The Fortnite Island Is Getting Weird Again, As Season 3 Draws Near

Like last season did, Fortnite Chapter 5 Season 2 is about to wrap up with a big ambient event in battle royale--where some big changes will happen to the map while people are playing regular matches. This event should ramp up dramatically over the course of the final 10 days of the season, which concludes early morning on May 24, before the Fortnite Chapter 5 Season 3 start date.

The first stage of these changes is live now: The clouds above Mt. Olympus have turned dark, and are now constantly firing off bolts of lightning. It's not much just yet, though it's certainly ominous, but you can expect the situation to change regularly. For example: a few hours after the storm clouds appeared, the lightning charged up the statue enough that its eyes started glowing.

Story-wise, this event is the result of Medusa's questline that was added to the game in the last patch. In that quest, players had to render Zeus mortal and then kill him once and for all. But, of course, you can't just expect things to be normal after you do something like that. As the event ramps up, we'll get the real conclusion to this incursion by the Greek gods, as Fortnite shows them the door and ushers in Season 3.

Speaking of which, the biggest apparent Fortnite leak of the year has been the game's alleged 2024 roadmap, which shows key art for Season 3 that looks very post-apocalyptic and brown, with a focus on vehicular combat--does that sound like Furiosa Season to anybody else? Dataminers have apparently been able to access the full plan for this season finale event in the game files, and it looks like a big sandstorm is going to eventually roll through, so that points to the roadmap being accurate about Season 3.

Last season, this finale event took the form of that giant hand sticking out of the ground holding Pandora's Box, which the community had to work together to open over the course of several days--that weekend, it was common to see groups of players sitting on the box pickaxing the chains until the storm forced them to move or killed them. There's no indication thus far that there will be any sort of similar community effort involved with this season's capper.