Kirby Star-Crossed World’s new lore explained

The Kirby series is well-known for being easy to pick up and play, but it’s also well-known for having tons of “implied lore” that actually gets pretty deep when you dive in and look for story tidbits. The new Star-Crossed World DLC is no exception – even though it’s only a few hours long, it contains many new lore additions that tack on to everything that the base game already introduced back in 2022. Today, we’re covering all of the new story details Star-Crossed World adds to the franchise – so come back later if you haven’t finished the main story just yet.

For the purposes of this post, we’re going to assume you’re familiar with everything that’s happened in Kirby and the Forgotten Land. If you’re not, we actually explained everything early last year in an easy-to-read summary. In Star-Crossed World, a giant meteor falls down to the new world and causes the Fallen Star Volcano to rise up from underneath the ocean. It’s soon revealed that this meteor is, of course, a great evil – and Kirby and Elfilin are tasked with recovering the Starries. The Starries are planet protectors who seal evil creatures within crystals, and Kirby’s goal is to gather enough Starries to fully reseal the Star of Darkness that landed. At least, that’s what Kirby sees – we combed through tons of dialogue within Star-Crossed World to piece together what really happened.

Hundreds or possibly even thousands of years ago, the new world was presumably inhabited by the ancients, who are constantly referenced by the Kirby series but never actually seen. They built tons of cities and were very technologically advanced – much more so than Planet Popstar, which to this day has most of its nature left intact. This civilization passed down a legend of a falling meteor that would arrive on the planet and consume everything, but the new world’s people mostly dismissed this legend as a fantasy. One important figure in Star-Crossed World’s lore is Neichel, who is actually the singer of the Welcome to the New World theme you hear at the beginning and end of the base game.

According to obscure dialogue from Elfilin in Kirby’s house after beating Star-Crossed World (you have to talk to him many times in a row to see it), Fecto Elfilis was actually attracted to the new world because of Neichel’s singing – it recognized both hope and sadness, and the songs had “a profound effect” on it according to Elfilin. Regardless, Fecto Elfilis came to the forgotten land and began its invasion, but was eventually captured by the ancients. They then extracted Fecto Elfilis’ signature spacial teleportation abilities, which led to the ancients building all sorts of spaceships using that power. According to an in-game figure, the spaceships the ancients built are capable of warping to other galaxies. Neichel’s song, “Welcome to the New World”, was played on board the ship to make travelers feel safe. Neichel herself, however, chose to stay on the planet (where she presumably died, but that part is technically unconfirmed).

As you can see via the image above (credit to the Kirby Wiki for that one), the spaceships the ancients built look similar to the Lor Starcutter. More specifically, they look like the Lor Starcutter’s hull – we know that Magolor stole the Lor Starcutter in Kirby’s Return to Dream Land, so he’s almost certainly unconnected to the residents of the new world. Furthermore, there’s a track in the game called “Neichel’s Unfinished Track” that creates even more connections with Kirby’s Return to Dream Land and the Lor Starcutter, but what exactly it’s trying to imply is unknown. Its lyrics seem to describe the forgotten land after its residents left for a new world – “An empty theme park seems so sad”, “Tickets dance in a land of lies, remains of good dreams gone so wrong.” As we mentioned before, Neichel chose to stay on the planet, so this song could be a way of her expressing newfound loneliness that came about as a result of her decision. In terms of Return to Dream Land parallels, there’s this beeping noise throughout the song that actually plays during cutscenes in Return to Dream Land where Kirby is inside the Lor Starcutter.

Some fans actually think Neichel somehow is the Lor Starcutter. In Neichel’s Unfinished Track, she talks about not having white wings yet, but that not mattering soon because she’s going to “get [her] wish”. We know the Lor Starcutter is sentient, and it’s theoretically possible that Neichel could have somehow uploaded her consciousness to the ship so that she could live on after death. How this is logistically possible, however, is completely unknown. 

With all of that said, we can now get into Star-Crossed World’s most important lore: its final boss! As mentioned earlier, the forgotten land passed down a legend of a meteor that would fall to the planet and consume everything, but it was mostly dismissed as false. When Fecto Elfilis arrived, however, the ancients began to believe the rumor. Neichel also had a prophetic dream that led to her creating a new song about the meteor. It turns out, however, that Fecto Elfilis has an elder brother – Genwel Meteonelfilis – and after Fecto failed to successfully capture the forgotten land, Meteonelfilis was drawn to the planet. This led to the Star of Darkness falling to the surface at the beginning of Star-Crossed World. Of course, Kirby winds up defeating him, and he’s then re-sealed by the Starries and sent back into outer space.

At the end of the game, Elfilin also guesses that he was once sealed by Starries in the distant past before eventually arriving in the forgotten land. Well-hidden dialogue from him also reveals that he thinks Kirby could befriend Genwel Meteonelfilis if they ever meet again, and goes on to guess that even he has to have some kindness within his heart. As a side note, Genwel is Fecto’s elder brother, and the two were supposedly born at the far corner of the galaxy. This does imply that Elfilis could be their species name, and if you look closely at the Star of Darkness you can actually see a form inside that resembles Fecto Elfilis’ split form that resides in Lab Discovera. Neat!

As for the Starries, we don’t get a ton of information on them other than that they seal great evil when they gather in numbers. One of the figurines states that they “once crystallized a fiend capable of destroying the entire galaxy”, and that’s heavily implied to be Galacta Knight. Supposedly, the Japanese version of the same figure says that the Starries “sealed the strongest evil in the galaxy” (heavily paraphrased), so that figure makes a more clear connection to Galacta Knight than the English version does. Galacta Knight himself does not appear in Star-Crossed World, despite many fan theories predicting he would. Interestingly, the final boss theme contains small snippets of Galacta Knight’s battle theme, as well as a small snippet of the Song of Supplication from Kirby Star Allies.

Unlike Fecto Elfilis, Genwel Meteonelfilis seems to resemble Void Termina from Kirby Star Allies in an odd way. After defeating his second phase, the part of his body that resembles Fecto Elfilis fades away in exactly the same manner as Void Termina’s does in the final battle of Kirby Star Allies. This leaves his true form – a circular eyeball with a pattern that looks almost exactly like Void’s true form. The Kirby series has a lot of circular eyeball bosses, so this could just be a coincidence. But as you can tell, Star-Crossed World introduces a lot of lore that could be a coincidence, or could be trying to imply something – and it’s often very difficult to tell which is which!

What do you think of Star-Crossed World’s new lore? There are definitely a ton of things to speculate about, and it’s probably going to be a while until we get our next brand-new mainline Kirby game. In the meantime, you can read or read our review of the new DLC.