Season 5 heralded the arrival of Loba, but she wasn’t the only new legend to make an appearance that season. The season’s story mission required players to engage in weekly PvE adventures that took place in a separate dimension–one in which Revenant has overtaken the Syndicate and is worshipped as a god. While it’s not entirely known why Ash’s head ended up in the Shadow dimension, we do know that Apex Games Commissioner Kuben Blisk sent her there.
After reassembling her head in the quest’s final mission, players were tasked with reattaching it to her body. This required players to climb down into an abandoned, leaky bunker where Ash’s damaged body was stored. As players approached, Ash began spitting out a series of word-salad sentences that made little sense at the time. Once her head was screwed on straight once more, Ash said “Welcome to Olympus” before the screen faded to black.
Many players assumed she would be Season 7’s legend, so when Horizon arrived alongside Olympus instead of Ash, it was a surprise. But Ash would make her way into Apex Legends eventually, first as the announcer of Arenas and then as a playable character.
But when it comes to the conclusion of The Broken Ghost questline, the real icing on the cake is that bizarre collection of dialogue lines Ash spouts in the moments before her head is reattached. While the sentences and odd phrases made absolutely no sense initially, each of her seemingly-random statements would later prove to be directly tied to a future plot development. This includes references to Lifeline and Octane’s immediate family members (“Darion, Duardo…”), a reference to Ash’s abandonment of Horizon (“Just a wee bit o’ betrayal before breakfast, eh dearie?”), a direct quote of Valkyrie’s and her father’s favorite catchphrase (“Five by Five”), and a science joke Horizon uses to keep wannabe geniuses off her back (“X equals the temperature of the negative space, NOT the specimen itself”).
Additionally, Ash mentioned a series of five different five-digit codes. This was also a reference to “five by five,” but the codes themselves were later used by Horizon prior to Season 11 to “wake up” Ash (who Horizon mistakenly believed to be her friend Lillian Peck, when, in actuality, she’s Dr. Ashleigh Reid). Instead of bringing Lillian back, the codes shattered the simulacrum’s psyche into two halves: the cutthroat Ash and more-human Leigh.
As Ash’s head is reattached to her body at the end of the Broken Ghost quest, she can be heard imparting a few more words of wisdom: “All roads lead to Branthium.” Branthium is the rare, valuable fuel Horizon and Ash were collecting when Ash betrayed her, leaving her mentor to die in a black hole and attempting to reroute the Branthium shipment (with disastrous consequences). At the time of the Broken Ghost quest, players were still three months away from meeting Horizon and learning what Branthium actually is. In retrospect, the amount of forethought and planning that went into this particular teaser is nothing short of astounding. If there’s one teaser to rule them all, it’s this one.
