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The newest character to Apex Legends seems to have contradicted what fans have come to know about what happens when Legends are eliminated.
Fans of Apex Legends are gearing up for the arrival of the game’s twelfth season, dropping February 8, 2o22, and developers Respawn Entertainment have played their usual hand in drumming up hype. As part of the newest season, the game has added yet another Legend for players to unlock and use in the Apex Games, Mad Maggie. But, as well as excitement, details about the new character have also had some fans scratching their heads.
Since launching back in spring 2019, Respawn has poured in a ton of lore in Apex Legends. What started out as a collection of eight characters has grown into a vast universe, told from content in the gameplay, delivered through story quests, included as part of unlockables and told through extra online content. With the newest batch of official lore straight from the developers to do with Mad Maggie’s backstory, it seems to have thrown off what fans have come to know about what happens when Legends die.
What Fans Came To Know About Death Boxes
It had been a mysterious question that plagued Apex Legends fans for quite some time in the early part of the game’s life. The first few official trailers saw characters getting blown away with explosions and headshots, only to appear in the next trailer unscathed. It became just another piece of typical game logic that fans brushed off. But, as the game developed and Respawn committed to making their Legends have interconnected relationships, and included pieces of information that explained just what happened with character eliminations in the game.
In Apex Legends, when a player is killed, they drop a Death Box, a large crate containing all the loot they were carrying. Players can search these death boxes, and for those belonging to teammates, they can claim Respawn Banners to bring their comrades back to life. Respawn sprinkled in revelations about how these worked in-world first through voice lines. The first hint came in Season 3’s Christmas-themed event, where an unlockable Octane kill quip referenced a respawn chamber.
More references have been made to characters respawning in the Apex Games, leading to a belief that, in-world, the battle royale is much more a form of entertainment than gladiatorial combat that ends in legitimate death. This explained why later seasons saw the characters becoming friendlier with each other, making the Apex Games a friendly, albeit violent, competition. As such, these Death Boxes were seen by fans as stand-ins for fallen Legends, with the characters being taken back to one of these theoretical respawn chambers via some kind of teleportation.
Mad Maggie Adds A Wrinkle The Further Complicates the Established Lore
The lore surrounding Death Boxes had already been tested before the arrival of Mad Maggie. Back in the lead-up to Season 4, Respawn pulled a bait and switch when they teased fans with a potential Legend, Forge, who was definitively killed off by Revenant, who joined the game’s roster instead. What complicated things was when Forge’s death box could be found in the map for a short time. Forge’s box was odd: a unique, red box that was dropped where he died, but very clearly his. That box has since disappeared, but Forge hasn’t been seen since, implying he’s still dead.
Maggie’s new lore is much more complex. Maggie’s inclusion in the Apex Games is much different from the rest of the cast, being the first Legend to be forced into competing. Tried for her crimes as a freedom fighter against The Syndicate, Maggie has been sentenced to death. The mysterious Dr. Silva saves her from a firing squad, however, and is instead sent to compete in the Apex Games with the express intent for the other Legends to be her executioners instead.
From what has already been established about character deaths in the battle royale and the lore’s explanation for death boxes, Maggie’s sentence appears to fly in the face of all of that. Those who sent her into the Games to die would surely know that the Legends don’t face a permanent end on the battlefield, or will her death box signal a canonical end? Perhaps there is more story to be revealed in the coming days, but for now, fans are yet again left to ponder how death boxes actually work.
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