Baby Yoda & the Mandalorian join the fight in Fortnite’s world-mashing new season

If you’ve been wondering how Fortnite could possibly one-up its epic Marvel storyline now that Galactus is defeated and Chapter 2, Season 4 is in the books, this is the way — and it’s coming from the galaxy far, far away.

Yep, the Mandalorian and Baby Yoda have warped the Razor Crest straight into the world’s most popular battle royale game to kick things off for Season 5, leading a new multiverse-mixing character lineup that promises to follow up on the island-shaking destruction wrought by Iron Man and friends just to get rid of Galactus. Epic Games says the Dec. 1 event finale to Fortnite's Season 4 roped in more concurrent players and viewers than any other gameplay action in its history, with more than 15 million players joining Tony Stark, Thor, and more in taking one final stand. It's even more impressive when you remember they did it all without access on Apple devices.

That means Fortnite’s breaking its own records at this point, considering the black hole that Season 1’s finale opened up back in February was, at the time, “the most viewed gaming event ever,” according to Epic.

We’re definitely in uncharted territory when Din Djarin and The Child can share the same screen real estate with Jonesy and the pancake man (aka Mancake), but the real question that’s on everybody’s mind is whether you’ll be able to suit up and wield the Force as Baby Yoda himself. For now, it appears that the little green one (we still can’t get used to saying his real name) doesn’t have a character skin and will instead function as a tagalong piece of gear that faithfully remains at Mando’s side…but we’ve already seen what our pint-sized hero can do against a giant Mud Horn on Disney+, so perhaps nothing’s off the table as Season 5 rolls along.

Epic serves up a full list of details on all the changes in store for Season 5 — titled Zero Point — over at its Season 5 Battle Pass landing page. But beside the newly-cratered map, realm-mashing character crossovers, and a new bounty feature that rewards you for recruiting other players (a nice touch, considering this season’s new focus on a certain Star Wars bounty hunter), part of the fun is never quite knowing what insane new tricks Fortnite has up its sleeve.

Guess we’ll just have to keep our Beskar polished, and our Force-sensitive friend’s tiny hand out of the frog-egg jar, while we wait to find out what Epic has in store as Season 5 unfolds. This is the way.