MultiVersus players hoping to see Gandalf duke it out with Batman in the near future may want to reset their expectations following an unfortunate discovery about Lord of the Rings content.
Warner Bros’ MultiVersus has been a major hit with the fighting game community bringing together a cast of characters to rival Super Smash Bros and Fortnite, but it looks like planned LOTR fighters have been cut.
When MultiVersus was first leaked, one of the fighters shown happened to be Gandalf and in a big character leak after that, both he and Legolas were listed.
To top this off, MultiVersus even began seemingly teasing LOTR fighters with an Eye of Sauron Easter Egg on Trophy’s E.D.G.E. However, a new datamine is suggesting that the content has been cut.
Every confirmed, leaked, and datamined MultiVersus fighter so far by Redditor u/vzukryWho do you want to see added to the game? pic.twitter.com/IxZm6aDr8o
— Dexerto (@Dexerto) August 2, 2022
Are Gandalf and Legolas still coming to MultiVersus?
In a post by MultiVersus leaker Susie, they revealed that they still hadn’t found the Eye of Sauron trophy and the devs appeared to replace Barad-dûr from the background of Trophy’s E.D.G.E.
Additionally, Mordor and Hobbiton tracks had also been wiped, though it’s unclear why this was done.
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Fans were very concerned with the discovery. “How did they create a moveset for Gandalf, make a character model, and then he gets cut?” one asked, wondering why the licensing deals weren’t made first.
“Devs are very aware of the datamining, maybe they took extra time to remove all LOTR files,” another suggested.
This is quite the bad news, but LOTR stuff for Multiversus *MIGHT* have been cuti haven't found the eye of sauron trophy, it seems like they replaced barra-dur from the background of trophy's edge and completely removed the mordor and hobbiton tracks from the files
— MultiverSusie (@multiversusie) August 15, 2022
It’s also important to note that Warner Bros’ rival Amazon has their own show based on the Lord of the Rings, The Rings of Power, debuting soon, so it’s possible that WB didn’t want to potentially advertise it by releasing Gandalf.
The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim, an animated movie from New Line Cinema and Warner Bros Animation is set to come out in 2024, so it’s also likely they could be holding Gandalf or Legolas back to coincide with that film’s release.
In any case, we’ll have to see what the future holds and if we actually see two of The Fellowship’s members join the roster in the months or even years ahead.