The Biggest Mysteries left in Hollow Knight

The biggest mystery actually is how did all the abyss vessles died if there's no fall damage in this game.

I always thought that the phrase "The last and only kingdom" was a straight up lie the pale king made to have a stronger influence towards the kingdom

A thought I had while watching this video: the reason why wyrms are the ones who create kingdoms is because they are the only ones big enough to create the tunnels everyone lives in. Normal bugs are too tiny and not cooperative enough to dig them out, only to create much smaller corridors like in deepnest. The wastelands are like that because worms in real life fertilize the ground, and since all wyrms died out the soil eroded to the wasteland.

One of my favorite small details in Hollow Knight is that the battles in Godhome are supposed to represent the bosses at the peak of their strength and capability, and the battle with Oro and Mato is them fighting The Knight along side each other. This shows that they are strongest when they work together, but due to their feud there's a good chance they will never reach their highest capability. It's beautifully tragic in a very specific way and it exemplifies the type of subtle writing, where it's completely possible to not even notice if you aren't analyzing everything in the game, that I absolutely love Hollow Knight for.

I think the name Hornet might possibly be a subtle and clever reference to hornets, from the hit videogame Real Life. Admittedly I've never actually played it, though I have seen it's anime adaptation, Family Guy.

“But the complete lack of the United States military anywhere in Hallownest” that line took me out back and shot me for my luscious untapped oil fields

I just want to say that "the daughter of three queens" sounds cool as hell

Since the Radiance refers to void as "ancient enemy", I firmly believe that void is a primordial force that is opposed to light. It is one of the elements from which the entire world is crafted and it just so happens that at the very bottom of hallownest is a large pool of pure void, that upon the pale king's discovery he started experimenting with precisely because he knew void and light are always in conflict with each other.

It’s really strange that they changed the name of “Silksong” to “Pizza Tower”. Still, Im glad they finally released it! The game is awesome :)

The biggest mystery is: will mossbag lose every bit of his sanity before silksong is released?

It's insane that after all this, after 6 years since Hollow Knight came out, Mossbag still can make an hour long video about what's still unsolved.

The whole "you knew what would happen but not how, and from that you will unwittingly bring about the events you wish to deter" is such a great way to humble an egoistic character, or bring some impermanence or greater perspective to a story

For your 4th video this is pretty great, can’t wait to see what you do next! Maybe you could dig deep into why Team Cherry gave Salubra so much sex appeal

"Isma could still be alive, even if it's not in the same way you or I are alive" Bold of you to assume I'm not a sentient plant, Mossbag

I always thought that charms worked by the more expensive the charm, the bigger it is. Each charm only slots into 1 slot, but covered up the other notches nearby, blocking them from use

I always thought maskmaker was commissioned by the king to make masks for the vessels. The line "To define, to exist, to focus" references harnessing void by giving it an identity. And what a powerful effect it has. Even in death the Siblings cling to the form they were given. The masks also grant the siblings the ability to focus, evidenced by it being the knight's starting spell, and description in godhome. Maskmaker knew the details of why the king needed millions of masks, which is how he knows of the knight's "face that lies beneath." Heck, he probably saw a few faceless vessels so he could get measurements. The high volume of the job order, combined with the knowing the fate of every mask recipient, drove this bug to insanity.

Fun fact: mossbag was holding a corn plate while recording this video.

I really appreciate you putting the Bee Movie script in the description, it was really helpful and saved me a lot of time!

My theory on Isma is that she was originally a follower of Unn before serving the Pale King, hence her connection with plants. Maybe she isn't dead so much as in stasis, becoming one with the grove to protect it (and by extension herself and Ogrim) from the Radiance's encroaching infection.

Lands Beyond: Maybe Hallownest is located somewhere that makes getting to and from it so dangerous that it makes travel outside of the kingdom impractical? It might as well be the only major civilization in the area when Blackwyrm: I have seen two theories about this that are pretty cool. One is that the Blackwyrm is a female of the Wyrm species that came to Hallownest to woo the Pale King via violence, but because he was already taken he had her driven off or killed. The other is that "Blackwyrm" is actually an organization, a group of rebels or an army that intended on overthrowing the Pale King to either free the kingdom from his rule or to simply take it over, depending on how charitable you're feeling about him. Origins of Void: Void is oil, 'nuff said. ...Ok, fine, I'll elaborate. Oil is made from the decomposed remains of plants, animals and other organisms that died hundreds of millions of years ago. Since the Void looks like oil, maybe it's actually the liquefied remains of lifeforms that lived in the land that would become Hallownest, and in a magical world like the setting of Hollow Knight, it might also be made of the regrets of those very same creatures along with their souls. We do see that the walls of the underground, especially in the Abyss where the Void itself is, is made from fossils of ancient arthropods, so Hallownest is literally made on the corpses of prehistoric creatures, so maybe there was a mass extinction event that killed everything that lived in the region millions of years ago, thus creating the Void. Mask Maker: I theorize that masks allow otherwize unintelligent creatures to be sapient. Give a tiktik a mask, and it can do taxes kind of thing. In Hallownest, the Pale King does basically the same thing, so masks aren't necessarily needed, but people probably still wear them as a part of tradition. The reason why Hallownest still has wildlife is probably because the Pale King can probably choose who to ascend to sapience, so for the sake of maintaining the underground's ecosystems and to give the people stuff to eat he didn't ascend some animals, like miktiks and maskflies. Charms: They probably come in different sizes, and they less need to slot into multiple notches and more just cover up nearby space, leaving less room for other charms. The Collector: The Collector probably developed a fondness for caring for plants and animals when they were a Kingsmold, likely from guarding the White Lady who was a gardening fan. Instead of having them recycled as a defective, the Pale King took away their armor and handed them over to a biologist dandy to be taught how to study plants and animals, after which they became known as the Collector. It seemed that the Collector and dandy became close, but overexposure to the Void in the Kingsmold likely corrupted them, forcing them to run away, but not without locking the Collector away either for their safety, or for the safety of everyone else. As for the jars, they might actually be terrariums. In real life, a lot of people use jars to make terrariums that either just contain plants, or are used as enclosures for small animals. The Grubs were likely collected to keep them safe because they're children and are likely the ones who will repopulate Hallownest in the future after the Infection is destroyed. Vessel Escape: What you're saying is mostly what I'm thinking. I doubt that the Abyss is airtight, so there must be holes all over the roof that lead out into the tunnels above. Also, we don't actually know how far it extends since we only see it in 2d and it probably extends far off in all directions that we don't see. There's also the Lifeblood room in the Abyss that extends into the background, and while the tunnel back there is occupied by the Lifeblood Creature, there's probably gaps the little Vessels can fit into to escape, or maybe the LbC just moves out of the way to let them pass since it at least seems passive and maybe is even friendly considering the beneficial nature of Lifeblood. The Abyss probably has tunnels that lead outside of Hallownest, allowing the Knight and who knows how many other Vessels to escape to the lands beyond. Maybe we'll see some grown up Vessels in Silksong who don't remember what they really are? Lifeblood: Could the Lifeblood Creature be a Higher Being? They can be found in Godhome in the Lifeblood Room along with the Abyss, where there's also a Dream Essence, which are normally associated with the most powerful of Gods. Maybe they're a dream being like them. If whether or not it's friendly or not is unknowable, but since it never shows even an an ounce of hostility, the Lifeblood is entirely beneficial, and while Joni lies dead surrounded by Lifeblood flowers, none of them are growing out of her like what Infection would, it might be either entirely passive, or even benevolent. As for why drinking Lifeblood is a taboo, if the Lifeblood Creature really is a God and is the source of the Lifeblood, the Pale King probably illegalalized possession of anything associated with it to keep them from gaining power through followers. Isma: She might be from Greenpath. As a plant being, she might be a creation of Unn, or is descended from her creations. As for why she became a Great Knight, I guess she heard that Hallownest was in need of powerful warriors to defend it and decided to test her luck there, only to impress the King and White Lady so much that they hired her on as a Knight. Why Hornet is Hornet: In regards to the canonicity of Team Cherries' statements on lore, considering how mysterious everything is in the game, we might as well use whatever we can. Sure we're meant to interpret things how we like, but that might include statements made by the developers. What they say can prove enlightening, no matter how much salt we're supposed to take. That aside, the idea that Hornet had three mother figures is one of my favorite headcanons about her. As for why Vespa would have named her, just because the Hive didn't have very good relations with Hallownest, that doesn't mean that it was cut off from Deepnest as well. Maybe Herrah and Vespa were good friends, so Herrah trusted her good friend to teach her daughter to fight. Dashmaster: He was probably minor athlete of not enough renown to be remembered much. White Lady: Many believe that the White Lady is not a plant but a fungus. It would explain her white color and lack of leaves, and her "roots" may actually be mycelium. It would fit the underground vibes of the kingdom. As for where she came from, she was either from Greenpath or the Fungal Wastes on account of being a plant/fungus, or she's from outside the kingdom like the Pale King. She might have lived in Kingdom's Edge since a lot of those white "plants" can be seen there and they might be associated with her or her species in some way, or she could have hitched a ride on the Pale King's original Wyrm body as an initially mindless parasite that gained intelligence from the Pale King's intelligence granting aura. Pale Ore: Not much to say here. I wonder if it's Pale Being bits? Though I do wonder how the Knight got their nail if it was really a Pure Nail all along and not just a regular nail upgraded into a Pure Nail. It probably has something to their trip outside of Hallownest. Oro and Mato: While there's not much to say here without getting into headcanon territory, there is a sad air about these two. Whatever happened must have been tragic, and it's too bad we don't get to learn even a little more about their backstories, along with those of Sheo and Sly. Esmy: While you talked about characters having deceased lovers and refer to Esmy as a female, there's no hint as to what their gender is nor their relationship with Sly, and the brothers for that matter. They're truly one of the more mysterious characters, and there's not much to say without getting into headcanon territory like with the incident that drive Oro and Mato apart. Deepnest Shrine: The creature depicted by the statue seems to be a horseshoe crab or a trilobite. With the Void likely being made of ancient bug juice and the walls of the underground being decorated with their shells, it's possible that the arachnids of Deepnest revere prehistoric arthropods as their most ancient ancestors. The statue itself might even be a trilobite fossil. The seal is probably just there to protect it from damage. The Ancient Civilization: This is one of my favorite things to speculate about. They're so mysterious, but unlike a lot of other things about Hollow Knight there's actually a lot of clues that help to piece together many different theories. Like I've been saying, Void is probably oil made from the matter of ancient creatures and their thoughts and Souls, but who were these creatures? Were they the Ancient Civilization, or did the AC come after the Void Sea was created? Who, or what, is the Shade Lord? Are they The Knight, an amalgamation of all the Vessels, or are they related but not the same as them? What destroyed the Ancient Civilization? Themselves, or an outside power, likely the Radiance? There's so much to think about that it would take too long to type out here. Pale King's Prescience: Whatever your opinion on the guy himself is, there's something distinctly horrifying about the idea of being able to see into the future but not being able to do anything about the horrible things you see. The Pale King saw the ruination of everything he worked for, did unimaginable things to preserve it, only for it all to fall apart horribly. It makes me wonder why he has that power in the first place. Mister Mushroom: Could he be omniscient? He's able to peer into other games and communicate with the characters in them, so he's definitely no normal fungus. Even the Gods never show his kind of power, so could he be a Higher Being as well? The Masters: They certainly don't sound friendly, that's for sure.