The Rock returns, helping Fortnite players in another explosive live event

Fortnite’s latest season has concluded with this year’s first big live event, as the battle royale Island’s heroes aimed to end the villainous Imagined Order faction for good.

Starting off the event, players found themselves in groups of up to four people Fortnite’s bear mech for the first time. Here, you could peer out from its bridge and onto an unfamiliar landscape – an icy moon which orbits the main Fortnite Island – and play around with gun turrets while listening to brief audio chatter between heroes Jones (Troy Baker), The Origin (Rahul Kohli) and The Foundation (Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson).

With a minute to go, a mission briefing finally re-introduced the mech’s pilot The Paradigm and laid out the stakes: the evil IO were set to detonate a superweapon capable of killing everyone, and it was up to you inside the mech to stop it. (Never mind that this is your goal in each battle royale match.) So off we went, blasting into space, through an asteroid field, and towards our best view of the Fortnite island floating through the multiverse yet.

Touching down on Fortnite’s Island, the mech came under heavy fire from IO tanks and Fortnite’s dreaded mechs, and a powerful blast from the IO’s mole drill HQ. The heroic bear mech responded, opening up a superweapon of its own from its chest. All seemed to be going well until the IO’s blimps turned up – and then it was the turn of fan-favourite Peely to drive by and save the day with a Popeye spinach can-like oil tanker full of healing Slurp to restore the mech and restart its charge.