Kingdom Hearts IV: Everything We Know so Far, Theories & Possibilities

Kingdom Hearts is a series that famously has a story that is not so complicated, but extremely difficult to follow, with crucial clues, tips and references scattered in secret endings, exclusive cutscenes released when the player completes some challenges within the game.

Time travel, more than one version of the same character (sometimes, much more than one), and many games, spread across all types of consoles and platforms, from one with card mechanics originally released only for the Game Boy Advance to exclusive games for mobile phones, passing through the PS2, PS3, Nintendo DS, PS4, Nintendo Switch... Although currently the player who wants to have the complete experience can buy the All-In-One package, which brings all the games and some cutscene “films” telling the story of some of the spin-offs, except Melody of Memory, released later, and not the story film of the mobile game Dark Road, only its predecessor UnionX.

The story is divided into three arcs so far. The first is the Dark Seeker saga, that is, all the games where the main villain is Xehanort, covering everything from his youth to the end of Kingdom Hearts 3.

The arc that precedes this, the Series X, counts the events that took place during the “Age of Fairy Tales”, and is made up of mobile games (the original Kingdom Hearts X (read 'chi'), its remake/successor UnionX, and UnionX Back Cover, the cutscene film that tells the essential story for the player who is not a fan of mobile and/or gacha games to understand the ending of KH3, and Kingdom Hearts: Dark Road, which tells the story of the origin of Xehanort and his then best friend and partner, Master Eraqus, introduced in Birth By Sleep, as they trained to become Keyblade masters.

The third arc, where we are currently, is the Lost Master Saga. Although it is still at the beginning, it already has the KH3 DLC, Re Mind, and Melody of Memories, which brings important points to the story hidden in cutscenes in a rhythm game! Kingdom Hearts 4 will be the first mainline game to directly follow this story.

For the rest of this article, we will consider all the information available on all the games ever released, with all the cutscenes and hidden secrets. But don't worry in case you missed a cutscene or another, or don't remember all the details, we'll cover their contexts!

Now that we're on the same page regarding events so far... What do we already know, what can we expect and, more importantly, what can we theorize about the highly anticipated Kingdom Hearts 4?

One of the favorite parts of many players is the announcement of which worlds will be present, everyone has their favorite Disney movie that they would like to see represented, or some old world they would like to see again... And this is one of the points where we have little concrete information, but lots of room to theorize!

The only concrete info regarding the worlds was revealed by director Tetsuya Nomura in an interview: Quadratum (the “reality” where Sora is currently) will be your starting point and a kind of hub where you will return periodically, similar to Traverse Town and Hollow Bastion/Radiant Garden in KH1 and KH2, respectively.

Star Wars

The Star Wars universe is almost certain to have its first appearance in Kingdom Hearts. In the game's announcement trailer, you can see in the corner of an image what is arguably the foot of an AT-AT. Many people speculate on a possible appearance by Marvel, as another successful IP belonging to Disney, which is not animation, as well as Star Wars and Pirates of the Caribbean, which have gained more importance in history.

Entering the speculation, in Kingdom Hearts 3, the history of the worlds had a small difference in relation to previous games: while in them each Disney world had its own history, objectives and villains, linked more to the plot of the original film than to the “main story” of the arc in which they are inserted. In KH3, their story is intertwined much more deeply with the quests, and Sora's actions in each of them affect the main story as much as they do in the original worlds; The villains from the films are present, but it is made clear that, this time, the real villains are acting and intervening directly in each world to benefit the Darkness.

If we consider the same pattern as Kingdom Hearts 4, some of the worlds that would make sense are:

Coco

The entire plot of the film is around themes related to death and much of it takes place in the world of the dead inspired by Mexican culture, and can be used as a direct parallel to Sora's situation in Quadratum, after having sacrificed his own existence to defeat the Darkness. Coco is a relatively recent Disney film and was quite successful, it's a safe bet to appear in the game.

Frozen 2

Frozen was one of the new worlds presented in Kingdom Hearts 3, and the story was deeply intertwined with the main plot, with the new Organization XIII considering Elsa as a possibility to be one of the Lights or Darkness due to her great power. Combining this with the size of the film's success, it is natural to assume that this world will return.

Wreck-It Ralph

In addition to this world having already made a brief appearance in UnionX and as a summon in Kingdom Hearts 3, the story of Wreck-It Ralph has themes of fantasy versus reality, this somewhat “meta” element of the consciousness of being a video game character (like Yozora) and mainly, Data, which has become a more important element for world building. It's almost too easy to conflate Wreck-It Ralph with where the KH story is headed.

Moana

Moana is one of the youngest Disney princesses and has not yet appeared in any game, so she has a good chance of appearing in this one. Furthermore, the film features themes involving corrupted hearts, again making it almost too easy for Nomura to connect with the story of the new arc without changing much of the original film. Its visuals also match the general aesthetics of the franchise's games.

The World Ends With You

Finally, there is a high possibility that we will see the return of this wonderful game, having previously appeared in Dream Drop Distance. One of the few certainties that the trailer gave was Sora's current location: Shibuya, Tokyo, precisely the same setting as The World Ends With You and the second game in the franchise, NEO: The World Ends With You, released in 2021.

Again, it is possible to make several parallels between TWEWY's story and Sora's situation that would make sense in the plot, if we consider that he is basically dead and the Reaper Games, the main element of the original game, could offer him a chance to come back to life, going through its trials.

It has already been established that in Kingdom Hearts 4 we will continue the Lost Master saga, now bringing together the story of the protagonists that we followed during the previous games, mainly Sora and Riku, with the plot beginning in the Age of Fairy Tales, many years before the events of Dark Seeker saga, that is, the history of UnionX, summarized in the HD cutscenes film Kingdom Hearts UnionX: Back Cover.

If you haven't seen it yet, don't worry: it's also available on YouTube.

As the name of the arc says, Lost Master will be a crucial point, possibly the new villain, taking over the position that belonged to Xehanort until then. This character is the Master of Masters - To make things easier, we will call him MoM in this article, and he is perhaps the most important character in the Kingdom Hearts universe.

He first appeared in UnionX, and is one of the most morally gray characters ever created. Through his machinations, which include a keyblade that grants clairvoyance about the future in which he will be present, a book of prophecies with all the details of the future of the battle of Darkness against Light and with Kingdom Hearts itself (the heart-shaped moon that we have already seen a few times in previous games) and instructions given to each of its six apprentices. As detailed in the Back Cover, they have, at the same time, the intention of setting events in motion for good and for bad.

The film makes his duality apparent, but the character's future remains open. We only know that he disappeared ages ago, and his first appearance since then (apart from his interactions with young Xehanort) is in the secret ending of KH3, an extra cutscene revealed when collecting all the game's Lucky Emblems, where he appears in Tokyo with Sora, Riku and Yozora, but without any context.

We also cannot forget to mention the MoM apprentices: Luxu and the Foretellers. Their story is also told in Back Cover. Before disappearing, the MoM assigned each of them a role, but also went behind everyone's back to sow discord among them, ensuring that the Keyblade War would happen, while guaranteeing another chance for the Light through the Dandelions, keyblade masters trained by one of the Foretellers to go to other worlds under MoM's instructions.

In the epilogue of Kingdom Hearts 3, we see Luxu, who is currently using the form of the already known Xigbar, and four of the five Foretellers meeting at the keyblade graveyard, where the war between the four factions of keyblade users led by each took place ages ago. The only one absent is Ava, the leader of the Dandelions and responsible for saving the light and some Keyblade users at the same time.

Our next clues come from a series of cutscenes from KH3 itself, from KH Melody of Memory (which, in addition to being the first complete game in the Lost Master saga, brings crucial information for the future of the story, so it seems no coincidence that its acronym is also MoM, considering how the games in the series are known by their acronyms, such as CoM -Chain of Memories-, BBS -Birth by Sleep-, DDD -Dream Drop Distance-, etc.) and the Kingdom Hearts 3 DLC, Re Mind.

Towards the end of KH3, when Sora ends up succumbing to the Darkness in the keyblade graveyard, he ended up in the Final World, the world that looks like an infinite sky, where he needs to recover parts of his self to return to normal.

There he meets a character called “Nameless Star”. She is literally a star shape, the remains of someone's heart that ended up in the Final World, like some hearts sometimes do when a person dies. Talking to her, it is revealed that the star has had her name stolen, as well as the rest of her “being”, and is waiting there for someone who, according to her, will find and save her. She whispers this person's name to Sora, but the player doesn't hear it.

And this is where the biggest mystery of Kingdom Hearts 4 now comes in, perhaps more enigmatic than the Master of Masters himself - Yozora.

Yozora is initially the main character of a JRPG that exists as an advertised game within the Toy Story universe in KH3, Verum Rex. In this part of the game, Sora meets Young Xehanort, who somehow (perhaps using the Book of Prophecies, with the power to create new realities) made the world of Verum Rex real within the “real” world where it takes place. part of Toy Story, and consequently brought its characters to life as well.

Yozora appears again in the Re Mind DLC, where he is the final boss. Before the fight, however, it is important to highlight two things:

The first is that a trailer for Verum Rex was released by Square, despite the game not being in production, as the trailer only serves as complementary material for Kingdom Hearts. In the trailer, we see Yozora struggling to try to save a female character whose name is not revealed, and he fails in the end, possibly being one of the objectives of the hypothetical game.

Who is familiar with Square Enix or Tetsuya Nomura probably knows Final Fantasy Versus XIII, eventually transformed into Final Fantasy XV after many years and many changes. And this is essential to understand Verum Rex because Nomura, director of FF Versus XIII, reused scenarios, animations, angles and even character designs that never became real in Versus XIII, for the DLC and the trailer.

That said, the design of the captured female character is quite similar to the original design of Stella, eventually reworked to become FFXV's Lunafreya. Perhaps these details are irrelevant, but given Nomura's appreciation for obscure references, and in games where names often have hidden meanings and allusions, like the Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts franchises, the simple fact she has Stella's original design could be a clue that she is the Nameless Star.

The second detail is in the dialogues between Sora and Yozora in the DLC, where we have more clues. The Nameless Star claims to have come from another world, and Sora recognizes Yozora, from when “that girl” told him earlier the name of the person she hoped would come to save her, most likely the girl being the star.

In turn, Yozora is very surprised when Sora reveals his own name, questioning him why he is using that name and becoming aggressive, saying that “if Sora is who he says he is, then the path is clear”, and attacking, giving start the battle. He also reveals that that is not his true form, in addition to him and Sora not being in the real world, waking up at the end of the fight in a car, supposedly in the "real world".

It still remains to be seen how the MoM is linked to this arc, the exact role that Yozora will have in the game, as well as Luxu and the Foretellers, where the fifth Foreteller, Ava, is, not to mention that in the same Verum Rex trailer, Yozora wakes up in a car driven by someone similar to Luxord, one of the members of both the old and new Organization XIII, who will possibly have a more relevant role in the new arc. His Nobody was destroyed at the end of KH3, so this could be his original form, his Somebody, and he is from another world, perhaps the same as Yozora.

Finally, one last point that we can speculate on is another key element: Data. Increasingly in games this separation has been made between three “realities”: the real world, where the games take place, the dream world, where Dream Drop Distance takes place, for example, and the virtual world, created by Data, which in the story may even contain a person's heart, encoded in this digital format, as shown in the world of Tron and in Kingdom Hearts Re:Coded, set in the virtual world.

Now we were introduced to the concept of this different reality, not exactly the world of dreams, but linked to it in some way because at the end of the DLC, the Fairy Godmother states that Yen Sid believes they will have some clue about Sora's whereabouts through Riku's dreams.

It's entirely possible that Riku goes to another version of Quadratum searching for him, and there is a version of this world for the living as well as one for the dead.

This theory is supported by the appearance of another character in the trailer shortly after Sora wakes up: Strelitzia, the sister of Lauriam, someone from Marluxia (confusing, I know, but for now, this is literally all we know about her). She was murdered at UnionX, but since she appeared so prominently in the trailer, it's most likely this character will play a major role.

This also raises the possibility of there being some gameplay reminiscent of Dream Drop Distance, with two protagonists.

After all this, I can say with complete confidence that… We cannot say anything with complete confidence — yet.

Theories have always been a big part of the Kingdom Hearts community due to the series' tendency to leave several clues hidden, but, it is possible that we will never get specific points right, and that Nomura is developing a story with several surprises.

The epilogue of Kingdom Hearts 3, the end of the DLC and basically, everything so far only seems to indicate that the story will get very close to UnionX, reinforced by the release of the Back Cover movie to ensure everyone can know its story. Lauriam and Elrene (Marluxia and Larxene), both members of the old and new Organization XIII, are important characters in UnionX too, so now that their nobodies have been defeated by our heroes, possibly their somebodies might have another direction in the plot.

Kingdom Hearts 4 doesn't have a release date yet, and all we can do until we have more info is to speculate on every little detail and hint the other games and its developers provide us. So, I'd like to know: what are your theories regarding Kingdom Hearts 4? Do you agree or disagree with any point I made here? Tell us!!