Lore recap: Everything that happened in Apex Legends in 2020

From an immortal murder robot to an astrophysicist who wants to research time travel, 2020 has brought in a lot of new additions to Apex Legends.

The battle royale started exploring its lore with even more depth this year and each season since Fortune’s Favor has brought in a monthslong quest that advances the narrative in the universe. Text or comics alike, the quests have contributed to tell a story that was for the most part confined to animated shorts, trailers, or teasers.

With the Frontier getting more and more detail each season, it’s hard to keep track of all the narratives that are taking place in Apex. Here’s what happened this year.

Revenant’s arrival

The Apex Games are the most brutal bloodsport in the Frontier and season four brought in its most bloodthirsty competitor yet. Season four introduced Revenant, the Synthetic Nightmare, to the Apex Games—and his arrival brought along important elements that’d change the Apex universe.

Revenant’s revenge story is tied to Hammond Robotics, a morally dubious corporation that turned him into a simulacrum: a human mind uploaded into a robotic body. Hammond Robotics gave him the illusion of humanity from the get-go, programming him to see his human image wherever he went, and employed him as a 300-year-old, mechanic assassin. Each time he’d die, his memory would be wiped and he’d return to a new body—at least until his systems malfunctioned.

A glitch in his programming forced him to remember 300 years of gruesome deaths. Revenant turned against Hammond Robotics, killing everyone remotely related to the company (RIP Forge) as a means to wreak havoc and make them pay.

Revenant exposed the strong ties between the Mercenary Syndicate and Hammond Robotics and drew a place for a new company in the greater narrative of Apex—one that was vital to advance the next season.

Revenant did much more than just go after Hammond Robotics, however. The season four launch trailer showed him assassinating con artists Marcos and Alanza Andrade but sparing their child—who returned as Apex‘s 13th legend.

Loba’s revenge

Loba entered the Apex Games with a bang—literally. In the season five launch trailer, Loba found an underground facility that housed Revenant’s “source code,” the source of his immortality. She triggered the security systems and caused an explosion that blew up Skull Town and the emergency protocol teleported Revenant’s head to Psamathe, far away from her grasp.

Loba’s place in the story started off as Revenant’s archnemesis, but the season five quest made her the architect of a plot that had vital repercussions for other legends. In The Broken Ghost, Loba orchestrated a ploy to recover nine pieces of a mysterious relic at the behest of Hammond Robotics.

The Broken Ghost

Although Loba was the poster girl for Fortune’s Favor, season five shared more lore about the rest of the legends. The quest kicked off with Loba’s search for revenge but ended with her as Revenant’s possible savior—and brought the rest of the legends into the mix.

Loba tricked the legends into collecting nine pieces of a mysterious artifact, but she wasn’t telling the whole story. The characters discovered that she made a deal with Hammond Robotics: the company would surrender the location of Revenant’s source code in Psamathe in exchange for the artifact. Despite the connection to Hammond, the legends assembled the relic to find a familiar face for Titanfall 2 players.

The artifact isn’t a “what,” but a “who”: the simulacrum known as Ash. She leaves the legends with a series of cryptic messages that mention Branthium, Darion and Duardo, and Olympus—a hint of what was to come.

Before Ash’s ominous hints fell into place, however, The Broken Ghost advanced the story of several legends. Loba’s desire to destroy Revenant could be the simulacrum’s salvation since he just wants his existence to end. Crypto and Wattson’s budding relationship was cut short after Caustic framed him as the mole (who happened to be Caustic himself). Bangalore and Loba started letting their guard down around each other. Several other legends also played a role in the quest.

The Old Ways

Despite the enthralling storyline between Revenant and Loba, the past year wasn’t just about new legends. Respawn released an episode of Stories from the Outlands called The Old Ways, which narrated the story of Bloodhound and gave fans an in-game event with the same name.

The animated short showed the Meltdown incident in Talos that killed Bloodhound’s parents and turned World’s Edge into a desolate wasteland. It explained how an orphan in a small village could challenge tradition to become Blooth Hoondr. It’s a 10-minute deep dive into the origin story of one of the most mysterious legends in the game.

After the cinematic went live, Respawn hosted an event called The Old Ways during season four and added Bloodhound’s Trials as a Town Takeover in World’s Edge. The arena housed important items from the Technological Tracker’s past, including a Charge Rifle and Artur’s armor.

Rampart and Sheila

Season six took a break from the storyline between Loba and Revenant to introduce the newest competitor: weapons expert Ramya “Rampart” Parekh. Rampart joined the Apex Games through a personal invitation by the Apex Games commissioner who found her inside the burning remnants of her store.

Rampart moved into the Paradise Lounge as Mirage’s roommate during the season six quest. Not much is known about her so far, but in addition to being a famous modder in the Outlands, she made a name for herself in the underground fighting circuit—which makes her a good contender in the Apex Games.

Blisk and Ash reappear

Despite the addition of Rampart, Apex‘s sixth season pulled two characters from Titanfall 2 closer to the spotlight. Kuben Blisk, the Apex Games commissioner, reappeared after a long absence and the legends learned what happened to Ash after the events of The Broken Ghost.

After the legends rebuilt Ash, Hammond Robotics took some codes out of her memory bank and dumped her in an alley in Solace. Pathfinder took her in while she booted back up, remembering some fragments from her previous life.

Blisk located Ash and revealed he was the one who hid her remnants by tossing them into space. At the end of the quest, Ash groups up with Blisk again after he says that “an old friend” of Ash’s was back—but without explicitly saying who that is.

Horizon

Season seven introduced one of the oldest legends yet: Horizon, who’s 37 years old—“give or take another 88 years,” as her official bio reads. Her backstory is one of loss, not just of a loved one but also of an entire lifetime.

Nearly a century before the events of Apex, the thriving city of Olympus faced an unprecedented energy crisis. Dr. Mary Somers (and her assistant, Dr. Reid) embarked on a journey to find an alternative energy source hidden deep in space: a resource called Branthium.

Dr. Somers separated from her assistant to attempt to collect the Branthium located on the outskirts of a black hole. After securing the resource, Dr. Reid decoupled her ship and left her stranded in space. Dr. Somers was there for under a year, but the relative passing of time meant that over 80 years had elapsed while she was away.

She returned to an entirely different landscape altogether. Olympus was evacuated due to a gravitational anomaly and became the new arena for the Apex Games. The life she had when she departed long faded away—including her son, Newton, who presumably passed away of old age.

Olympus was the reason she lost everything, but it’s also where she has a shot at getting her life back. Dr. Somers adopted the name “Horizon” and joined the Apex Games to fund her research on time travel so she can reunite with her son. Now, she fights on the ruins of the very city that was once her home.

“A wee bit of betrayal”

Despite being stranded in space for decades, Horizon isn’t completely isolated from the rest of the Apex universe. Her story has a series of callbacks to Ash and the finale of the season five quest

Ash’s cryptic monologue at the end of The Broken Ghost included a series of mysterious themes that turned out to be important story hooks that link her to Horizon. One of Ash’s voice lines mentions that “all roads lead to Branthium,” the mysterious mineral that both Horizon and Dr. Reid set out to find. But that was just the beginning.

In one of the season seven teasers, Horizon mentioned “a wee bit of betrayal” while stranded in space. The quote is a word-by-word match with one of Ash’s voice lines at the end of The Broken Ghost: “Just a wee bit of betrayal before breakfast, eh dearie?” The passage becomes even more telling after taking into account that “dearie” is one of Horizon’s catchphrases.

Several of Ash’s quotes also start to make sense in the greater scheme of things and hint that she could have lived as Dr. Reid before turning into a simulacrum. In Family Portrait, Darion Che pointed out that Dr. Reid would call out to him and Duardo Silva when the two went to visit Peck Labs—and one of Ash’s voice lines in The Broken Ghost was “Darion! Duardo!”

What now?

It’s been an eventful year for Apex, but there are still a series of narratives to be explored in the next year. The ending of The Broken Ghost doesn’t reveal whether Loba plans to help Revenant die his final death, for instance, and the return of Blisk and Ash could mean another handful of narratives close to Titanfall may develop next year. If Ash really is Dr. Reid, too, it could have serious implications for Horizon’s story—not to mention the new quests and legends that will release next year.