I have been a Kingdom Hearts fan for most of my life. The Kingdom Hearts series has been a foundational aspect of my gaming life and for a very long time, was the primary driving force in my console purchasing decisions. I basically bought a console on the back of either a new Pokemon, a new Zelda, or a new Kingdom Hearts. It was a practice I continued until it led me to purchase a WiiU, at which point I stopped this practice because the WiiU is one of the worst consoles of all time. Of those three, I'm now most known for Pokemon due to my brief but lasting "biology and ecology of Pokemon series" I used to do on Twitter, but I am also very well known for being involved with Kingdom Hearts.
That being said, I don't love the series universally. I have had a lot of opinions on Kingdom Hearts over the years and a lot of them surround my shifting like or dislike for each of these games. For a very long time, for instance, Kingdom Hearts 1 was one of my least favorite in the series because I had both played it so many times through in preparation for other Kingdom Hearts games and I used to think its gameplay was very slow and dry compared to the more flashy gameplay of the remainder of the series. But now I've grown to really appreciate KH1 and it's probably my third favorite game in the series, maybe even second favorite depending on the day. Contrariwise, what was once my undisputed favorite game in the series, 358/2 Days, for its emotional storytelling, great characterization, and targic ending, has fallen off the pedestal because I realized it is simply miserable to play.
There has been one constant across all these years though: I hate Dream Drop Distance. It is second only to re:coded on my list of KH games but that is mostly just because, technically speaking, Dream Drop Distance is a better game. But I actively hate Dream Drop more. There are numerous reasons for this, I think Flowmotion is a poorly implemented mechanic that fails at its goal of making the platforming more engaging to instead make it more exploitable. I think Dream Eaters are way too complicated for what is a very short RPG, there is more mechanical depth to them than is ever necessary for a game that is like 20 hours long. I think the story is among the worst in Kingdom Heart's sordid history, with a promise of character growth it never delivers on and major reveals whose information is obsolete as of the next game in the series because Nomura just decided he wanted the series to go somewhere different in the intervening 7 years.
The biggest problem with Dream Drop, though, is what I feel is missed potential. Dream Drop has one of the best ideas for world theming in the series' history. Each world in Dream Drop (besides Hunchback) is either an alternate version of a world we have visited before (Traverse Town, Prankster's Paradise, The Grid) or prominently features an alternate version of a character we know incredibly well (The Country of Musketeers, Symphony of Sorcery). It's such a cool idea for a world theming and would allow the series to explore so many worlds that otherwise don't make sense to use. However, Dream Drop is very limited by what it can do by the fact that it is attempting to be a PS2 quality game on the 3DS. The game only features 7 worlds, 5 Disney and 2 original, which is technically the smallest number of playable worlds in any canonical Kingdom Hearts game (re:coded has an 8th, the Datascape). The game is severely limited by what it's capable of doing and as such kind of drops the ball on its world theming.
I think this is sad. I think that this world theming is way too good to only be limited to a not very good side game that becomes less and less necessary to play as time goes on. So let's theorycraft some worlds that could be in a possible "Dream Drop Distance 2". But first some ground rules.
- Every single world I am suggesting will be based on either a character Sora has met or a world he has been to. For the most part, I will be doing "alternate universe" takes on characters, but if there is a character that is from a previous KH game that hasn't had a world by now and is unlikely to but I think they would work well in this context, I will be putting them in.
- As a followup to the previous rule: no sequels/prequels/additional works that are directly set in the same universe as the source material. It would be very easy to say "well, they haven't done a world based on Frozen II, so put it on this list as a possibility". I know that technically the Grid would be disqualified from this because of it being a direct sequel to Tron but the complicated nature of the Grid vs. Space Paranoids both in the universe of the Tron films and in the universe of Kingdom Hearts gets it in on a technicality. For my purposes I'm trying to go full alternate versions/content Kingdom Hearts will never have justification to address.
- There needs to be a concrete narrative basis for the world in question, something you can point to and go "this is the story we will be adapting the world from". Keep in mind, an actual Kingdom Hearts game has the freedom to tell original stories set in basically any world it wants, but for my purposes I don't think it's fair to go "yeah, we can do 7D because we can just invent a brand new story set in the universe of 7D". Oh, spoilers I guess, we're not doing 7D. I want to be able to directly point to a journey that Sora could join the cast on and go "yes, this is what we'll base the world off of". Also, let's be honest, y'all have played KH3 presumably if you're reading this, you know Nomura's interest in doing original stories set in the Disney worlds he selects is less and less with each passing game.
- I'm not going to say no live action remakes but I will be ignoring them if I feel like they don't add enough to the original source material to be worth exploring. Which I realize to critics of the live action remakes IS saying I'm saying no but there's a couple I think are worth exploring. It would be really funny though to do an entire Kingdom Hearts game of just the live action remakes, just replaying the entirety of KH1 & 2 but now everything is photorealistic. God that would've been such a hilarious bit with the realistic Sora in KH4, I would love that actually.
- Finally, this is hypothesizing a new game like Dream Drop Distance, not a way Dream Drop Distance could've been improved. I am not limiting myself to Worlds that existed at the time of Dream Drop by any means. This only comes up on like two of the worlds I have listed but still, good ground rule to establish.
Duckburg
I feel like this is the most obvious world to fulfill this prompt. From the very beginning of the Kingdom Hearts series, Huey, Dewey, and Louie have been prominent characters, usually appearing as shopkeepers as they try to amass money to continue their adventures. They were the main shopkeepers in the first game, they ran the shops in Hollow Bastion in the second, they were central to one of the worlds in Birth by Sleep, they have been all over the franchise since its inception. Heck, they even made it into re:coded, no one made it into re:coded. Similarly, as of Kingdom Hearts II, Scrooge McDuck has been a major player in the Kingdom Hearts franchise. Positioned as a universe traveler who is always seeking financial gain, Scrooge has appeared in games like KH2, BBS, and KH3 with some brand new money making scheme. These characters are hugely important to the history of the Kingdom Hearts franchise and to a large portion of the audience, this is likely odd. Because in America, these characters are primarily associated with the Disney show DuckTales. And there has not been, as of the time of writing this, any real DuckTales content within the Kingdom Hearts series.
Now, if you're outside of America or just know what happened with pop culture in the past century outside of the States, you'll instantly know why. These characters are not even remotely connected to their DuckTales incarnations and are, instead, based on the wildly successful series of Donald Duck adjacent cartoons and comic books that the US doesn't really engage with. Globally, characters like Scrooge McDuck are among the most well known Disney characters, having been prominently featured in some of the most successful Disney projects of all time, and they are in particular very popular in Japan. A lot of the earliest mangaka were inspired by the Scrooge McDuck comics that never found a foothold in the US actually, meaning a lot of modern Japanese art is descended from Scrooge McDuck. Their inclusion in Kingdom Hearts is actually a pretty massive deal even if it's not always understood by the Americans. It's like how they put Terry in Smash, nobody in America knows who that is but LatAm popped off like nobody's business.
The fact that they aren't inspired by the DuckTales version of these characters, however, allows us to consider a DuckTales world for a hypothetical Dream Drop 2. Like I said, this is the most obvious fit for the prompt you could possibly have. You're taking a familiar character or characters (in this case, Scrooge McDuck and the nephews) and having Sora and whoever comes with him experience them in a wildly different context. It would frankly just be really cool to see Sora interact with the adventurer version of Scrooge McDuck, a man who is more of a swashbuckler than he is a businessman. It would also give Sora the opportunity to interact with the Disney Afternoon, a huge part of Disney's history that unfortunately doesn't have a reason otherwise to pop-up in Kingdom Hearts. Also, full disclosure, I kind of just want to see Yoko Shimomura take on the DuckTales theme and turn it into a level tune.
As for what part of DuckTales I think this game could be based on, part of me wants to say the Season 2 finale of the DuckTales reboot, just because the Moon is so associated with DuckTales at this point that it feels just right to have that play into its adaptation in Kingdom Hearts. And again, imagine a Shimomura version of the Moon theme but redone as a battle theme. It would kill. Another tempting option is the Season 1 finale of DuckTales 2017, the Don Cheadle Duck section, just because I want desperately to see Sora's reaction to Donald "talking normally". But I don't think it's fair to just do the reboot when the point is to highlight an alternate version of the original Scrooge and nephews. So let's just place the world in the DuckTales movie, Treasure of the Lost Lamp, specifically the point in which the villain, Dijon, wishes for Scrooge's fortune and gets him arrested onwards.
Underland
I guess this technically counts as a "sequel", huh? I don't know, the status of Tim Burton's 2010 adaptation of Alice in Wonderland has always been a bit murky. Is it a sequel, is it a remake, is it an entirely new adaptation unrelated to the Disney version? It's kind of all three at once. Of the worlds on this list, this is actually the one I'm most surprised hasn't made it into a Kingdom Hearts game yet. Alice in Wonderland was the very first Disney world that Sora ever visited in a Kingdom Hearts game and it has left a large shadow on the series since. If there is a game that is set around the time of KH1, it has Wonderland in it. Wonderland is so quintessentially Kingdom Hearts and especially so quintessentially Kingdom Hearts 1, it is one of the things I think about when I think of KH1. Mainly because I've played that world specifically dozens of times over the years.
It is then very odd that the alternate universe sort of sequel/sort of remake version of Alice in Wonderland has never appeared in a Kingdom Hearts game. It's weird to think about now, as we're rapidly approaching two decades since this film happened, but Tim Burton's adaptation of Alice in Wonderland was a cultural phenomenon. It was at a time when people still were somewhat optimistic about Burton's work, we were only just realizing how often his films drew from the same well and had not yet fully gotten to "the good era is pretty definitively over". Even if we had, an Alice in Wonderland adaptation from Burton was such a perfect idea that it seemed impossible to screw up. We had not yet entered the live action remake era in full, and in fact it would be several years before we even knew what the live action remake era entailed, so people did look at the Burton Alice in Wonderland with optimism at the time. And it starred the, at the time, very beloved actor Johnny Depp, long after he started running on fumes but long before anyone noticed. Not only did it star Depp, it starred him in a role that people could really latch onto as an eccentric, easily recognizable, easily mimicable character. Which was a big deal because this was 2010 so everyone was getting sick of Jack Sparrow impressions. It seems like I'm giving backhanded compliments but you need to understand, this was a different time and this movie was huge. It made a billion dollars, and that's not a lot of money anymore but in 2010 that was kind of unheard of. This was long before we entered the dominance of the superhero movie era, after all, where basically every event film crossed a billion, Alice in Wonderland was one of like 9 films period who had done it up to that point.
It genuinely seems like it would've been a shoe-in for the original Dream Drop Distance, as such. Like, I know that's not exactly how Kingdom Hearts works, it's not quite a popularity contest despite what people seem to think. Nomura chooses what worlds he wants to be in there and if they align with what's popular, they align with what's popular. I doubt Hercules would be a lock for every KH game if it was just a popularity contest. But it does feel like the kind of movie that Nomura would be super invested in getting for his series. Like he's a massive fan of Nightmare Before Christmas and its gothic imagery, he was even on that train long before Disney realized it was a lucrative property, it was literally the first world they conceptualized. He always likes putting Sora in these darker worlds, as seen with like Pirates of the Caribbean. And obviously he's a pretty big fan of Alice in Wonderland given it's such a mainstay of his series. Maybe he's not a huge fan of the decision to add a lore and mythology to Wonderland either.
Anyways, Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland sees an adult Alice, who is roughly ten years out from her childhood adventures in Wonderland and having been led to believe it was just an elaborate dream she has since forgotten, being brought back into the world of Wonderland (which is revealed to actually be called "Underland" and she just continuously mispronounced it) to save it in the midst of political turmoil. The Red Queen and White Queen are at war and the Red Queen's forces are about to claim victory as they have allied themselves with the mighty dragon of Wonderland, the Jabberwocky. Alice must reclaim her memories and prepare to step in to stop the Red Queen, wielding the mythical "vorpal sword", the only weapon capable of slaying the Jabberwocky. Adaptations of Alice have just gotten so much mileage out of that nonsense poem, haven't they?
Now, I'm not going to say that Kingdom Hearts necessarily gains anything from adding the Burton Alice in Wonderland, this is really more just me being surprised it has yet to make an appearance in the series at all. It genuinely seems like such an obvious pull. As for when the world would be set, really just any point of the movie after Alice makes it to Underland is good, I think this is a movie that would benefit from having most of its content be in a world in Kingdom Hearts, but I think if you want a more specific timeframe: the part from when Alice arrives in the Red Queen's palace and poses as a servant named "Um" onward would be kind of fun to highlight. You'd actually have a nice parallel between the original Kingdom Hearts Wonderland and the alternate universe of "Underland" then.
Pixie Hollow
This is kind of a "weird pick", but hear me out. So, in the mid-00s, DisneyToon Studios, one of the many studios that was under Disney's umbrella and the one who mostly handled the animation on sequels, prequels, spin-offs, etc. for Disney's animated films began work on a brand new franchise for young girls starring the character Tinker Bell. Initially the film was meant to be an ensemble piece about Tink and a bunch of other pixies from Neverland flying to London after the events of Peter Pan to attempt to retrieve a magical ring, all the while coming into conflict with Captain Hook and his crew. It was meant to be a light, fun adventure fair for a younger girl audience than even the Disney Princess line targeted, teaching lessons about being true to yourself and friendship and teamwork. It was also nigh unwatchable according to the people who saw it and the film was scrapped at the 90% completion mark, having to be very quickly rewritten and reworked from the ground up at the last minute.
What they produced in the fallout of this scrapped film is the 2008 children's film "Tinker Bell", a pseudo-origin story for the character of Tinker Bell. The Tinker Bell film franchise's canonicity to the Peter Pan films is dubious at best, sometimes it seems like it was trying to slowly set up the Peter Pan story, sometimes it seemed like it was an alternate universe take. It ultimately doesn't matter because these are movies for children. Tinker Bell begins at the literal moment of Tinker Bell's birth, where she arises from a flower fully formed as the fairy we know and love. She is then immediately put to work. Every fairy in the fairy homeland, Pixie Hollow, has a specific job you see. There are water fairies who are in charge of molding the water into dew drops, light fairies who give light to bioluminescent creatures, animal fairies who teach the animals the lessons they need for survival and so on. Tinker Bell is a "tinker fairy". Meaning she does machines. Not exactly what I imagined for Tinker Bell, especially since there are literally fairies who are in charge of pixie dust manufacturing, but hey, I'm no Disney writer.
Even though the series' plot would change, its core themes of finding yourself and friendship and determinism are all still present across the subsequent films. The series would go on to be very successful, spawning 6 total films, 2 short films, and probably more merchandise than anyone could possibly count. It even was planned to have a final film to send off the franchise, which would've shown Tinker Bell meeting Peter Pan and his initial battle with Captain Hook, something foreshadowed in the series' fifth film "The Pirate Fairy". This movie was canned due to the declining sales of home media and the subsequent shutdown of DisneyToon studios.
Now, it's definitely an odd pick to have a franchise so decidedly for small children in Kingdom Hearts, but I actually think it's a rather interesting fit. Neverland has always been a pretty prominent part of the Kingdom Hearts series, one of the most story significant worlds in the first game was the world of Neverland. It was the moment where we really found out what Maleficent's plan really was, where our missing friend Kairi was and where she fits inside Sora Maleficent's ambitions, where we found out that Riku really has turned traitor if you didn't do Monstro because Monstro is optional. Moreover, Peter Pan has cemented himself as someone who keeps popping up in this franchise, even lending his help to Sora as a summon in KH2 despite Sora and Peter never really seeming to like each other all that much.
Unfortunately, Tinker Bell is an aspect of this series that has never had time to be properly explored due to the heavy plot focus in many of these worlds. She kind of just exists as a means for the plot to move forward rather than a character in her own right, with the only game where Tink feels like she's a real character being 358 with how she interacts with Roxas. And like, obviously the Pixie Hollow Tinker Bell is not exactly Tinker Bell but I think it'd just be cool to see Sora interact with her on a more personal level. As for which of the Tinker Bell films I think the world should be based off of? I think it's gotta be Pirate Fairy. A big problem with these films in this context is that a lot of them are very static films. They don't have plots with a lot of momentum, sometimes they're just "we're going to spend the entire film in this one location and it's going to just be about learning a lesson". Pirate Fairy seems to me like the best bet for a more adventure-y story. You could even have a boss fight against a giant James Hook back when he was just Blackbeard's cabin boy James.
Puerto Dorado
Do y'all ever just think about how weird Pirates of the Caribbean is? Pirates of the Caribbean is a massive film franchise, a sprawling fantasy epic that takes place across numerous films, books, comics, video games and more, Disney's own attempt to rival the success of the Lord of the Rings franchise which dominated the early 00s. And it's all based on a theme park ride. One of the most iconic theme park rides of all time, I'll grant you, but still a theme park ride. More than that, it's not even really a proper adaptation of the theme park ride. Like, it borrows a lot of elements from it, it recreates the most iconic scenes from the ride in the film. But other than what essentially amount to easter eggs, the ride is more "inspiration" and less "source material". Like they basically just saw the opening show scene with skeleton pirates who are clinging to their lifestyle even in death and went "that's our movie". It seems like it almost was branded as "Pirates of the Caribbean" as a means to get corporate to sign off on the IP, as pirate movies were considered box office poison. And it worked out, don't get me wrong, Curse of the Black Pearl is an absolutely amazing film and it is much better than you remember it being in your head, seriously, go rewatch it. But I think it's about time we give the ride proper its due. This is Puerto Dorado, the world of the Pirates of the Caribbean theme park ride.
Puerto Dorado is an 18th century Spanish port town within the Caribbean, and the primary setting of the show scenes of the original Pirates of the Caribbean ride. It is a seemingly peaceful town, with a wealthy Spanish populace who normally walk the streets in peace. That is until Pirates descend on the town. See, the pirates have found out that Puerto Dorado's leader, the Magistrate Carlos, is holding a treasure map that would lead them to a Grotto containing a massive treasure from the original Conquest of the new world. Over the course of the night, they capture the place and turn it into a den of crime and sin, capturing the women of the town to sell them at auction, arriving at the bars and drunkenly singing their songs, before burning the town and setting sail for the treasure they seek. However, they would never return from this expedition, as while they would find the treasure, their greed would imprison them in the Grotto, which is the opening scene of the ride. The pirates who had found the treasure still caught in their final moments of greed long after they had died, a skeleton crew fighting over treasure they will never get to spend.
Now, Pirates of the Caribbean has been a pretty prominent part of the Kingdom Hearts since KH2, with the game attempting to draw numerous parallels between Sora, a golden retriever of a man whose positivity is literally so strong that it has defeated the concept of death multiple times, and Captain Jack Sparrow, an alcoholic opportunist who would abandon his friends to the wolves if given the opportunity, hoping they survive long enough for him to come back with a bigger ship, if he's even willing to come back for them at all. The inclusion of Pirates was also intended to show that the series was getting darker, albeit still within the realm of a kids game, Sora was now having to fight real people rather than just faceless dark monsters. As well there is this idea put forward that Sora kind of likes being a pirate. Granted, he only knows it in the context of being a swashbuckling hero and has never done an ounce of actual thieving, but you know. Doing an alternate universe Pirates of the Caribbean just makes sense, bringing Sora further into that darkness, you know?
Obviously, you would just set this world in the show scenes of the ride, maybe if you want to avoid the whole "bridal auction" thing you could base on the revamp where the Lady in Red is changed from victim to pirate and have her be a major player in the story of this world. You could also do something to soften the blow of Sora taking down actual human pirates, maybe have them be possessed by a Heartless that feeds off greed or something. Have all the humans be knocked unconscious while the greed monsters fly out of them. Also it'd just be fun to see Shimomura tackle "A Pirate's Life for Me", I know we all hate it when the world music is a song that has a specific song structure and then just loops endlessly but like. I think it could work in this circumstance. Oh and maybe you could incorporate the Grotto as the like "boss arena", similar to what was in Port Royal in KH2, but have it be like "the heartless controlling them is sealed inside of it and if the pirates get their hand on the treasure, they will be unleashed onto the World."
The Shadowlands
I almost don't want to talk about what this idea is because I want you to figure out what "the Shadowlands" means. But, as is the nature of this article, we must talk about it. So, we've covered a lot of interesting facets of Disney's brand so far. Live action remakes, TV shows, home media spin-offs, theme park rides. All important pillars of the brand, both in the past and to this day. But there is a pretty massive hole in both Kingdom Hearts' depiction of these Disney worlds and in our own data tracking. And that is Disney on Broadway. Disney has been a titan of the Broadway scene for decades at this point. Beauty and the Beast, The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, Hunchback of Notre Dame, Frozen, all shows that have been massive hits and some of them have become as iconic to the stage as the works of Rodgers and Hammerstein or Andrew Lloyd Webber. And Tarzan was there too! But, without question, the most important Disney Broadway adaptation and arguably one of the most important Broadway shows in history is today's subject. Yes I'm talking about the Lion King again, I'm sorry, I don't know how this keeps happening!
The Broadway version of the Lion King is, bar none, one of the coolest Broadway shows of all time. I'm willing to just say that, and I don't think people would disagree with me. It remains the gold standard for how to adapt a film into Broadway, a gold standard that a lot of adaptations fail to reach in my opinion. It doesn't try to bloat the Lion King by adding too many subplots and additional characters to pad the time, but it also doesn't just try to be the film on the stage. It cleverly expands on incidental music that was originally in the film to bolster the runtime, either by turning the songs into full scenes to set the mood or by making them into musical numbers, rather than adding a bunch of scenes and musical numbers to arbitrarily bloat a 80 minute movie into a 150 minute musical. And the costuming and puppetry is absolutely amazing, some of the best in the entire history of the medium. I genuinely believe the Broadway adaptation is the definitive version of the Lion King, it is brilliant in every possible way a Broadway show could be.
Really, it's because of the presentation of the Lion King on Broadway that I want the Shadowlands (get it, Shadowland is one of the big Broadway exclusive tracks). I want to see the translation of these puppets and costumes and stuff into Kingdom Hearts. It would create such a unique world visually, which is one of the things that KH fans really love about certain worlds in the series. Kingdom Hearts getting super experimental with its visuals can turn what would otherwise be a pretty mediocre world into something the fanbase raves about years later. See: Timeless River. The actual story of this world would just be the Lion King, it would probably primarily take place in the show's second act and cover a lot of the same ground as the Pride Lands did in KH2. But it would be such a spectacle visually, such a unique rework of an existing world, that it would absolutely kill.
The Ohana Islands
This will not be a world based on the film Lilo and Stitch. I know, I'm sad about it too, I literally put this on here thinking "hey, we can finally do Lilo and Stitch, we can finally have a timeline where Stitch doesn't fully miss out on meeting Lilo because he's trying to track down the Birth by Sleep crew". As an aside, did y'all ever realize the implications of Stitch choosing to try and track Terra, Aqua, and Ven and ending up in Hollow Bastion does mean there's an actual Lilo world out there where Lilo was just. Taken away from Nani? That's just what the canon of Kingdom Hearts is now, sorry for making you sad, I didn't write that, Nomura did. Speaking of that, I really wanted to put the Lilo section of Lilo and Stitch in this because I feel like that is what a lot of people would want out of a proper Lilo and Stitch world. To see the Lilo part of it.
But I think that section of Lilo and Stitch is just a bit too real for Kingdom Hearts, you know? Like the Lilo part of Lilo and Stitch is about a young native Hawaiian girl whose parents are dead living with her older sister who gave up a potentially lucrative professional surfing career to raise her baby sister, picking up jobs at tourist traps owned by wealthy white people that fetishize her entire existence to make ends meet. Oh and also the United States government is trying to separate them. It's just a bit too much of a real problem for Sora to swing a Keyblade at, you know?
At the same time, it's not like I can just ignore Lilo and Stitch. This is one of the most necessary worlds to fulfill this prompt. Stitch has carved a niche for himself in the Kingdom Hearts series, he's easily the most iconic summon in KH2, he appeared as a party member in Birth by Sleep, and he returned as a summon in KH3. It's clear Stitch is one of the mainstays of the series and, since his inclusion, a proper world based on Lilo and Stitch has seemed to be a hanging thread. It demands to be addressed, almost. So what are we to do? What possible piece of Lilo and Stitch canon could we base this on to both address the Lilo and Stitch shaped hole in the KH series while not going to real with it. ...do y'all know who Angel is?
Yes, I am suggesting we base this entire world off a singular episode of the Lilo and Stitch animated spinoff where they say cousin every third line. And I am suggesting we base it off the Angel episode specifically. So the reason for this is that I think that the Angel episode allows you to touch upon as many aspects of the franchise as possible in the most digestible way. The Angel episode has a lot of focus on Lilo and Stitch's friendship, it features Jumbaa being both a goofy and evil mad scientist, it allows you to put in a lot of experiment fights because of Angel's power to turn good experiments back to evil. Which is a thing she can do, which is an incredible amount of foresight by Jumbaa, like. He somehow predicted that there would someday be a little Hawaiian girl who would find all his experiments gainful employment so they'd stop wanting to destroy the universe? He predicted that Regis Philbin would someday develop a biological resistance to sleep medication and need a little sheep to put him to sleep? Crazy. And Angel herself, whether we like it or not, is a massive part of the franchise. She is always advertised as one of the main characters, even taking the spot from Lilo in some merch lines, and she was a main character in the second Lilo and Stitch TV series "Stitch!" Like, the Angel episode just kind of works. And because you have all these experiments turning back to evil, you can pad the runtime with a bunch of unique boss fights.
Although speaking of boss fights, this an idea I've had for a long time about a hypothetical Lilo and Stitch world: they have it so that this is the "Coliseum" world where you can fight in like tournaments but it's actually just a series of experiment fights you can fight. And as it goes on, you have to start fighting them multiples at a time, them playing off each other's strengths and weaknesses to gain the upper hand. This could also be a way to incorporate experiments that weren't in the Angel episode originally, just have them appear as matches in this tournament setting. But anyways, when you get to the end of the tournament chain, you can fight Stitch, obviously, and he'll be something of a superboss. But then you could unlock harder tournaments and if you get to the end of those? You get to fight 625 as a superboss and he can do everything Stitch can do, but also, he's always making sandwiches, so he can heal mid match. Tell me that's not an amazing idea for a hypothetical KH game.
Castle of Warped Dreams
This is a personal attack to all Kingdom Hearts fans. So, I had a general idea of what worlds I wanted to include on this list when I started making it. Some of those didn't make it on here, for what it's worth, I couldn't make Sword in the Stone make sense because it's not really a movie with a standard three act structure, I realized that the Disney Channel Original Movie "Halloweentown" did not technically count by my rules even though it would be a great bit, I wanted to put in Casey Jr. Circus but I realized that the window where Dumbo makes sense to do as a world is so small that it really wouldn't actually work. However, there was one addition to this list that I didn't initially think of but as soon as I started looking through the eligible content I felt a lightbulb go off. A world that fills the prompt in such a unique and interesting way that I HAD to put it on here. And as I trimmed the list, it survived. It thrived even. This is the Castle of Warped Dreams, a world based on the alternate timeline depicted in Cinderella III: A Twist in Time. By the way, I really tried to put the Brandy version of Cinderella in here and couldn't justify it, I'm sorry y'all.
The third Cinderella film is among the most unique and interesting of the Disney Direct-to-DVD sequels. Which is unfortunate, because it was the second to last one, unless you're counting the Tinker Bell films. A Twist in Time takes place a considerable amount of time after the first Cinderella film, with Cinderella as the princess of the kingdom in the film and Lady Tremaine and her daughters having been relegated to footnotes in her story. However, due to an accident at a celebration of Cinderella's wedding anniversary, Tremaine gets ahold of the Fairy Godmother's magic wand and uses it to rewrite history to make it so that the glass slipper instead fit Anastasia, Cinderella's stepsister, and then enchanted the Prince to believe that he danced with Anastasia that night because, contrary to what people have said about this story to try and play a "gotcha" on it and prove they're smarter than it, the Prince would in fact recognize the woman he danced with over more than a shoe.
Now, I know this is a Disney sequel and I know my rules were kind of constructed to edge those out, but it just makes sense, right? Like, this is about possible alternate universe worlds appearing in a hypothetical Kingdom Hearts game, and Cinderella III is literally a movie about an alternate universe version of Cinderella. One that includes a very interesting storyline where the villains win and they take over the kingdom. One that has way more drama, way more action. One where Cinderella, as a character, has to be kind of an action hero a little. It'd be a super fascinating world to throw in there. Also, like. Sora has met Cinderella, he rescued her at the end of KH1, but they don't super know each other. So it'd just be interesting the see the two interact more. And also this is a world that cannot actually happen on the main KH timeline because in the main KH timeline, Aqua unceremoniously murders Lady Tremaine and Cinderella's two stepsisters in the woods. Which is very sad knowing that Anastasia is a character Disney put work into having a redemption arc, because large swaths of Cinderella 2 and 3 are just about her realizing she no longer wants to be like her mother and she settles down with a humble baker who is also Will Scarlet, I guess, I don't know.
Obviously the window of time that this world would be set in is after Tremaine makes things wrong. I imagine Sora landing right after Anastasia is riding off to meet with the prince. Like I'm so distinctly picturing Sora seeing the carriage leaving from Lady Tremaine's house and thinking "oh, this is Cinderella's world" only for it to then be followed by Cinderella running out of the house to sneak into the Prince's palace and set things right, causing Sora to chase after her. As an aside, something I find interesting is that A Twist in Time doesn't "fix" itself. When the Fairy Godmother gets her wand back she almost offers to set things right, but realizes this timeline is arguably better as Cinderella and the Prince have a more deep love carved by mutual experiences and Anastasia and Cinderella now have a positive relationship with each other much earlier on. Also Lady Tremaine got turned into a frog, so truly this is the good timeline, who doesn't love a frog?
Planet Z
One of the most notable new additions to the Kingdom Hearts series in its third main installment was the Toy Story franchise. Toy Story is a world that felt like a long time coming, especially with Disney's acquisition of Pixar in 2006. It's one of the most iconic animated films of all time, it's one of the most beloved film franchises in history and there are actually indications that Toy Story content in Kingdom Hearts was being worked on as early as the Final Mix version of KH2. Various datamines over the years have confirmed the existence of unfinished Buzz and Woody models, with it being long speculated that they were intended to be a summon in the enhanced version of the game which just never got finished. And when the world finally appeared in KH3, it was beloved. It's easily one of the most in-depth worlds in the entire KH series, so much love and care was put into every individual detail of the world and the audience largely responded positively to it. It immediately felt like it belonged in the Kingdom Hearts series and I'm fully expecting it to become a mainstay due to how much you can get out of Toy Story.
And with a franchise as wide as Toy Story, it only makes sense to try and insert something from the franchise into the Dream Drop Distance thought experiment we have going here. And there is actually a lot of aspects of the franchise we could base it on. Woody's Round-Up, the in-universe 1950s Western TV show that inspired the Sheriff Woody toyline that Woody comes from. The playtime sessions we see in films like Toy Story 3, where we see this massive sprawling narrative surrounding our favorite toy characters. Lightyear, a movie nobody likes that Pixar sold as "the movie Andy saw that made him obsessed with Buzz Lightyear", because I'm so sure Andy saw this Instellar-esque movie at the age of like 7 and went "yeah, I want to have EVERYTHING related to this movie". However, I think the pick is obvious. We're going to Buzz Lightyear of Star Command, the other show that is canon to the Toy Story films.
Buzz Lightyear of Star Command is a TV series starring the character of Buzz Lightyear, who is a Space Ranger working for, well, Star Command. The series begins with him having recently lost his partner during a battle with Emperor Zurg, who as we know is secretly Buzz's father because he's a pastiche of Darth Vader. This leads him to become a bitter, lonely space cop who refuses to ever have another partner, lest he lose them too. Unfortunately for Buzz, that's not how cops work, so Star Command assigns him a new partner in the form of rookie Mira Nova, an alien princess with a fluid biochemistry that allows her to phase through objects. Through his interactions with Mira, he learns to be a team player again, and eventually develops his own unit, Team Lightyear, consisting of himself, Mira, the clumsy but enthusiastic giant alien Booster Munchapper, and the experimental robot XR, who is prone to falling apart but can be easily put back together and is seemingly indestructible despite his design. The group go on adventures of the weak, as they combat space criminals, while having frequent run-ins with the army of the evil Emperor Zurg.
Now, this being a TV show, there are obviously questions on when this would be set. Buzz Lightyear of Star Command is a long running, entirely episodic television series after all. There are so many specific stories you could set a Buzz Lightyear of Star Command world in. But there is a specific reason why I'm calling this world "Planet Z" and not "Star Command". I am suggesting we place this world at the very start of the series, during the Planet Z sections of the pilot movie "The Adventure Begins". Have Sora land only to have the Alpha-One spacecraft crash down in the opening cutscene, have him meet Buzz and insist he come along, have him not be surprised that Buzz is a grumpy loner who pushes away all his friends because that's literally the vibe Sora has always gotten off him. It'd also just be amusing to see Sora try to convince the "real Buzz Lightyear" that they already know each other from that time he was a toy, causing Patrick Warburton Buzz to hit him with the "you're a sad strange little man, and you have my pity".
The Ruined City of Midgar
Since the very beginning of the Kingdom Hearts franchise, there has been one commonly held sentiment among the fanbase: when are we getting an actual Final Fantasy world. Even though Nomura now states that Kingdom Hearts was never actually intended to be a crossover between Final Fantasy and Disney and that the Final Fantasy characters were there for both marketing reason and to fill space that would later be filled by original characters, many of the people who latched onto the franchise back in the day always saw the series as a crossover between these two titans. And it was not uncommon to see people ask for more Final Fantasy representation, to not just have these characters appear in the Kingdom Hearts series as this group of refugees cast from their home but to have their own stories be told within the Kingdom Hearts saga. Heck, there were and still are people who state KH should fully abandon the Disney stuff and just be the original and FF stuff. Those people have what we like to call bad opinions.
There are two key reasons why I don't think this would actually work like people want it to. The first is that I think it would actually be very disappointing to see Final Fantasy become sequestered into their own worlds after the status quo has been established that these people coexist with each other, have unique lives, friendships, relationships. I know for myself, I would dislike it if Rinoa, a hanging thread from KH2, appeared in an FFVIII world and interacted with the FFVIII versions of the cast instead of appearing in KH and interacting with the Hollow Bastion/Radiant Garden crew. I think it just fits better for KH to have the Final Fantasy characters be part of generic "Final Fantasy-esque" worlds where they all coexist at once. The other reason is just logistical. How would you do a Final Fantasy world? How would you condense a 40-60 hour RPG into one 2-4 hour segment of another game without basically missing the entire point of the source material? If only there was a Final Fantasy property that, due to the rules of Dream Drop Distance world selection, could allow us to explore alternate versions of established Final Fantasy characters while also just being, say, a movie length experience, one that does not require you to take out a small snippet of a much larger RPG. Yeah we're doing Advent Children here.
Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children is the sequel to Final Fantasy VII and the "true ending" of the original story between Cloud and Sephiroth. Taking place two years after Final Fantasy VII, Advent Children sees Cloud now technically living with his childhood sweetheart Tifa Lockhart (although they are still not together) and running a courier service in the city of Edge, a refugee city on the outskirts of the ruins of Midgar. Cloud spends most of his time wandering, however, as he is wracked with guilt over the death of his friend/potential partner Aerith Gainsborough. As well, he, as well as all the children who were born in Midgar in the last 12 or so years, are infected by a mysterious illness known as Geostigma. One day, he is called back home by Tifa to meet with the former President of Shinra, Rufus Shinra, who tells Cloud that there are three remaining Sephiroth clones out there, and they want to combine their life forces with those of the children infected by Geostigma to resurrect Sephiroth so he can accomplish his goal. Cloud and the gang must reunite to fight off these clones, hoping to stop their resurrection of Sephiroth in the process.
This is just such an easy bag, you know? Doing Advent Children in a Dream Drop Distance-like game allows you to answer demands for a proper Final Fantasy world in Kingdom Hearts that will not have to take severe shortcuts to adapt the source material into this series and won't fight against the established canon of these Final Fantasy characters. It would be having your cake and eating it too. As well, I just think it would be very fun to have Sora enter a version of the Final Fantasy VII story specifically, especially since right now Cloud, Sephiroth and Tifa are MIA in the main KH timeline. Sora just thinking this is where they went only to realize they're not exactly those versions of his friends. And then also realizing that his friend Aerith is dead and has been for at least two years. As for when this takes place during the source material, Advent Children is a very action-heavy movie with tons of forward momentum, I think it would just be the entire movie. Sora arrives at Tifa's courier service as she's calling Cloud to come talk to Rufus Shinra and we go from there. You could even explain away the fact that the boss of this world would just be Sephiroth, who is normally a superboss in the KH series, because he's kind of an imperfect resurrection of Sephiroth. Get Lance Bass back though, that's non-negotiable.
The Bound Woods
I have a lot of ideas for things to write about for this blog. A LOT of ideas. I have started and scrapped too many blog posts to count. There are many reasons for this. I stop wanting to talk about the topic in question because I get time away from it and realize I'm apathetic to the thing in question. I just can't find a good way to talk about the thing in question, I literally struggle to start it. I work on a project for like a year and realize "oh wait, this is just boring, what am I doing". Usually, for me to grow attached to a piece, especially a list-like discussion piece like this one, I need one singular thing for me to talk about. One grounding topic for the whole thing to be worth it. I would not have written my most successful piece as of this writing if the idea of talking about Daisy as Smash's first woman of color didn't cross my mind. This is that for this piece. The Bound Woods are a world I have been saying should be in Kingdom Hearts for years, a world that seems too perfect not to do, and a world that is very unlikely for them to actually do. For you see, my friends. The Bound Woods is what I am calling the world of Maleficent.
This is the one inarguable "live action remake" I am entertaining for this thought experiment. Maleficent is a 2014 reimagining of the Walt Disney classic Sleeping Beauty which shifts the protagonist role from the hero, Aurora, to the film's charismatic and beloved villain Maleficent, framing her more as a victim of a lover who took from her the things she cherished most for his own personal gain, showing her turning into the villain we know before ultimately choosing to be a hero after developing maternal feelings for Aurora. Now, full disclosure, this practice has been long critiqued by fans of Disney and particularly Sleeping Beauty as Maleficent is kind of the textbook example of a transparently "evil for the sake of being evil" sort of villain. She's beloved BECAUSE of her being just a petty, vile woman who is willing to damn a kingdom to a fate worse than death because she's mad she didn't get invited to a birthday party. To do this to Maleficent is, to some, misunderstanding the character. It doesn't help that the movie ended up not being that great either.
But I think that's why I find this idea so compelling. There is just something inherently interesting about the idea of taking a character so beloved for being truly and unrepentantly evil and choosing to add weight to their character. Showing them as a person who had everything taken from them by someone they believed they could trust, someone they believed they could love, only for them to abandon her because they got what they wanted. And, in turn, seeing this character who has every reason to take the actions she took end up choosing to love has a lot of potential. Maleficent asks us to sympathize with the devil and honestly, I think that the only reason it ends up not working is not that the idea could never work, it is instead that Disney has too much reverence for the original work to make it properly work. It's never allowed to be a full retelling, it is bound by the original.
I'm getting away from the point. The reason I think a Maleficent world would be interesting for Kingdom Hearts to explore is because of who the character of Sora is. Like, I love Sora, don't get me wrong, he's a lovable goofball with too much trauma for a kid who just wants to fish. But Sora has a bad habit of viewing the world within very black and white terms. Light is always good, darkness is always evil, and if darkness is ever a valid path, it is one in service of the light. There's an entire world about this in KH3, where feminist icon Larxene calls Sora out for believing that he is allowed to make Elsa's choices for her because of his belief that light is inherently right and darkness is inherently wrong. And I think it would just be super interesting to see Sora interact with a version of one of his greatest enemies who is the hero. There is no more direct way to challenge Sora's beliefs than to bring him to a world where the things he thought he knew were true are not, where Maleficent is a person he has to empathize with, has to understand, has to ally himself with. And moreover, I think it would be interesting to see the two Mals interact with each other, see tragic Mal meet classic Mal and realize that this is the worst version of herself. It's just such an interesting idea that I think the KH series would only benefit from exploring.
As for when the world would be set, it obviously makes the most sense to set it during the 16-year-old Aurora sections of the original film. I think it would actually be very clever to start the world as Aurora flees from the Moors after finding out what Maleficent did, making Sora believe that Maleficent is trying to pursue the fleeing princess out of malice, only to fight her off and start to piece together the truth: that this Maleficent is not his enemy, she's the "good guy" here. Like, it's just basically the same timeframe that the Sleeping Beauty world in Birth by Sleep was set in, which makes it an excellent Sleeping World candidate, and also it allows Sora a lot of opportunity to interact with Maleficent as she is trying to fix her mistakes and do the right thing. And all the while you could have the classic Maleficent appearing to tragic Mal, trying to convince her to let this happen, convince her that she can truly win, only for tragic Mal to prove that she isn't a bad person, just a person who did horrible things and is trying to make amends. And then Sora and Mal can fight a heartless of King Stefan together after he falls from the Castle.
Storybrooke, MA
Sometimes you just gotta put in a stupid idea for no one else but yourself. Some of the people reading this have no idea what this is and are like "Ed, what are you on about". And some of the people know exactly what this is and are either laughing their heads off at this idea or about to stop speaking to me forever. Storybrooke, MA is the setting of the hit ABC fantasy-drama series Once Upon a Time. Once Upon a Time takes place across two different universes, one of which is our world and one of which is a world where numerous fairytales (or at least the Disney-branded versions of them) coexist. The series starts with bail bondswoman Emma Swann, the sexiest friendless orphan you'll ever meet (real ones know) on the night of her 28th birthday. After arresting someone who was caught skipping bail, she returns home to celebrate her birthday, wishing that she would just not be alone for the night. Suddenly, a knock raps on the door, and when Emma goes to answer it she discovers 10-year-old Henry Mills. Henry is the son that Emma had given up for adoption 10 years earlier and he demands she come back to his home of Storybrooke, Ma, with him because he believes that his town is populated entirely by the people from the storybook he carries around with them and that it is Emma's destiny to free them from a dark curse that has left them trapped in Maine. And the wild thing is? He's right.
See, almost 29 years prior, in the realm of Fairytales, Snow White and Prince Charming are having their wedding after the events of the story Snow White and Eight Seven Dwarves RIP Stealthy, my GOAT. However, the Evil Queen from that story, a woman named Regina, crashes the wedding and vows to rob everyone of their happy endings by any means necessary. She has discovered a dark curse, you see, a powerful magical spell that will create a world of the caster's choosing. And what Regina chooses, is to bring the entire populace of the Enchanted Forest (it's later called Misthaven but for now we just know it as the Enchanted Forest) to a place where they will be robbed of their memories, severed from their happy endings, and forced to live miserable and depressing lives under the heel of Regina without any magic available to free them. And the curse brings them to coastal Maine. Regina wanted a hell dimension and the curse was like "yeah, New England, I gotchu".
However, a prophecy is put forward that states that the child of Snow White and Prince Charming will eventually return to free the people of the fairytale world and bring an end to Regina's reign of terror. The plan is thus, Snow White will use an Enchanted Wardrobe to arrive in the land without magic and raise their child to one day save the people under Regina's curse. However, the wardrobe can only transport one person and one useless wooden puppet, and as luck would have it, Snow's child is born the night the curse is cast and, as such, has to be transported without her mother in the hopes she finds them when the time is right. That child is Emma Swann. Also, the Once Upon a Time universe believes that babies are not people until they are literally born, because Snow would've been able to go with Emma still inside her womb despite the wardrobe only allegedly having space for one person. Emma of course fulfills her duty and then also 6 other seasons happen and you won't believe what happens in those even a little.
Now I'm not going to pretend like there is any justifiable reason to put Storybrooke into a Kingdom Hearts game. There isn't. Like it doesn't thematically match at all, Once Upon a Time is very much about family and redemption and Kingdom Hearts is never about one of those things and is only kind of about the other. Like characters do get redeemed in Kingdom Hearts, it usually comes out of nowhere and ruins what's interesting about them but they do it. And Kingdom Hearts is so not about family that only one of the main characters has ever had a parent appear in this franchise, and she died moments after her introduction to never be mentioned again. But, it qualifies within my rules. It's an alternate universe version of a character or character(s), and/or an alternate version of a world that has previously appeared in the franchise before. It's not a sequel. It's not live action remake that doesn't add anything to the source material. Once Upon a Time technically counts for a Dream Drop Distance style game, and as such it should be on everyone's wishlist because this is hilarious. This is such a funny idea, if you hate this idea then you're too cynical to be playing Kingdom Hearts.
As for what the narrative of this world would be based on, I actually do have a very specific window for what I think a Once Upon a Time KH world should be based on. It's the Cora arc in Season 2, Episodes 10-17. I chose this arc for a number of reasons, it's in Season 2 which means magic has been brought to Storybrooke, so it's not just like "Sora tags along on a weird police procedural show where a woman investigates why her child's adoptive mom refuses to co-parent". There are like things that could be happening. Cora is one of the show's central antagonists and in many ways is the main antagonist of the core story between Snow White and Regina, her obsession with upward momentum and nearly two decades of abuse made Regina into the evil Queen in the first place. And, that's really kind of the last arc in the show that is about the Snow White stuff. The subsequent arcs tend to favor adapting specific fairytales or literature and delving into the deep lore of the character of Rumpelstiltskin, the show's actual main antagonist. If we are doing Once Upon a Time, I would like to keep it grounded on the Snow White conflict for simplicity's sake. Although, hear me out: two-phase Rumpelstiltskin superboss where he fights you as both Mr. Goblin and as the Lizard Goblin Man.
Auradon
I already feel like absolutely no one who will be reading this will know what this is. I kind of don't even know what this is. But you know what, sometimes you have to put in an entry just because it's really funny. I say sometimes, this isn't the first nor last time this will happen on this list where I just put in a weird entry but like. This is who I am, I'm sorry. I do so much serious game analysis on this blog and this is a fun post, let me be silly. I don't even care if there is no practical reality where this world would get in there, it's a fun pick. I'm arguing with no one, I'm defending myself to no one, you're probably just there asking "what the heck is Auradon". Well, dear reader, Auradon, or the United States of Auradon as it's also called despite being a monarchy, is the setting of the Descendants franchise.
Still with me? Good, this is the last one, you can leave after this. What is Descendants, I'm sure you're asking? I am not an expert on this franchise, Descendants was after my time, but I will explain it to the best of my knowledge. Descendants takes place in a universe where most of the Disney movies coexist, not just within the same universe but also in the same period. Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella but specifically the Brandy Cinderella movie from the Wonderful World of Disney, Peter Pan, Beauty and the Beast, etc. they all happened in this universe and all these stories coexist with each other. Now, at some point in the recent past, the various kingdoms from these films decided to unify into one centralized government and held an election. An election for who would be King and Queen of the United States of Auradon. I don't often wish that I was doing like video essays, I'm much better at writing than I am at speaking, I wish you all could hear how much I'm laughing each time I talk about a plot point in Descendants. Anyways, the election is held and Belle and the Beast, they always call him the Beast, never by his real name of "Adam", are elected to be the monarchs at the center of this ruthless globe-spanning empire democracy. And as the monarchs of the United States of Auradon, they decide to round up all the villains of their stories and force them into exile as political prisoners on an island without magic, which is presumably just in coastal Maine.
However, and this is the crazy part, the villains all have kids. Every single one of them. These kids were not born in exile, they were exiled with their parents, as Belle and the Beast, the democratically elected monarchs of this world, felt that it was just simply too dangerous to have the children of villains running around. So before they make any choices on whether or not to be evil, they're imprisoned on a cursed island as political prisoners. Cut to the 16th birthday of Belle and Beast's son Ben. Ben, being 16, is about to ascend to the throne of Auradon. His parents are still alive, this is just how the government works. Ben, having empathy, realizes that, hey, maybe it wasn't cool to lock up a bunch of children before they had the choice on whether or not to commit treason, maybe we should let them out so they can go to high school. And so they let out four of the villain kids, Mal, daughter of Maleficent, Evie, the daughter of the Evil Queen from Snow White, Jay, the son of Jafar, and Carlos, the son of Cruella De Ville. Two of their parents tried to commit regicide, one of them committed treason, one of them stole dogs. All of them are political prisoners. I guess when your democratically elected monarch is kind of a dog man himself, that makes sense.
To absolutely no one's surprise, it turns out the villain kids aren't inherently evil just because of their parents and, in fact, actually don't have great relationships with their parents who spend the entirety of their children's calls back home trying to rope them into schemes to overthrow the government, commit regicide, and... steal dogs I guess. With the subsequent films, they introduce more villain kids, all of whom have little interesting quirks. I think some of them are pirates? Anyways, Descendants is very silly but like, I'm here talking to you about Kingdom Hearts, I can't judge anything they do over on the Disney Channel. They have Phineas and Ferb, you know what doesn't have Phineas and Ferb, that's right, Kingdom Hearts. I'm really jokey in this post, huh?
I don't think it should come as a surprise that the primary reason I'm highlight Descendants is because it's just really funny. Like, I think there is something here, don't get me wrong. Like I stated with Maleficent, there is something very interesting about making Sora confront his biases. Making him confront the fact that he often sees the world in terms of black and white and that things are more complicated than that. I mean I guess his life is extremely complicated, but you know what I mean. Having Sora hang out with people his own age who are the children of people he has relentlessly stabbed in the past is an idea with some wings, especially since the Descendants franchise asks you to consider, hey, maybe banishment isn't a good punishment even if the people who you're banishing arguably deserve it. As such, the I think the version of Auradon I would base this world on is the one in Descendants 3, the one where King Ben asks Mal to marry him and his ex-girlfriend is so mad about this development that she becomes the most evil sorceress in all of Disney history, amassing the powers of every Disney villain behind her and reshaping the world to her whims. Get it girlie.
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