The best Fortnite live events, ranked
If you’ve never dived into Fortnite before, then it may come as a surprise to you that the game features some rather hefty lore thanks to frequent live events. These are where something happens to the main Fortnite island, and the entire community can gather to participate in a story unfurling right in front of them.
Exactly what happens is different every time, but it always creates a buzz in the community and can dramatically change the face of Fortnite afterward. With Chapter 4’s finale event, The Big Bang happening soon, we’ve put together a ranking of the very best live events Fortnite has ever held.
The Meteor – Chapter 1 Season 3
Epic Games
This isn’t the grandest of events, but it was the first time anything like this happened in Fortnite. In the sky, a flash of something appeared one day and slowly seemed to be getting closer and closer. Epic didn’t say anything on the matter, and so the community got to speculating. The belief was that the meteor was headed for Tilted Towers, and Epic fuelled the flames by adding watchtowers around the POI in an update.
In the end, it touched down somewhere else, destroying the nearby terrain, and from it emerged The Visitor, the first character in a faction known as The Seven, who would soon come to dominate Fortnite storylines.
Kevin the Cube – Chapter 1 Season 5
Epic Games
Arguably the first Fortnite event to truly go viral, one day in Paradise Palms, a giant purple cube appeared. It wasn’t clear what it was, what it wanted, or what players could do with it. Then it started to move. It could crush players or simply bounce them away as it traveled around the island gathering six runes. People didn’t know what to make of it, but they liked the cube, with it being nicknamed “Kevin” by the community at large.
It reached its final destination of Loot Lake and slowly began to sink into it, turning the surface bouncy. The next couple of seasons would cover the consequences of this, but this long-lasting event captured everyone’s imagination in a big way.
The Unvaulting – Chapter 1 Season 8
Epic Games
If you’ve ever wondered why an item being removed from Fortnite is referred to as it being “vaulted”, this is why. A strange vault appeared on the Fortnite island, and if you were lucky, sometimes you would be able to open it if you got clear.
Inside the vault was the Zero Point, a mysterious entity with immense power, and also maybe the energy of all life in the universe – Fortnite lore is sometimes unclear. Alongside it were all the items and weapons that had been removed from Fortnite up until this point, and players were able to cast their votes on what things they wanted to return in the future.
The Final Showdown – Chapter 1 Season 9
Epic Games
This event the Fortnite team really went all out, giving all players Jetpacks so that they could fly through the air and witness a fight between a Kaiju-like monster and a giant robot. Known as the Monster and the Mecha, the two fired various shots at each other in the build-up to the event before eventually engaging in an all-out war.
It ended when the Mecha pulled out a giant sword that had been hiding under a statue all season, slayed the Monster, flossed – because of course it did – and then flew away. While it wasn’t the most interactive of events, it was very cool to watch.
The End – Chapter 1 Season X
Epic Games
This event felt like a huge deal when it first happened. The idea of Fortnite “Chapters” hadn’t been introduced yet, and no one had any idea what was happening.
In short, the events of the Final Showdown left the Zero Point extremely unstable, and rifts appeared all over the Fortnite island, causing it to slowly tear itself apart. After a while of various rifts appearing and locations being ravaged, the entire island was sucked into a massive rift caused by the Zero Point.
Even the game’s main menu was sucked away, leaving players unable to do anything than stare at this black hole. Eventually, a new cutscene played, showcasing a brand new island, as well as new mechanics what what would now be known as Fortnite Chapter 2.
The Devourer of Worlds – Chapter 2 Season 4
Epic Games
Chapter 2 features a lot of wild events, from spy thrillers to multiversal calamities, but we can’t talk about all of them.
Instead, this event – and all of C2S4 – were dedicated to the game’s crossover with Marvel comics. As well Marvel characters dominating that season’s Battle Pass, the major event for the season was a hue battle against Galactus. After rising from the water on the edge of the island, Galactus destroyed Helicarrier 64 and sent all players flying off into the rift – until Iron Man saved them.
From there, players were thrown into a Battle Bus equipped with laser weaponry and were sent into a Star Fox-style battle against Galactus. The spectacle of this event alone was huge, but for a surprise unique gameplay mechanics like that to appear was something else. Heroes like Iron Man and Wolverine helped the players out until eventually a rift was enough to send Galactus away.
It’s worth noting that the events of this event – and thus the entire Fortnite universe – is canon to the Marvel comics.
Operation Skyfire– Chapter 4 Season 3
Epic Games
You know this event is a wild ride when our starting point is an alien mothership beaming up chunks of the island.
Once the players had been beamed inside the spaceship it was time for thriller action, as they had to get through the mothership undetected to arm the bombs secretly planted inside the chunks of the island. Before that can happen though, the players are caught and we see the shocking return of Kevin, the giant purple cube from C1S6.
After disabling the cube the players were then betrayed by their ally Dr Slone and left for dead on the soon-to-explode spaceship – that is until they reactivate the cube, as an ally this time. What follows is a mad dash through the ship and the bombs’ timer ticks down. The ship explodes and the players escape, but it causes loads of purple cubes to fall to the island, causing chaos in the process.
What a rush.
The End – Chapter 2 Season 8
Epic Games
Chapter 2 had to come to an end eventually, and this event uses the same name as the original finale event to give it the same weight.
After a golden cube went around Fortnite’s island activating six other purple cubes, eventually the Cube Queen emerged and attempted to open a portal containing a whole fleet of spaceships like the one players destroyed in Operation Skyfire. This climactic battle sees players shooting down strange spacecraft and fighting off creatures from another reality as a team – also Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson is there for unclear reasons.
It all ends when the players manage to trigger an event that causes the entire landmass of the island to completely flip, defeating the Cube Queen and revealing the brand new Chapter 3 map on its reverse side.
Collision – Chapter 3 Season 2
Epic Games
Chapter 3 was an unexpectedly short Fortnite season, but there was still time to get a couple of good live events in.
After spending all season waging a war against the IO as they slowly build the Collider – a giant doomsday device – this was the final battle to end it all. It sees the return of the Mecha from C1S9, as this mech has to battle its way to the Collider while being bombarded by the IO’s military forces, with players inside controlling its weapons systems.
It all ends in a chaotic gun battle to the Collider’s core before finally witnessing the demise of the villainous Dr Slone, eventually destroying the Collider and defeating the IO once and for all…as far as we know.
Fracture – Chapter 3 Season 4
Epic Games
Until the Big Bang was announced this was the last Fortnite live event, putting an end to Chapter 3 and revealing the mysteries of the strange Chrome substance that had been slowly infecting the island all season.
After failing to defeat the Herald and allowing the Chrome to dissolve the entire island, players are thrown into the strange space between worlds. There they must complete a series of parkour challenges, along with a variety of side tasks to slowly reassemble fragments of past Fortnite islands.
It wasn’t quite as action-packed as previous events, but it was a nice trip down memory lane that took elements of old island to eventually form the ew map for Chapter 4.
