It’s fair to say that Bangalore has enjoyed a starring role in recent seasonal stories in Apex Legends. While she often does a good job of hiding it, her life has been scarred by trauma, family deaths, and the end of a war that left her and her brother stranded in the Outlands a long way from home.
Recent lore bites in the past few seasons have focused on her fractured relationship with Loba, her partnership with Wraith, and the endless search for her long-missing brother. But it all comes crashing down with The Williams Sendoff story event that launched alongside the Warriors collection event last week and concluded today. It’s the second in a new line of “bite-sized” stories in the game, following Old Ways, New Dawn in season 10.
Chapter one
It’s been years since Bangalore’s search for her brother Jackson began. But with the help of Wraith, who she began teaming up with in The Legacy Antigen comic, it seems that there’s finally a lead and the truth is close. In chapter one of The Williams Sendoff, Bangalore heads to the Firing Range to reflect on how hard the search has been mentally for her. Here, players can complete the Scout of Action challenge and acquire a tracker for their highest score. Unfortunately for Bangalore, the truth that Wraith has discovered is the worst possible outcome. Jackson Williams is dead and has been for about five years.
Bangalore has had two objectives throughout her time in the Apex Games: finding her brother and getting back home alongside him to the planet Gridiron. She doesn’t want to believe Wraith at first, saying “maybe it isn’t him,” but Wraith gives all the evidence she needs to realize the search for her brother has been for nothing. The records found in a morgue on Solace are indeed Jackson. All Bangalore can do is cry, letting her emotions get the better of her for the first time since Apex launched back in 2019 and finding a breaking point she didn’t know she had.
Chapter two
Chapter two saw Bangalore attempt to begin processing the sudden wave of grief, returning to the Firing Range once more to complete Jackson’s Bow-Out challenge. The two siblings were incredibly competitive, trying to beat each other at everything, and Bangalore reminisced about one specific contest. Jackson knocked her elbow so that she missed an arrow and the scheming brother went on to beat her by one. In a bittersweet moment of justice, players train their Bocek Bow on a moving target and beat Jackson’s record to give Bangalore a brief chance at closure (and acquire another highest score tracker for their banner).
The second chapter concludes with a radio play showing a flashback to when Bangalore and Jackson first arrived in the Outlands. Jackson tries to cheer Bangalore up with red velvet cake, a dessert they used to share back home and a recipe with a nostalgic place in their memories. But the gesture seems lost on Bangalore.
“It reminds me of grandma too much. Of home,” she says. “And you’re acting like you don’t care that we’ll never see them again.” Bangalore’s loyalty to the idea of home at all costs is unsurprising considering her reasons for being in the Apex Games today, but Jackson is less convinced. “Letting go of something doesn’t mean losing it,” he responds. “I know I won’t see her again but I know I’ll never forget her.”
Chapter three
With Jackson truly gone and Revenant’s offer last season to take her to Gridiron looming overhead, Bangalore has one final stop in The Williams Sendoff: Loba. Despite an initially frosty first impression, Bangalore and Loba slowly shifted from being rivals to close friends between The Broken Ghost in season five up until The Legacy Antigen in season nine.
But it went deeper than that, and it appeared they were on the cusp of making the jump from just friends into a loving relationship. Dialogue from The Legacy Antigen plays in the backdrop as players complete the Smoke Show challenge in the Firing Range. Loba attempted to lure Bangalore into a date, but a moment of miscommunication saw Loba overhear Bangalore say they were “just friends” to Rampart and everything fell apart. This is despite Bangalore later confessing to Wraith that she loved Loba, too.
Things had been getting worse between them since then, with Valkyrie becoming Loba’s rebound and Bangalore becoming distanced from the Translocating Thief. With Jackson dead and the failing relationship with Loba, the ex-IMC soldier sees leaving the Outlands and returning to Gridiron as the only worthwhile option she had left. So she sets up a meeting with Loba to break the news.
“This is a joke, right? Gridiron is 20 years away and you hate flying,” is Loba’s first reaction to hearing Bangalore’s plan. The laughter quickly stops when Bangalore stresses that it isn’t and that it was Revenant, the Simulacrum assassin who killed Loba’s parents, who offered to take her. Loba’s light demeanor quickly turns to anger. “El demonio? He’s going to find his head, and you’re leaving with him?” It was in season seven that we discovered Loba had teleported Revenant’s source code, the root of his mortality, to Gridiron and now Bangalore was unintentionally aiding him in getting it back.
Any hopes of a warm goodbye or Loba offering Bangalore a potential reason to stay evaporated at that moment and one of the only bridges Bangalore had built in the Outlands was burnt. Revenant asks Bangalore if her soul-searching is done and Bangalore says she’s ready to leave.
Finale
The finale becomes accessible immediately after completing chapter three, loading you into a unique instance of Storm Point. Certain that her path of grief-stricken self-destruction has meant there’s nothing left for her in the Outlands, Bangalore makes one final stop before saying goodbye to it to give herself a Williams Sendoff in memory of Jackson. She cracks open a beer and looks out to Storm Point’s surrounding oceans as she gives a brief eulogy.
“You don’t need to find your way home, because you’re already there,” she admits, accepting that Jackson fit in best with the people of the Outlands even if her eyes were always set on returning to Gridiron.
She throws a bottle cap out to sea and the story concludes with Bangalore’s uncertain future in the Apex Games awaiting resolution in future seasons.
Published: Apr 4, 2022 04:04 pm