Fortnite leak hints at Tomb Raider crossover with Lara Croft skin

Fortnite players are convinced that the game’s next major crossover skin will be Lara Croft from the Tomb Raider franchise.

When Season 5 of Epic Games’ popular battle royale launched in December 2020, it came with the theme of ‘bounty hunters’ as Agent Jonesy attempted to “gather the greatest hunters across all realities” to protect The Loop.

So far, we’ve seen hunters including God of War’s Kratos, Halo’s Master Chief, The Walking Dead’s Daryl and Michonne, and of course The Mandalorian make appearances in the game as playable skins.

Who’s next? Well, fans have been gathering clues – alongside a recent leak – and they think they’ve discovered that the next newcomer to The Island will be none other than Tomb Raider legend Lara Croft.

Square Enix

Fortnite fans think Lara Croft is coming to The Island.

Is Lara Croft going to be in Fortnite?

According to Fortnite dataminer Mang0e, a new crossover skin codenamed ‘Typhoon’ will be arriving in the game soon. It will be a female character with reactive styles, and the portal on the map indicting her arrival has a ‘flicker’ effect.

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While codenames like this one don’t always have a link to the final skin, some fans believe that ‘Typhoon’ is a reference to the opening of 2013 reboot Tomb Raider, where Lara gets stranded on an island after a violent storm sinks her ship.

As for being reactive, there could be a number of possibilities. One could be that as the player receives damage, the skin appears more bloody and bandaged up, which would reflect Lara’s modern appearance in the recent trilogy of games.

Square Enix

Lara Croft would fit the ‘hunter’ theme of Fortnite Season 5.

A recent tweet from the official Tomb Raider account has added even more fuel to the fire. Using symbols, the tweet depicts Lara thinking about three emojis. One of them is a pickaxe, which is a piece of Fortnite iconography.

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Of course, Lara uses a pickaxe in her own game, but that hasn’t stopped fans from speculating. Lara would also fit the ‘hunter’ aspect of the season, as she uses her bow and arrow to hunt prey in the games.

The rumors have even got some dedicated fans creating their own artwork. Twitter user @wawa_cwoft mocked up what Lara Croft could look like as a Fortnite character, and it’s got us fully on board with the concept (as if we weren’t already).

But what if it’s not Lara Croft? Well, there’s been heavy speculation about Metroid’s intergalactic bounty hunter Samus Aran joining Fortnite as a crossover skin.

With Kratos representing PlayStation and Master Chief representing Xbox, Nintendo are the only company behind the ‘big three’ consoles who haven’t got a skin representing them yet. Samus could be perfect for the job.

Whoever the new crossover skin turns out to be, fans will be able to get their hands on them soon enough as Season 5 of Fortnite is scheduled to come to an end on March 16, 2021.