Coco Opens Kingdom Hearts 4 To These Potential Disney Worlds

In the middle of Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep, Lea--well before he becomes fan-favorite character Axel--makes a brief appearance, leaving a big impression on protagonist Ventus with his rather boisterous behavior. At the end of this scene, Lea makes a declaration that outlines his outlook in life.

"I want everybody I meet to remember me. Inside people's memories, I can live forever."

In what might seem like a coincidence at first, the D23 trailer for Kingdom Hearts 4 begins with a remarkably similar moment. Recreating a scene from Coco, the character Héctor loses a friend to “the Final Death,” which occurs to anyone in the Land of the Dead once they are forgotten in the living world. The scene is essential to the film’s world-building and more than fitting with the larger Kingdom Hearts franchise, which heavily emphasizes memory as a central component of the heart.

We’re still at least a year away from the release of Kingdom Hearts 4, but based on what we know about the game and its story, the world of Coco already seems like a perfect thematic fit for the game and the series as a whole. Kingdom Hearts creator Tetsuya Nomura said as much, stating that he considers how Disney worlds “synergize with the overall main story progression with Sora.” And through the reveal of Coco, we might have a better sense of what other Disney worlds are to come.

Another reason why the Land of the Dead makes perfect sense for Kingdom Hearts 4 is Sora’s … “situation,” let’s call it. After fading away at the end of Kingdom Hearts 3, presumably due to his abuse of the Power of Waking, the game’s secret ending and subsequent KH4 trailers show that Sora is now in Quadratum, a world that appears to be a simulacrum of our own real world. But as Strelitzia explains to Sora in KH4’s debut trailer, Quadratum is “similar to an afterworld.”

It’s also known that Donald Duck and Goofy are trying to track Sora down, searching in the Underworld as depicted in Hercules, only to be informed by Hades that our favorite keyblade wielder isn’t there. Judging from the extended D23 trailer, their search eventually takes them to the Land of the Dead.

It’s evident that Sora has “moved on” in some fashion, but he isn’t necessarily dead. The inhabitants of Quadratum appear to be very much alive, and Sora’s Land of the Dead look includes skeleton paint, similar to what the still-living Coco protagonist Miguel dons in that world. With how focused our early looks at Kingdom Hearts 4 are on the living, dead, and in between, I’m left thinking that other Disney worlds featured in the game could continue that narrative throughline.

A strong candidate for a Disney world would be another Pixar gem: 2020’s Soul. While Coco interprets Mexican folklore, Soul presents an original concept on, well, souls--specifically, how they gain their personality traits and passions, and what happens to a soul after death. The film follows a jazz musician named Joe Gardner, who, after accidentally falling down a manhole, becomes a disembodied soul. Determined to avoid the “Great Beyond,” the film’s version of an afterlife, he ends up in the “Great Before,” where nascent souls prepare for life in the living world. With Sora being in a strange status between life and death, the scenario of Soul seems like the perfect adventure for him to get tangled in.

Meanwhile, Kingdom Hearts fans seem convinced that KH4 will finally include a Star Wars world, based on what appear to be walker footprints in a forest world that resembles Endor from Return of the Jedi. One can definitely find overlaps between the metaphysical concepts from Kingdom Hearts and the Force from Star Wars, which connects all living beings. And when a being dies, they become one with the Force--with certain individuals gaining new life as a Force ghost after death. It’d be fun to see Sora swinging a lightsaber Keyblade around, but him learning about the nature of the Force and potentially communing with those who have moved on could prove to be narrative gold for Kingdom Hearts.

And while it might be fun to see Spider-Man or the Avengers join the fray, I wonder if Black Panther would actually be the best Marvel representation, if Kingdom Hearts 4 were to include any. Black Panther is a standout property after the 2018 film became a phenomenon, and better yet, using the MCU movie as a Disney world gives Kingdom Hearts access to the Ancestral Plane. It’s an astral dimension that acts as the afterlife for Wakandans--a space that the Black Panther, after consuming the Heart-Shaped Herb--can enter to speak with their ancestors. It would probably be cultural taboo for Sora to enter that plane, but the movie’s themes of connecting with departed family members would still make for good story fodder.

We’ll have to wait until late 2027 to see if any of these Disney worlds made the cut, and how the worlds included fit with Kingdom Hearts 4’s grand narrative. For now, remember our predictions, and

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