Season 4

Season 4 is the season of the Shadow King. After his return and his murder of the Arbiter, the King sits on a throne that should not be his. the Grandmaster is reduced to “the Grandmaster, but only a name,” shackled in gold runes and forced to open every arena with a cursed amulet that cuts her hands. The fights are as unhinged as ever: grandmothers thrown from the stands, a raccoon fused to a wood elf, a satyr sweeping a pirate’s ashes into a box. The difference this season is what comes after. Almost every match ends with The Shadow King stepping out of the shadows to kill whoever is still standing. The season is a long, darkly funny portrait of a tyrant learning to love the show. Underneath it runs a sadder story about a niece and the uncle who raised her.

Background

Centuries earlier, in the events of Skypiercer, Elusia and her companions defeated the Shadow King, and the Deathmatches were born. Atalantos and Kaja fought in the very first one. At the end of the previous season the King came back and killed the Arbiter, Vythorn the Endless Scholar, the Grandmaster’s long-serving partner in running the games. As Season 4 opens, the Void itself reflects the change. Fire and hail pour from the sky, tornadoes flatten homes, lightning of every colour dances overhead, and the volcanoes around The Dread Fortress never stop erupting. “Nothing dares fly or walk these lands.”

The Story

S4E1 — Shadows Reign — Atalantos v Kaja

The season opens with the worst birthday party in the Void. The Grandmaster clanks into the throne room in heavy weights, and her uncle greets her: “Elusia. Happy birthday.” His gift is two stone sarcophagi holding the bones of Atalantos and Kaja, the legendary first champions and, in Kaja’s case, the Grandmaster’s love. He raises both and makes them fight in The Shadow King’s old home, an obelisk strangled by blood-drinking vines and guarded by a door that is furious nobody knocks. It is also the King’s first time running a Deathmatch, and he rolls a 1 on his first try. The old friends give a magnificent fight. In the end Kaja’s blasts deliver the warrior’s death Atalantos always wanted, and he dies smiling: “Finish this warrior. I know you can.” Kaja turns his flames into the Sword of Cor’thun and drives it through the King’s chest. He shrugs it off and flings the sword into the crowd, where it lands in Prince Vegeta. Then he twists Kaja’s head off and holds up the skull: “Happy birthday!”

S4E2 — Under the Bottom — Richardo v Evah

The King now uses Kaja’s skull as a hand puppet, and the Grandmaster begs the goblins to poison his drinks. Her champions are two barbarians on a rickety pirate cove at sea. Richardo “Over the Top” Johnson is an arm-wrestler who flips his helmet backwards to go berserk and then can’t see. Evah believes in the pure art of the fight and despises cheap tricks. The match brings Acolyte grandmothers hurled onto the deck, one of whom poops her pants in terror, a table smashed around Richardo like a wooden tutu, and Richardo’s mother Juanita crowd-surfing to his rescue. Evah finally impales him on her glaive and declares, “This is how you fight. No cheap tricks. No little magic boxes.” The King answers by slicing up through her slushie, her mouth and her head. “Well, your tongue won’t be doing any more wagging, will it?”

S4 Ep3, Swindlers - Griff v Cappin Fodder

The King is losing at Bop-It and bopping the goblins instead. The Grandmaster reminds him that he gave her one for her twelfth birthday and watched her score 52. Griff, a satyr game hustler, faces Cappin Fodder, a halfling pirate with a whip and a pair of scissors on his ship called the Monkmaker. They fight in a cold, broken temple under a huge statue of Vythorn. Both champions attack Dolly for the first time in the show’s history, and the haunted doll explodes in poison. Fodder dives headfirst into The Box of Chaos and comes out with a life-stealing sword grafted to his arm. Then the King turns nostalgic (“I’m almost sorry I killed him. Not really sorry, but like a little bit”) and brings the statue to life to hammer Fodder halfway into the floor. Griff finishes him with a pillar of holy fire and sweeps his ashes into the Box. When the King shoves the winner off a ledge, Griff quietly teleports to safety. He is one of the very few champions all season to slip away.

S4E4 — Death Dealers — The Scourge v Bone Daddy

The King has been teaching the goblins watercolour using paint made from donated chinchilla blood. (“No chinchillas were harmed in this. I hope.” “Yet.”) What follows is pure professional wrestling. The Scourge is a sleeveless aasimar who turns into a giant snake and summons two pterosaurs named Hammer and Anvil. Bone Daddy is a six-foot-seven necromancer who raises a family of skeleton “children.” The favourite is Darcy, with one green eye and a few strands of blonde hair. Both hosts dive from the stands with folding metal chairs. Darcy merges her siblings into a giant skeleton and later opens her ribs so her father can wear her like a mech. When the Scourge’s smite finally breaks Bone Daddy, he asks forgiveness for the fatherhood he never gave, and Darcy carries him off the platform into the void. The winner’s prize is a bone shoved down his throat by the King: “Now a piece of Bone Daddy can be with you forever.”

S4E5 — Toxicity — Toocher the Toxic v Sho Nin

The King has discovered taxes, sorts the receipts by size, and complains that Vythorn wrote everything in symbols. The match is an anime parody in an abandoned steampunk dockyard. Toocher the Toxic is a poisonous grung wrestler in a red scarf, set on teaching a newbie a lesson. Sho Nin is a fifteen-year-old wind-blessed monk who trips Toocher before the fight even starts, then rolls one disaster after another, five natural 1s in all. Their buttocks sprout butterfly wings, a mad old hatter swaps their places, and the Grandmaster shoots Toocher for making a deli-meat pun. She then sneaks him healing, and the King catches her. Toocher wins by knocking Sho Nin’s moon sickle from his hand and finishing him with it. The King takes the champion on a victory flight, dips him in the acid-green water, and raises his arm to the crowd. Only his arm.

S4E6 — The Hunt — Witch Hunter v Grickle

The Grandmaster is fraying. Her hair is falling out in patches, her eye twitches, and the King is using the goblins as bowling pins. Witch Hunter (real name Ricardo) is a centaur paladin who sprouts marigolds when he finds someone attractive, and he finds the thri-kreen Grickle very attractive. On The Frozen Lake they ride magical mounts: a naked, mustached man named Bruce, and a rhinoceros beetle that Grickle promptly kills with his own arrow. At one point the Grandmaster rips off the King’s face, Scooby-Doo style, finds a swirling void with yellow eyes beneath, puts the face back, and puts a trash bag over it. Grickle shatters the ice under the heavy centaur, then has a change of heart and tries desperately to pull him out. Witch Hunter hands over his grandmother’s glaive and sinks, his marigolds floating up like a funeral. As Grickle grieves in the snow, the King drops a giant black boot from the heavens and crushes him, splattering his guts across the ice.

S4E7 — Wings — Misery v Daisy Bloom

The King grills ribs in his throne room in Kansas City sauce: “Yes, I might have killed your friend and taken over… your throne and your empire, but I’m not a monster.” In a dusty, abandoned excavation site, Misery, a weeping greatsword fighter, faces Daisy Bloom, the cheerfully deranged “Beacon of Village Town,” who is determined to befriend him. Daisy summons a moth named Janet, fights with uprooted cacti, and prays to Criss Angel for protection. Misery slowly shows his past in flashbacks of a beloved friend and a betrayal. The Box gives him a vorpal greatsword that turns into a blade of nothingness. Daisy bursts into a moth-woman and nearly snaps his neck between her thighs, but Misery takes her head with a final perfect strike. His one wish is to trade places with the friend he lost: “Put me in the ground and give him a life.” The King obliges, sealing him alive in a stone coffin. Just before the lid closes, Misery smiles for the first time in years.

S4E8 — Blood Rain — Fatale v Claudia

The King is planning to expand the Dread Fortress across the Void, starting with a pool where the school is. (“We will kill them. And then they won’t live there anymore.”) On a sky-ship eighty feet up, Fatale, a black-petalled rogue, faces Claudia, a botany professor fighting with gardening shovels. A giant sleeping sky puppy lands between them and farts on Fatale when she scratches its butt, squeaky shoes are handed out, and the two whisper secrets. Fatale admits she is infiltrating the Deathmatch for information on the hosts. Claudia is after the King’s grandmother’s soup recipe. Bored, the King crashes the ship into a mountaintop, then dissolves their armour and doubles all damage. Claudia’s shovel kills Fatale, whose petals are caught by a cloaked, black-lipped figure: “We will fulfill your mission, sister.” Claudia receives the recipe. The secret ingredient at the bottom reads “Incinerate,” and the vines around her burst into flame.

S4E9 — Shootout — Stanley Second Life Gibbs v Gideon Regalis Electus Gregorius the 537th (Greg)

The King has discovered video games. He went to Best Buy because the Radio Shack in Prexmarin was closed. (“That Radio Shack has been closed for 38 years.”) In an abandoned Western saloon, Stanley Second Life Gibbs is a cowboy revived by a tiny drone every time he dies. He faces Gideon Regalis Electus Gregorius the 537th, “Greg,” an apologetic lizard duelist whose pistols keep firing on their own. Stanley dies ten times: shot by dropped guns, by lightning from Vythorn’s prismatic rings (which the King “kept as mementos”), and by a chandelier brought down by a ricochet that wrecks half the bar. Then Greg’s gun reveals it is sentient and shoots the drone to pieces, and Stanley dies for good. It blames Greg for the death of its sibling pistol and shoots him too, and Greg slips in his own blood. The Grandmaster pins the celebrating pistol with a single arrow. Nobody wins.

S4E10 — Rivals — Nonamatt v Decima

It’s Taco Tuesday on a Sunday, and the Grandmaster insists that all 328 goblins have names, not numbers. The twins Nonamatt and Decima arrive divided by grief. Their brother Morta is dead, and they blame the God of Fate. Decima means to take Fate’s throne themselves. Nonamatt believes no one should hold that power. In a glowing purple forest, Decima summons echoes of Morta to strike their sibling, and Nonamatt pelts them with enchanted ball bearings. Then Decima leaps into the Box of Chaos and consumes it, wearing its legion of souls like armour. Nonamatt answers by pulling in their own self from another timeline. A whip of memories of Morta strips the shadows away. Decima throws down the axe and dares Nonamatt to be brave for once. Their dying words are gentle: “Don’t be sorry. Morta would be proud.” When the King wraps Nonamatt in a tortilla for a hungry giant named Kyle, the Grandmaster drops from the sky and puts her spear to his throat. He relents (“You’re like a daughter to me”), and she opens a small portal so Nonamatt can carry Decima home.

S4E11 — Beatdown — Sprinkles v Nigel

The King is watching the moon landing and claims it was faked. He admits he has been to The Shadowlands and Prexmarin and “not too far beyond that.” Sprinkles, a pacifist halfling dressed like a waiter, has bet he can win through friendship. Nigel Night Louis is a changeling method actor determined to traumatise him into greatness. Midway through the match, the King drops a family bombshell about Elusia’s mother: “she was my sister-in-law. It got really confusing there at the end.” Sprinkles’ dark passenger, Melchizedek the Dark One, breaks loose. Nigel gives his own face to the Box, then climbs inside and dies so the shadow can wear his skin. When Melchizedek tries to seize the body, the fight moves inside Nigel himself. There, after both are swept apart by an avalanche of chunky vomit and stomach acid, a child version of Nigel tap-dances, charms a nine-headed demon into yodelling, and stabs it to death with a bone he imagines is an Oscar. Calling it award-worthy, the King slimes both champions until they drown.

S4E12 — Racoons — Sam Cletus v Ben Zappa

The Grandmaster is locked in the pantry, and the King only lets her out because he wants Doritos. Sam Cletus is a perpetually drunk wood elf fighting to save his Meemaw. Ben Zappa is haunted by the Jolly Chimp, a giant cymbal-monkey spirit. They fight in an abandoned throne room beneath the Fortress. The aliens abduct them both, making Sam smarter and taking Ben’s eye. Sam throws a raccoon named Dolores, who gives Ben rabies. Ben feeds Dolores to the Box, and Sam fuses with her as the were-coon “Deletus,” then falls back in and comes out inverted, with a raccoon penis. Both champions end up trapped inside the Box, where the Jolly Chimp smashes Sam’s raccoon dick and balls, and a cut-rate genie “fixes” it into a raccoon vagina, which leaves Sam as Samantha Cletus. The Jolly Chimp finally flattens her. The King peers into the Box, closes the lid, and locks Ben inside with his monkey. Earlier, on learning about the staff’s health insurance, he had cancelled all employee benefits on the spot. The Grandmaster’s reply: “That is not true.”

S4E13 — Swole — Storm on the Horizon v Grug the Wizard

The household has hung jingle bells on the King’s boots so they can hear him coming, and the chinchilla army is in security training. Storm on the Horizon, a snow-leopard monk with knives for feet, faces Grug the Wizard, a barbarian cursed to believe he is the greatest wizard ever. He shouts spell names (“Mage armor!”) while punching and hitting people with tax records. In a peaceful meditation valley, a siren pelts Grug with chicken wings. Storm feeds a hairball to the Box and gets a flying hairball chariot, and both hosts deliver the metal chairs again. The King even pulls Grug out of the river so he won’t die too early, and a beam of radiant light blasts out of Grug’s ass into the sky. Grug’s mythic leap to the chariot fails, and Storm’s final strike sends him falling to his death, smiling at a fantasy of a wizard’s tower with his familiar at his side. The King gives Storm a victory lap so high it leaves the sky, and she freezes among the stars.

S4E16, The Dragon and the Spider, Ricky Red Dragon v Traxton (Spider)

The finale opens on the King’s secret solo rave, with German techno, lasers and a hidden keg, shared with goblins who are all bald after a lice outbreak. Ricky Red Dragon claims to be a red dragon cursed into human flesh. Traxton, who would much rather be called Spider, is a 45-year-old emo elf still waiting for puberty. On the King’s would-be Coachella grounds they are trampled by a colossal chinchilla (“Chin Dragon,” or “Chinzilla”). The Box hands out a container of magical beards and an immovable rod shaped like a dick. Their fireballs touch tips, and Ricky plays dead. Ricky later blasts Spider into the air with a Wall of Force between his legs, and Spider ends it with a blast of unresolved teenage angst. Ricky confesses as he turns to dust: “I’m not really a dragon.” The King makes Spider “look the part,” turns him into a tarantula and kicks him out of the arena. Then he spreads his arms to the crowd: “While I’m around, there will be death in the arena.”

Running Threads

The Shadow King learns the job. Most episodes open in his throne room on some new hobby: Bop-It, watercolour, taxes, bowling, barbecue, a Void-sized map table, a PlayStation, tacos, the moon landing, a solo rave. He starts the season baffled (“This is my first time”) and keeps rolling badly on the dice. Bit by bit he comes to enjoy it (“I see why you like this”). His signature is the ending. Champions who win are usually killed anyway: decapitated, crushed, incinerated, buried, drowned, launched into space. A handful escape the pattern. Griff teleports away. Nonamatt is spared by the Grandmaster’s plea. Ben is locked in the Box. The Scourge’s fate is left unsaid. Deaths under his rule were not followed by the usual quiet revivals in the locker room.

The Grandmaster in chains. Elusia runs the games under protest, bound by rune-inscribed bracelets and a choker the King can tighten at will. In S4E3 he crushes her throat to silence her. Every summoning cuts her hands with the amulet, until her palms are covered in scars. She still slips in small rebellions: tea service for Kaja, secret healing for Toocher, an arrow through Greg’s gun, and finally her spear at the King’s throat. She also keeps learning family history she never wanted. There is the birthday Bop-It, the revelation that her mother was his sister-in-law, and his claim that she’s “like a daughter to me.”

Absences. Without the Arbiter, the King keeps stumbling over Vythorn’s work: his taxes, his statue, the prismatic rings now worn as trophies. (“God, I wish the Arbiter was back here,” the Grandmaster sighs.) The tiny throne beside hers sits empty all season. Doug is gone, she has to roll his dice herself, and in S4E9 she insists, “I bet he’s alive somewhere.”

The Box of Chaos. With its old resident walking around in a body (“I should know, I was it once”), the Box now runs on fuel ripped from the crowd. The donors include Robert Hartley, Commodore Scrib, Prince Vegeta, Gator, Blissful Dwarf, Glass Flippers, Forty, Lubofan, Lady Magdala, Majestic Wolf, Aether Flux, Iron Trout and Toolkit 71, each killed in some new and gruesome way. Champions feed it everything from toes and hairballs to state quarters and, more than once, themselves. Decima became the first to consume the Box outright, leaving it dormant for the rest of that match. In the finale the King lets slip, “I killed the guy who made the box.”

Goblins, chinchillas and the Fortress staff. The staff suffer constantly and develop real personalities. Theodore serves tea, Thomas fetches gift baskets, and Kesa gets a face full of tacos. Henrietta the Goblin is a favourite. The goblins also have a union, health and pet insurance, and an emotional-support chinchilla each. The chinchillas, it turns out, have their own union and an army.

Recurring chaos. Acolyte grandmothers come back again and again: thrown, zombified, and beating the King with Werther’s-laden purses. Metal chairs are swung by both hosts, and the crowd empties its pockets of raccoons, pianos and tax returns. Every match brings the Acolytes’ gifts of “plus ultra” power, along with the standing warning not to die holding them.

Aftermath

The season ends with the Shadow King triumphant and unchallenged, promising that death will stay in the arena while he rules. It leaves loose threads behind. The Sword of Cor’thun is somewhere in the Void with an Acolyte. A cloaked sister has sworn to finish Fatale’s mission. Misery lies buried beneath the excavation site, and whether his wish freed his friend is unknown. Ben Zappa is still locked in the Box with the Jolly Chimp. Nonamatt has carried Decima home for a proper burial. And the Grandmaster, who begged for one life and got it, has told the King that “even if this will cost me, I will pay that.”

The Black Tome

Explorer