Nothing has influenced Fortnite: Battle Royale‘s storyline like the Zero Point has. Right from the point where the lore kicked off in Chapter 1, through Season 4 to the latest events of Chapter 2, everything has either happened as a result of the Zero Point, or in an attempt to acquire it. But what exactly is the Zero Point in Fortnite? What is this magical blue orb made up of? How does it work, and why is it so important to the game?
There’s no denying that Fortnite has a strange and often vague style of narration. The Zero Point has never properly been explained in the game, and only hints of its true nature have been given through various live events and seasonal trailers. Here’s everything we know about the Zero Point in Fortnite so far.
Our first look at the Zero Point
Aside from the brief (and again, vague) mention in the Season 4 live event, the Zero Point appeared in its entirety in the Season 6 live event. This was also our first look at the In-Between (also known as the Nexus), the realm of the Zero Point.
We had only seen the Zero Point’s “energy” (represented by white or blue glowing light) function as Rifts in Season 5. We didn’t know this yet, but the Rifts were a product of the Zero Point, which possessed far greater abilities when it came to traveling through space. Two seasons later, we finally got a look at the stable version of the Zero Point in the Season 8 event. This was where all of the vaulted guns were stored, along with a table that had the Singularity’s helmet on it. Singularity was assumed to be the guardian of the Vault.
Season 9 and the Vault
The end of Season 8 marked the Unvaulting Event where Tilted Towers and Retail Row were destroyed by a raging volcano. In Season 9, we had fast-forwarded a few months where both POIs were rebuilt, with cables leading from the Vault in Loot Lake to the location of Tilted. The power of the Zero Point had made it possible for Tilted and Retail to turn into futuristic locations because of those cables.
Singularity’s statue was built in Neo Tilted to thank her for granting us the power of the Zero Point. However, she seemed to be busy in the hollow mountain where the volcano had been, building a giant robot as she prepared to battle the Devourer. When the monster called the Devourer finally rose, Singularity went into the giant robot and battled him.
The Devourer seemed to be after the Zero Point as well, and was ironically defeated when Singularity had to use its power herself to defeat him. However, while she had saved the island, her opening the Vault left the Zero Point exposed, and thus started a series of events where the Zero Point would grow unstable and alter reality around it.
Season X and The End
The Zero Point went crazy in Season X. It turned back time to before Season 4, at the moment where the meteor was just about to crash into the island and started altering space and reality at various POIs.
Time was reversed at Dusty Divot too, reverting it to pre-Season-4 Dusty Depot. From the meteor frozen in time, the Visitor (now dubbed The Scientist) escaped and started his plan to save the island. He built Rift beacons to teleport the meteor elsewhere and save the Island, which is when we got The End event.
During the event, the Scientist tried to save the meteor by throwing it into a Rift, but he failed big time (unless that was his intention). In the end, a massive rift opened at the top of Loot Lake and the giant meteor came crashing into the Zero Point. The energy surge was too much for it to handle and the Zero Point collapsed into itself, creating a black hole and sucking the meteor, rockets, and the entire Athena map into it.
Chapter 2 and Midas’s plan
When Fortnite Chapter 2 started, we were on a new map and the Zero Point was nowhere in sight. Two political factions (Ghost and Shadow, also known as Alter and Ego) were struggling to gain control over the center of the island for some reason, and a mysterious man called Midas kept siding with the winning power. It turns out, the Zero Point was below the center of the island all along.
In the Season 2 event, Midas tried to harness the power of the Zero Point to push back the Storm, but he failed and ended up flooding the island. At this point, we saw how John Jones (Jonesy) from a connected reality was growing aware of the bridge between that world and ours.
The Galactus Invasion
When the Zero Point had exploded in Season X, Galactus from the MCU had sensed its power and approached the Fortnite island. This brought some of MCU’s most popular superheroes on our island as they helped us prepare for war against him.
While we successfully defeated him in this event, he had ripped the Zero Point out of the ground and left it exposed once again, causing massive reality changes in Seasons 5 and 6.
The IO interference
The IO is the organization that controls the Loop (the repeating iterations of Battle Royale matches) and the Storm. When they figured that the bridge between our realities was growing stronger, they sent Agent Jones to seal the Zero Point and prevent anyone from escaping the Loop. He was accompanied by a bunch of intergalactic hunters (like The Mandalorian) who were to help him in his mission.
When they failed to do so by Season 6, the IO sent an order for him to abandon the mission and leave the island to its fate. Jones, realizing that he had been working with the bad guys, went rogue and summoned The Foundation, the leader of The Seven.
In this event, the Foundation had to contain himself within the Zero Point to keep it together, while Jonesy tried to seal the bridge. During this process, we also saw the Zero Point bloom like a lotus, which is supposed to be its “rebirth” process, triggered by the Foundation. The unstable Zero Point’s reality waves caused us to go back in time and put half of the map into a primal age, bringing back ancient towers, the biggest of which was called The Spire and had evil Cube energy within. The Spire attracted people who were hungry for power and corrupted them using the Cube’s energy. However, the tower exploded during the invasion in Season 7.
Where is the Zero Point now?
The Zero Point is currently being controlled by Dr. Slone, leader of the IO. Using Deathstroke, she has put an anchor and controls the Zero Point in an underground lab called The Bridge. Here, the IO has set up devices to calibrate and control the Zero Point to travel across realities and through time, as seen through the Zero Point comics. This is the same place that we saw in the Season 5 event, where Agent Jones used it to travel to our world.
The recently released Batman x Zero Point comic series gave us an insight into some of Fortnite’s lore, including where the IO is hiding and how exactly they are controlling the Zero Point. Dr. Slone and her gang really need to leave us alone at this point, don’t they?
