot of questions and few answers, so I'll talk about it later when things are a bit more concrete, but I will say that I am extremely excited about this new chapter in the Kingdom Hearts series. For years, Tetsuya Nomura, the director of Kingdom Hearts has talked about how Kingdom Hearts III would be the end of the "Dark Seeker" arc of this franchise, and now we know that IV is going to be the beginning of the "Lost Master" arc. We don't know what that means yet, but it certainly looks like it's going to be a wild ride.

    Thank you so much for dealing with this extremely long and convoluted post about complicated lore mostly out of context. It turns out it's difficult to explain the ending of this first arc and transition into whatever Kingdom Hearts IV and following games may bring for us. The main thing that we know so far is that Sora is almost completely alone in this world, and that everyone in the worlds of light/darkness are doing their best to find him. We can only hope that they succeed with this, but I'm going to be along for the ride regardless! I hope you all have a great week, and I'll talk to you soon. I'm Jonathan, your Self-Proclaimed Keyblade Master, and remember that I'm thinking of you wherever you are.