Disney’s $1.5 billion investment in Epic Games’ Fortnite is starting to take shape. The battle royale game had a special showcase at this weekend’s D23 Expo (also streamed in Fortnite, of course) that revealed an upcoming season event and tons of skins.
Chapter 5, Season 4: Absolute Doom, launching on August 16, sees Doctor Doom, the longtime Marvel villain, as a new big bad. He opens Pandora’s Box, coating the map in green fog. He was also recently announced as the next grand foe in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and is set to be played by Iron Man himself, Robert Downey Jr.
The cinematic trailer, which you can watch above, features a bunch of Marvel characters, including a whole batch of X-Men like Cyclops, Cable, and Colossus. The skins are a bit more varied. The Gwenpool skin will be unlocked right away, but you can also get War Machine, Emma Frost, Mysterio, and Shuri as Black Panther, along with the Fortnite-specific Peelverine and Captain Jonesy. You can also see a Meowscles Sabretooth in the trailer, although it’s not on the official skin list at the time of this writing.
Since this is a Doctor Doom-centric event, there’s a Doom skin that you can unlock via battle pass quests this September.
We know little else about Absolute Doom right now, but following D23 on Monday, Epic Games started teasing the map, which is coated in green fog. Eagle-eyed Fortnite players can really zoom in and see that some areas have been hit harder than others.
Every place has a story. And every story is undiscovered… for now 😉
Help us out @Marvel? pic.twitter.com/WaDrhm06BF
— Fortnite (@FortniteGame) August 12, 2024
There are lot more Disney skins coming to Fortnite later this year. First up is a group of Disney villains this fall: Cruella de Vil, Captain Hook, and Maleficent. Then we’re set to get the first Pixar characters — Mr. Incredible, Elastigirl, and Frozone — also this fall.
Finally, there’s Star Wars, because there’s always Star Wars. We’ve had Star Wars in Fortnite before, and we didn’t get any details about specific skins or additions, but the trailer showed IG-11 and Moff Gideon from The Mandalorian, along with Grogu Back Bling (a previous version was available during Season 5).
When it was first announced that Disney was investing in the battle royale in February, we saw concept art that depicted multiple Disney universes inside the game, similar to one of the company’s theme parks. There hasn’t been any update on these plans just yet, but we can assume that the partnership will go beyond just some more fun skins and crossover events.
