Of every franchise Nintendo is involved in, Kirby is the one with a reputation for its in-depth lore. Unlike other games, however, Kirby lore is rarely spelled out to the viewer – instead, it’s often implied with things like pause screen descriptions and the like. Kirby and the Forgotten Land is the first main series game in quite some time that lacks pause screen descriptions for bosses. This means that, compared to the other games, the game’s lore is a bit more front-and-center. There’s a lot to unpack here, and we figured we’d round up all the lore Kirby and the Forgotten Land has to offer. Do note that we’ll be discussing full game spoilers, so if for some reason you haven’t beaten the game, you might want to bookmark this page and come back later.
Kirby and the Forgotten Land lore round-up
Kirby and the Forgotten Land starts on a normal day on Planet Popstar. A big star-shaped portal opens above the sky, and Kirby is eventually absorbed into it. When he wakes up, he finds himself in a new world. As he navigates through a long-abandoned city, he meets Elfilin, a blue mouse-like creature who is being chased by an antagonistic group called the Beast Pack. The Beast Pack consists of animals that live in this new world, and for some reason, they’re going after both Elfilin and the Waddle Dees that were brought to the new world via the portal. Kirby and Elfilin decide to team up to save the Waddle Dees that have been captured and explore the new world.
As Kirby travels through the new world, he takes on members of the Beast Pack, who are all looking to capture Elfilin. Eventually, he makes his way to Winter Horns and encounters King Dedede, who to his surprise has also joined the Beast Pack. Kirby defeats him, but while he’s celebrating his victory Dedede wakes up, captures Elfilin, and flees to another continent. Kirby chases King Dedede all the way to the Redgar Forbidden Lands, where he climbs into a volcano and finds an abandoned base inside. There, he defeats King Dedede once again, and it’s revealed that his mind was being controlled by another entity. A nearby elevator door opens as other members of the Beast Pack attack the duo. Kirby, Dedede, and a few Waddle Dees go to enter the elevator, but one of the Waddle Dees trips and falls. King Dedede stays behind to save the Waddle Dee and fight the Beast Pack, while Kirby enters the elevator alone.
Inside, Kirby finds Lab Discovera, a huge scientific lab created by a race of ancients who originally inhabited this world. It’s also being powered via wheels that the captured Waddle Dees are running on. As the elevator descends, the first-ever voiced cutscene of the main Kirby series plays. The pre-recorded voice explains that Lab Discovera is home to a creature named ID-F86, which was captured by the ancients many years ago and remains in stasis within the lab itself. ID-F86 appeared one day and began a campaign of destruction, razing the world below with its spatial teleportation abilities. Eventually, it was captured by the ancients, who figured out how to extract its power and use it for themselves to “enter a land of dreams”. This heavily implies that the ancients used ID-F86’s power to go to Dream Land, which we’ll discuss more later on.
Kirby and the Forgotten Land’s Final Boss, explained
When Kirby enters Lab Discovera’s control room, he meets Leongar, the leader of the Beast Pack. He also sees ID-F86 lying in stasis in a capsule in the background. Leongar explains to Kirby that ID-F86 has long been incomplete, and that the Beast Pack has been looking for Elfilin because he is the second half of ID-F86 that split apart from it 30 years after it was originally captured by the ancients. Now, Leongar intends to reunite Elfilin with its missing half and fully restore “The Great One’s” power so the Beast Pack can use it for its own purposes.
As it turns out though, Leongar and the entire Beast Pack, King Dedede included, are under mind control from the sleeping ID-F86. Because it wasn’t capable of freeing itself with its own power, it used the Beast Pack to capture Waddle Dees to power Lab Discovera and search for Elfilin. Through Leongar, ID-F86 tells Kirby that its possession charade is over and that it’s time for all to be consumed. In an attempt to absorb Elfilin and become whole again, ID-F86 breaks free of its containment and melts into a creature called Fecto Forgo, which absorbs Leongar and several members of the Beast Pack to gain power and attack Kirby and Elfilin.
Though Kirby is able to defeat it, ID-F86 eventually manages to absorb Elfilin into its body and become whole again. After ID-F86 reforms into its true form, Fecto Elfilis, it immediately resumes the campaign of destruction it attempted to enact on the new world many years ago. Notably, it’s able to open star-shaped portals to both transport itself and summon projectiles from another dimension. Still, Kirby manages to defeat Fecto Elfilis and separate Elfilin from its body.
Knowing full well that it will soon revert to its incomplete form, Fecto Elfilis decides it would rather destroy the universe than go without its power. In a last-ditch effort to exact revenge, it flies up in the sky and opens a huge portal. It then summons Planet Popstar, Kirby’s home, to crash into the new world and completely destroy both of them. As the two planets rip each other’s gravity fields apart, Kirby uses Mouthful Mode on a big-rig truck to crash into Fecto Elfilis, destroying its physical form and saving both worlds.
So what does all this mean?
Fecto Elfilis is one of the coolest lore drops in the entire Kirby series because games that came before it actually hint at its existence! It’s not just that, though – several of the series’ past final bosses are explicitly implied to use its power. As we mentioned before, the ancients captured ID-F86 and learned how to extract its spacial teleportation power. From this, they formed planetary warp technology that eventually led them to Dream Land. You might recall that Kirby’s Return to Dream Land Deluxe released around a year after Kirby and the Forgotten Land. That’s on purpose, because Kirby and the Forgotten Land lore is heavily connected to that game.
Fecto Elfilis’ signature power is opening star-shaped portals. This means it can be reasonably assumed that any star-shaped portal you see in a Kirby game is a result of its power. The Lor Starcutter, Magolor’s ship, was made by the ancients and shoots out star-shaped portal to travel between dimensions. Furthermore, Star Dream, another presumed creation of the ancients, uses star-shaped portals in Kirby: Planet Robobot’s Meta Knightmare Returns to summon clones of powerful entities. Therefore, it can be reasonably implied that both the Lor Starcutter and Star Dream, as well as possibly (but not confirmed) Galactic Nova from Kirby Super Star, were crafted by the ancients using the power they stole from Fecto Elfilis.
Like we said, releasing Kirby’s Return to Dream Land Deluxe (a game that includes a lot of star-shaped portals) after Kirby and the Forgotten Land was almost certainly on purpose. Another interesting note is that the Lor Starcutter can open star-shaped portals to Another Dimension, which is where Magolor’s home land, Halcandra is located. At the beginning of Kirby and the Forgotten Land, Kirby is sucked into a portal created by ID-F86. Its interior looks very similar to (but is not confirmed to be) this same dimension. If the two are one and the same, that would imply Fecto Elfilis can either travel between any dimension it pleases or that it is somehow the origin of Another Dimension. Again, that last point isn’t confirmed — but there are still so many loose threads in the Kirby series that it wouldn’t be a super-surprising revelation.
Kirby and the Forgotten Land’s post-game lore
After clearing Kirby and the Forgotten Land’s main story, it’s revealed that Leongar survived the ordeal, but his soul was split apart inside a pocket dimension called Forgo Dreams. This is a dream world of sorts created by ID-F86, who is revealed to have survived its battle with Kirby by hiding away in this dimension instead. It’s not exactly clear how it survived, though in this section ID-F86 appears as a ghost-like creature and is trying to use Leongar’s body as its new physical form.
Kirby and Elfilin confront and defeat the possessed Leongar, and ID-F86 emerges in its spirit form prepared to fight the two. Before it can do so, however, an orange butterfly flies in and lands on its nose, consuming it and transforming it into Morpho Knight. Morpho Knight is currently one of the Kirby series’ greatest mysteries — it’d take a second post to completely describe everything we know about it. Regardless, Kirby is able to defeat Morpho Knight, and when he does, ID-F86 uses the last of its strength to absorb Morpho Knight’s power and flee. Kirby later encounters Chaos Elfilis, ID-F86’s final form, in the Colosseum’s Ultimate Cup Z challenge.
This is where Kirby and the Forgotten Land lore ends – for now. The game added a ton of depth to something as simple as star-shaped portals, which reframes previous games in the series with our new knowledge. If you’ve played Kirby Star Allies, you might remember the villain Hyness’ deranged rant that involved “science users” and “magic users”. His dialogue implies that the ancients used Fecto Elfilis’ power to achieve prosperity, whereas another group that existed at the time worshipped and used dark matter to achieve their own energy. The past few Kirby games’ final bosses have actually alternated between “science-based” and “dark matter-based”. Forgotten Land’s Fecto Elfilis is clearly science based, whereas Kirby Star Allies’ Void Termina is dark matter-based. Kirby: Planet Robobot’s Star Dream is definitely science-based since it is presumed to at least partially use ID-F86’s power, whereas Kirby: Triple Deluxe’s Queen Sectonia is technically darkness-based since she was corrupted by the Dimensional Mirror from Kirby and the Amazing Mirror.
If none of that made any sense to you, it’s definitely a good idea to play some other games in the Kirby series to brush up on lore. Kirby and the Forgotten Land added an overwhelming amount of lore to the series, so other games’ story additions might be a bit easier to understand. If you have any comments, thoughts, or theories on Kirby and the Forgotten Land lore, feel free to drop them below! It’s entirely possible that the next Kirby game shifts to focus on a darkness-based boss again to keep the pattern going. Or maybe we’ll get something all-new?
Kirby and the Forgotten Land is available now on Switch and the official site is located here. If you’re still playing the game, check out our list of Present Codes while you’re here.
