To many hardcore Kirby fans, Kirby Star Allies is one of the more middling entries in the series. Though it isn’t bad by any means, its simple level design and less-than-fantastic performance drew criticism when it released in 2018. Thankfully, the game is no slouch when it comes to lore – it adds a ton of it to the Kirby franchise as a whole. Today, we’re recapping Kirby Star Allies lore and explaining everything you need to know about what it adds to the series.
Kirby Star Allies lore round-up
Kirby Star Allies begins with a hooded character named Hyness, who is performing a ritual deep inside a fortress in outer space. The ritual involves the Jamba Heart – a big, purple, crystallized heart pierced by four spears decorated with pink hearts. Unfortunately, Hyness makes an error in the ritual, which causes the Jamba Heart to lift off and shatter into tons of smaller hearts. These smaller hearts then scatter across the galaxy, and many of them wind up landing on Planet Popstar. The purple Jamba Hearts wind up infecting and possessing King Dedede, Meta Knight, Whispy Woods, and more. Kirby, on the other hand, winds up absorbing one of the pink hearts that decorated the spear sealing the original Jamba Heart. This gives Kirby the ability to spawn Friend Hearts, which allows him to recruit enemies to his cause. After gaining this ability, Kirby notices that King Dedede is stealing tons of food from Dream Land. This kicks off Kirby Star Allies lore, as he then sets off to find out what’s going on (and maybe get a few pieces of cake for himself along the way).
When Kirby arrives at Dedede’s castle, he defeats him and learns that the king was possessed by a Jamba Heart all along. Afterward, a huge intergalactic fortress lands on Popstar, which prompts Kirby and friends to explore it. Inside, he meets the Three Mage-Sisters: Francisca, Flamberge, and Zan Partizanne. They’ve arrived to reclaim some of the lost Jamba Hearts, and all three of the sisters lose to Kirby in combat. After Kirby defeats Zan Partizanne, she stabs the core of the fortress with her spear, causing it to crumble. Kirby and friends manage to escape before the fortress crumbles on top of them, however, and from here they embark on an outer space adventure to storm the base of the enemy’s operations.
Kirby eventually makes it to The Divine Terminus, where he finds Hyness once again attempting to perform a ritual with the Jamba Heart. Zan Partizanne appears to fight Kirby and prevent him from interrupting the ritual, but she fails to subdue him and asks for Hyness’ help. Rather than helping, Hyness goes on a crazed rant (which we’ll talk about later, because there are important details within) and uses the unconscious forms of the Three Mage-Sisters as physical weapons against Kirby’s crew. Once he’s defeated, he offers up all three sisters plus himself to the Jamba Heart as a sacrifice. The sacrifice is successful, and this is where Kirby Star Allies lore gets complicated! The Jamba Heart is enveloped in darkness as it is reborn into the Destroyer of Worlds, Void Termina.
Kirby Star Allies’ final boss, explained
In order to take on this new threat, Kirby upgrades his Warp Star into the Star Allies Sparkler. Void Termina is a gigantic masked being with a huge assortment of interesting attacks. For one, it can summon Ultra Swords from Kirby’s Return to Dream Land and then imbue them with fire, electricity, or ice. After Void Termina’s first phase has taken enough damage, it falls to the ground and its mask comes off, revealing a portal in place of its face. Kirby and friends are absorbed inside, where they find Void Termina’s core plus the unconscious Three Mage-Sisters and Hyness inside. Kirby and company defeat the core, which expels them back outside. Void Termina’s shell then grows wings, and its attacks begin to change. It can now summon near-perfect replicas of the Master Crown from Kirby’s Return to Dream Land (the artifact that possessed Magolor and led to the events of the game), implying it either created the Master Crown or is somehow linked to them. Kirby uses the Star Allies Sparkler to defeat this form of Void Termina, and is then once again absorbed into its body. Once inside, it’s revealed that Void Termina’s core is actually a circular, blob-like entity that has Kirby’s face! We’ll go into what this means later. Once Kirby defeats Void Termina’s core, he’s expelled from its body once again. Void Termina’s shell disappears, leaving only its Kirby-like core to attack. Kirby and Void then have a laser battle, which Kirby wins. To finish the job, Kirby seemingly summons spiritual forms of all his allies from memory to attack and then destroy Void Termina. From there, Kirby and friends escape the galaxy-sized explosion that ensues and then head home for a nap.
There’s a lot to unpack here. Void Termina is the main reason why Kirby Star Allies lore is so complicated, because we don’t really know what it is. What we do know is that Void isn’t inherently evil – it’s existed for “aeons” and only turned out evil because Hyness, its summoner, had an evil heart. In further pause screen descriptions, we learn that Void exists in every dimension, and that its existence in another dimension led to the transcribing of its legend in Kirby’s world. Things get even more complicated, however, when we factor in an official Nintendo Dream interview from a few years back.
According to the interview, Void Termina’s vessel is set up to be the embodiment of the kind of energy inside the Jamba Heart. Given that one single heart is enough to transform King Dedede into a monster, imagine what a ton of them can do. That’s why Void Termina appeared at the level of power it did. More interesting, however, is what the interview says about Void’s true form – the one that resembles Kirby. Apparently, this isn’t necessarily because Kirby and Void are related. Instead, it’s because Void Termina spit out Hyness (whose evil heart was influencing it) prior to taking on its Kirby-like form. After spitting out Hyness, it lost a bit of the evil influence that gave rise to its form. It looked at Kirby, “felt something, and started to remember his face”. It’s also important to note that Void Termina is the only entity in Kirby Star Allies that can be damaged by Friend Hearts. According to the interview, this is because the Friend Heart has the sealing power originally present in the four spears. Given Void Termina was originally summoned by the Jamba Heart, it makes sense that the power of the spears that sealed it would cause damage.
A lot of YouTube videos and the like might tell you that Kirby is implied to be a reincarnated god. This technically isn’t disproven, but it’s not proven, either. The interview does clearly state that Void Termina was simply mimicking Kirby’s face. The two could still be related in some way, but we’re kind of lacking in information. Much of Void’s identity has been left to the imagination, and given how short Void Termina’s lifespan was, we don’t really know much about its true abilities, either. It’s sort of doubtful that we’ll see Void again – at least, not in the form it last appeared. Some more pause screen descriptions do imply that Void could one day be reborn as a friend. Who knows?
Miscellaneous lore tidbits
Most Kirby Star Allies lore is centered around Void Termina, but there are a few other tidbits, too. Let’s start with Hyness, the cultist who summoned Void Termina in the first place. Apparently, he found each of the Three Mage-Sisters just as they were about to die or be injured. Hyness found Francisca freezing in a harsh blizzard, Flamberge moments away from succumbing to flames, and Zan Partizanne had been struck by a thunderbolt. That’s also how their powers originated – Hyness somehow bestowed each of them with their elemental abilities. After meeting the Three Mage-Sisters, Hyness apparently became obsessed with the legend of Void Termina, which caused his heart to become weak.
Earlier, we mentioned that Hyness goes on a crazy rant before his battle. In-game, this rant happens very quickly, and it’s difficult to discern specific details from it in real time. When you take a step back and read everything, though, it paints an interesting picture. According to Hyness, he’s part of a clan that either worships or uses the power of darkness (most likely Dark Matter from Kirby’s Dream Land 2, 3, and Kirby 64). This clan was affiliated with another group of people who preferred using science instead. At the time Kirby Star Allies was released, we didn’t know who these science-users were. Thanks to the lore in Kirby and the Forgotten Land, however, we now know they were likely the ancients, a group that used Fecto Elfilis’ spacial teleportation powers to travel to Planet Popstar. It’s also heavily implied that the ancients built the Galactic Nova from Kirby Super Star, as well as Star Dream from Kirby: Planet Robobot.
Also according to Hyness, the ancients eventually betrayed his clan. They also erased all records of dark matter and its users from history books. Hyness claims that the dark matter clan also put a stop to a “galactic crisis”, though he doesn’t give any more details than that. After the main story of Kirby Star Allies comes to a close, players are able to play Heroes in Another Dimension, a postgame mode that adds a little bit more lore to the game (and is also considered canon). Kirby and friends collect Friend Hearts throughout several levels, and then battle Corrupt Hyness at the end of the mode. If enough Friend Hearts were collected, Kirby could befriend Hyness with a giant Friend Heart, putting an end to his evil. If Kirby collects all of the Friend Hearts the mode has to offer, he can also befriend the Three Mage-Sisters and recruit them as a Dream Friend.
There’s one major thing we haven’t covered yet: Morpho Knight, who appears in a side mode. Morpho Knight’s lore is actually so complicated that we’ll need a whole separate post for it. Kirby Star Allies lore also relates to the spin-off games involving Gem Apples, which is enough for another separate post.
In the meantime, what are your thoughts on Kirby Star Allies and its lore? What do you think Void Termina actually is? Feel free to drop your thoughts or headcanons below.
