Tetsuya Nomura dropped a massive clue about the Kingdom Hearts 4 villain

After the climactic finale of Kingdom Hearts 3, the future of the series has been the primary question on every fan’s mind. While Kingdom Hearts 4 is undoubtedly still years away, a new interview with series director Tetsuya Nomura might provide a massive hint for the future. Sora and company need a new villain to go up against, and there’s a good indication of who that’s going to be.

Up until now the primary villain of Kingdom Hearts has been Xehanort, or beings inadvertently created by him, like Ansem and Xemnas. The franchise has slowly revealed bits and pieces of Xehanort’s story, and one of the most interesting details came in the ReMind DLC, which showed the villain meeting the Master of Masters, a character that remains one of the biggest unanswered mysteries in Kingdom Hearts. Before diving into who the Master is, however, here’s what Nomura said in the recent Game Informer interview.

“In the trailer for Kingdom Hearts IV, we mentioned The Lost Master Arc,” he says. “We’re going to be delving into a new enemy figure for the continuation of the story. This new enemy has a lot to do with the masked characters that appear at the end of Kingdom Hearts III.”

The masked characters Nomura refers to are the Foretellers, first introduced in the mobile game Kingdom Hearts Unchained X. That game takes place in the distant past before the start of the first game and deals with the ancient Keyblade War. The Foretellers are elite Keyblade Masters that lead the Unions, groups of wielders that protect worlds from the Heartless. About the Foretellers, Nomura says, “They’re going to be obstacles that stand in front of Sora. Also, in Kingdom Hearts 2.8, we showed what kind of characters they are, so the enemies have already appeared within the series.”

As for the Master of Masters, the Foretellers were all his apprentices, along with another Keyblade wielder named Luxu. Very little is known about the Master, but he seems to be all-knowing and all-powerful. In Unchained X, the Master is the one who wrote the Book of Prophecies, a book that predicts the future and allows players in the game to use medals and cards that hold power from the future.

Now that Nomura has confirmed the Foretellers will be Sora’s adversaries, it’s practically guaranteed that the Master will be behind the scenes pulling the strings. After the events of Unchained X, the Master completely disappeared, and we have no idea what happened to him. However, he did assign a task to his apprentice Luxu, and the end of Kingdom Hearts 3 reveals that Luxu has been masquerading as the Organization XIII member Xigbar.

If you couldn’t tell the series’ lore is absurdly confusing, but the basic gist is that the Master has been a key figure behind everything, and it’s possible we haven’t even seen his real plan start yet. The Kingdom Hearts 4 trailer shows two figures wearing Organization robes, and it’s possible these figures are the Master and Luxu, who’ve been waiting for Sora to come to Quadraum for some reason. Xehanort was slowly built up over multiple entries, and it wasn’t until Birth By Sleep that we actually saw the character. It seems likely Nomura will want to take a similar approach again, with an overarching villain that has a hand in multiple games.

Then there’s the issue of the mysterious black box featured in Kingdom Hearts 3, with the secret ending showing Luxu and the Foretellers convening around the box at the Keyblade Graveyard. We also know Maleficent and Pete are searching for the box. At this point, there’s literally no clue about what could be in the box. It could be a Keyblade, it could be the equivalent of Pandora’s Box, or it could even contain the body of the Master himself. It could even be some wild secret that changes everything we know about the convoluted RPG series.

There are dozens of unanswered questions ahead of Kingdom Hearts 4, but if you aren’t familiar with the Master and the Foretellers, you might want to change that.