Apex Legends’ eighth season kicked off with a blast.
Walter “Fuse” Fitzroy was the 16th legend to join the Apex Games. He hails from Salvo, the seventh planet to join Syndicate space, and he took advantage of the new treaty to make a name for himself—much to the disdain of his friend-turned-nemesis, Margaret “Mad Maggie” Kōhere.
Fuse’s arrival in the Apex Games created some trouble for the legends when Maggie came knocking in Kings Canyon with an armed ship in hand. And that’s where the Mayhem started. From then on, the season had a series of storylines which may leave some unfinished ends in Legacy. Here’s a recap of everything that happened during Apex‘s eighth season, Mayhem.
Maggie and Fuse: Recap
The new season kicked off with an old feud. Maggie and Fuse were childhood friends growing up in Salvo, who spent decades having their fair share of (less than legal) adventures. Maggie took pride in Salvo’s resistance; as a child, she encountered a group of dead Salvonian fighters and called them “real Salvo badasses,” as seen in Fuse’s episode of Stories from the Outlands.
Maggie was a staunch defender of “the Cause,” as she called it (presumably Salvonian autonomy). Salvo joining the Syndicate was a heavy blow for her, and another one followed close behind. Fuse decided to put his past behind him and enter the Apex Games. Maggie didn’t take it well.
She threw a grenade at him and the ensuing explosion took off his arm. Fuse left his past and Maggie behind after the incident—“it’s a lost cause,” he said—and continued his way to the Apex Games. Maggie crashed his inauguration party and threatened the existence of the legends’ “precious games” if they didn’t bring her Fuse’s other arm, during the launch trailer. She also took out the Ceremony Ship that hovered over the arena and blew up a chunk of Kings Canyon. That kicked off the events of Mayhem—including the season quest, Armageddon.
Season Quest: Armageddon
The season eight quest revolves around the complicated mix of friendship and rivalry between Fuse and Mags. In the quest, the new legend joins up with Lifeline and Bloodhound to take Maggie down, but she surprises the trio and captures them.
“Salvo needs you, Walter,” she tells him. “The Cause needs you.”
“Never was much for causes,” he replies. “That was your thing.”
Maggie then threatens to torture his fellow legends if he doesn’t comply. Fuse blasts the wall with a Knuckle Cluster and the trio gets away.
Since she failed to take out Fuse, Maggie spent a few weeks hijacking the Games and making the Ring Flare takeover. The legend decides to go after his old friend, and Lifeline and Bloodhound show up to support him. Maggie shoots their ship out of the sky and another conversation takes place between the two.
“You don’t want me dead. You want me home,” Fuse tells her. “But that’s not Salvo. Not anymore.” The legend tells Maggie that he finally feels at home in the Apex Games after spending a few years lost. Maggie retorts by shooting him with a cannon. Fuse reacts quickly and shoots his Motherlode first, which causes a fiery explosion that sends the two flying and leaves them hanging onto a ledge above a gargantuan drop.
“I’m happy for ya, Mags. Always have been.” Fuse tells her. “I just wish you were happy for me.” Mags lets go, however, and falls, presumably to her death. The quest ends with Fuse still trying to deal with Maggie’s passing, but he toasts “to second chances” with the rest of the legends.
Ultimately, the rivalry between Fuse and Maggie appears to be one-sided. She can’t accept his decision to leave Salvo and the Cause behind, which she sees as a betrayal to their decades of friendship. Maggie hunted him down with everything she had—including her life.
Although Armageddon doesn’t appear to have as much of an impact as some of the previous quests, it’s still important for Fuse’s character development. If Fuse gets more lore in Legacy, it will likely revolve around Maggie’s loss—and his found family in the legends.
Caustic Town Takeover
Fuse was only one half of the characters that showed up on the loading screen, and Mayhem also shared some lore on Caustic. The Toxic Trapper devised a new formula for his toxins and turned Water Treatment into a sick house of horrors filled with deadly fumes.
His homicidal experiments aren’t built just for science or murder. Caustic was stricken by Wattson’s distancing of him after the season five quest, The Broken Ghost, as well as new information in Pathfinder’s Quest, Apex‘s lore book. Caustic and Crypto are brothers of sorts: Crypto’s foster mom, Mystik, is Caustic’s birth mother, Ms. Katerina Tikacec Nox. That combination helped push Caustic over the edge.
Caustic found a new noxious gas in Kings Canyon. The leaking fuel from Maggie’s attack during the launch trailer ignited the gas pockets below the arena to create a “gargantuan supply of toxin.” The scientist intended to harness it and use the fumes in human test subjects and found the tools to refine them.
Caustic took control of Water Treatment under the guise of purifying the water from the new-found substances. In truth, it was a step in his master plan: deploying his toxins against the entirety of Solace City.
Luckily for the citizens of Solace, Wattson showed up to stop his plan from coming to fruition, and the ensuing story arc taught us a thing or two about them.
Caustic and Wattson
Early into Apex, the relationship between the two was almost paternal. That quickly deteriorated after the events of The Broken Ghost, during which Caustic betrayed the legends by telling Revenant about their plans and framed Crypto in the process to drive a wedge between him and Wattson. The troubled relationship between Wattson and Caustic, however, returned in this season’s community comics on Twitter.
Wattson appears to wrestle with her mixed feelings towards Caustic. “And if something was wrong, do you care? After what he did? No,” she tells herself. She bumps into the scientist as he muses about his upcoming great experiment. Caustic has a coughing fit, which reminds Natalie of her late father, Luc Paquette. The comic shows a flashback to Luc and Wattson, when her father has a coughing fit. “I’m just—a little out of breath, my dearest Natalie,” he tells her. “Do not worry about this doddering old fool.”
Wattson follows him into Caustic Treatment to stop his plan and pleads him to spare Solace City. After some back and forth, Caustic uses his deadly fumes on Wattson. “It’s too late to save the city, Ms. Paquette,” he tells her. “It’s too late to save any of us.” She replies that “it is never too late.”
“This isn’t about humanity’s suffering,” Natalie tells him from inside a cloud of gas. “It’s about yours! It’s about ours. You’re suffering because you’ve pushed me away, because you’re afraid when the end comes, you’ll be alone.”
Wattson collapses to the floor amid Caustic’s toxin. The scientist turns off the gas and rushes towards her. “Not you…I never meant this for you,” he says, shaken. Wattson jolts awake and zaps him with an electrical shock. “I look forward to you earning my trust again,” she tells him.
Wattson threatens Caustic. She won’t tell the Syndicate about his plans to destroy Solace City, but on one condition: “From now on, doctor…you play by my rules. You will be a better man, whether you want it or not.” She also asks the scientist if there’s anything he wants to tell her, and not about Solace City. “Your coughing…your desperate ambition.”
“No. You shouldn’t waste your time worrying about this old fool,” Caustic responds. It’s a parallel to when Luc Paquette told Natalie not to worry about this “doddering old fool,” and we see her response: “But I do, Papa. I do.”
The comic sheds some light on both Wattson and Caustic. The Toxic Trapper may have a fatal disease, based on the incessant coughing and the parallels to Wattson’s father. Although this has been a long-standing theory, Respawn seems to be hinting at it more and more. It also shows Wattson’s side of the story. To a degree, she seems to feel warmly about Caustic, despite what he did to her.
Several aspects of this short questline might return in Legacy. Wattson’s condition to Caustic—“you will be a better man, whether you want it or not”—may come into play at some point in the next season. On Caustic’s side, Respawn may dive into more detail about his disease and explore the relationship between him and Crypto after the two found out about their mother.
Bangalore and Wraith
Not everything was about Fuse and Maggie or Wattson and Caustic, however. Bangalore and Wraith also bumped heads during the season in a heated argument about the former soldier’s knife.
Wraith sees Bangalore’s Heirloom (a Pilot knife) and asks her about it. Wraith insists it can be a data knife and hold valuable information, but Bangalore isn’t happy about it. “You are not taking anything else from me,” the former soldier says.
Wraith returns her knife. “Just thought I might find intel to help us both,” she tells Bangalore. “My past, your brother Jackson…”
“No one gets to say his name,” Bangalore responds. “Especially you.”
There is some bad blood between the two. Bangalore seems to dislike Wraith for her former ties with ARES Division, a part of the IMC that was doing “cruel and unspeakable things,” according to Bangalore. The soldier also says that Wraith “is not IMC.”
In Pathfinder’s Quest, Bangalore shared that she hated when people generalized the entire IMC as bad because of the Frontier War. Ironically, however, she seems to be doing the same to Wraith due to her former ties with ARES Division.
The conflict between the two—as well as the possible contents of Bangalore’s data knife—could also reemerge during Legacy and possibly provide some character development to the two.
