Donald Duck is considered by many fans to be the most powerful mage in all of Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts. For a long time, his reign as the supreme magic user in the franchise was unchallenged. But that’s changed with the release of Final Fantasy XVI, because now there’s finally another mage who’s as powerful as Disney’s duck.
To many fans around the world Donald Duck, Disney’s popular animated character, is a funny, grumpy, and loveable friend of Mickey and Goofy. He first appeared in 1934 and since then has become one of Disney’s biggest animated stars, appearing in numerous movies, shorts, comics, and TV shows. However, Kingdom Hearts and some Final Fantasy fans know Donald not as a silly duck with anger issues, but as the most powerful mage (and one of the most powerful beings) in the entire franchise, who…also has anger issues. Now, in the year of our lord 2023, someone in Final Fantasy XVI is finally giving him competition.
Spoilers for Final Fantasy XVI and Kingdom Hearts III below.
In Square Enix’s latest entry in its long-running Final Fantasy series, powerful creatures known as Eikons are a new take on the franchise staple of summonable monsters. Many classic summons, like Ifrit and Shiva, appear in the new game as Eikons. And at one point in FFXVI, players encounter one of Final Fantasy’s oldest summons: The powerful dragon himself, Bahamut. Bahamut first showed up as a foe in the original 1987 Final Fantasy and, since then, has made appearances in many games in the series. In many of them he commands extremely powerful offensive spells, which makes the dragon one of the most powerful magic users in the franchise. But not the most powerful.
The most powerful mage/magic user in this universe is Donald Duck. That’s not a joke. In Kingdom Hearts III — a game series that contains many Final Fantasy characters and spells — Donald at one point uses Zettaflare. This is often cited as the most powerful spell in Kingdom Hearts and Final Fantasy, so being able to wield it catapulted Donald to the top of the mage power tier list, even if that might sound like one of the most ridiculous things ever. And up there Donald sat, with no other character really coming close to his power.
That is, until Final Fantasy XVI landed last week. In the new action-RPG, Bahamut shows up and casts MegaFlare, GigaFlare, TeraFlare, and then finally, the most powerful spell of all: Zettaflare.
Some have suggested that this means Bahamut is more powerful than Donald Duck. I disagree. Instead, I think this just means that Donald finally has a worthy opponent to fight in a giant magical duel that would make for one hell of a cutscene in Kingdom Hearts IV.
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