Fortnite's UFO season concludes with explosive live event
And kicks off a dark new chapter in time for Halloween.
Fortnite bid farewell to its UFO season with one of its most ambitious live events yet, as players teamed up to detonate explosives on board the aliens' mothership.
This involved deliberately being abducted (along with a bunch of bombs) into the bowels of the capital ship, as directed by Dr. Slone - boss of IO, the island's group of mysterious and morally-dubious protectors.
If you want to watch what happened yourself, Epic has a recap video below:
In a big twist, the aliens were revealed to be agents of Kevin the Cube, the infamous evil shape which rumbled around Fortnite's original map. And in a not-so-surprising heel turn, Slone decides to let you die on board the mothership in the explosion rather than risk Kevin returning to the island again.
You manage to escape the exploding mothership after "rebooting" Kevin, who turns from angry purple to a cool blue. Fans have now dubbed this "good" Cube as Blevin, or Blue Kevin (also a neat nod to the blue hair of Tyler "Ninja" Blevin).
But in the process, Blevin is revealed to be just one of hundreds of cubes, many of which still fall onto the island as the mothership detonates, seemingly blowing up several locations and beginning to corrupt the Fortnite map's landscape.
On that cliffhanger, Fortnite itself went offline and into around 12 hours of downtime as developer Epic prepped for today's Chapter 2 Season 8.
Servers have now returned online, to a map perhaps less changed by the explosive cliffhanger than many had expected. The new season's intro video shows areas of dark corruption, and a new "Sideways" dimension which takes over a different location each match. Here you'll find Cube Monsters to fight in exchange for new weaponry. On the upside, the end of that video shows The Foundation (AKA the character almost definitely voiced by Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson) springing back to life to confront the threat.
Finally, the game's battle pass trailer below adds one final flourish - it's narrated by a mysterious female voice who looks to be this season's secret battle pass character. Leaks have pointed to her being referred to as "The Queen" - and seemingly in charge of the Cubes overall.
Other battle pass outfits this season include a buff unicorn, a classic toon version of Fishstick you can customise via paint can collectibles, and Marvel's Carnage.
