Chaos vs. Order: The Final Splatfest

Splatfests are the Splatoon series' democratic mythology: real players vote with their Turf Wars, and the result is written into the canon. No Splatfest has ever mattered more than the last one of Splatoon 2. Held in July 2019, it pitted Pearl's Team Chaos against Marina's Team Order, and the winner would, the game promised, decide the future of the world. It was not exaggerating.

The question

Off the Hook did not pick a food or an animal. They asked players what kind of world they wanted. Pearl argued for Chaos: freedom, spontaneity, the messy joy of doing whatever you want. Marina argued for Order: structure, harmony, a world where everything works and everyone belongs. The framing was unusually philosophical for a series about paint, and both idols were written to genuinely believe their side.

The subtext was personal. Marina grew up in the rigid Octarian military and found her freedom on the surface; her longing for order was about safety, not control. Pearl grew up wealthy and constrained and burst out of it; her chaos was a fight against expectations. The final Splatfest was, in a sense, about which of the two friends the world agreed with.

Chaos won. Across the three categories the game scored, Pearl's team took the majority and the Splatfest closed with Marina graciously conceding and Pearl promising a wild future. Players did not know at the time how literally the game would honor that.

"What kind of world do you want?" the idols asked. The world answered: a loud one.

Splatsville

Three years later, Splatoon 3 opened in the Splatlands, a sun-blasted desert region far from Inkopolis, and its capital, Splatsville, was explicitly billed as the "city of chaos." Its streets are cluttered, improvised, and layered with graffiti. Its idols, Deep Cut, are treasure-hunting semi-outlaws who introduce themselves as bandits. Its Turf War stages are built on ruins and scaffolding. Everything about the place is a design answer to the question "what does a world of chaos look like?"

Even the new game's tone follows the vote. The story mode is a scrappy expedition into a crater. The gear is patched and customized. Tricolor Turf War introduces a three-way brawl. The developers were open about the connection: the Chaos vs. Order result shaped Splatoon 3's setting from the earliest concept work.

Order gets its turn

But what about the road not taken? That is the premise of Side Order, the Splatoon 3 expansion released in 2024. Marina, still curious about the world she argued for, builds the Memverse, a virtual space modeled on her memories and designed to explore what an ordered world would be. It does not go well. The Memverse's Inkopolis Square becomes the Order Sector, a bleached, silent, perfectly regular version of the city where color and individuality have been stripped out. The Spire of Order at its center is a tower of endless identical floors.

Side Order is, in effect, the canon exploring the Splatfest's losing side, and its verdict is not kind to Order taken to its extreme. But it is also generous to Marina: the story lets her confront what she wanted and why, and Pearl's presence (as a wisecracking drone) keeps chaos in the room. The two friends' argument from 2019 finally gets its resolution.

Why Splatfests matter

Chaos vs. Order was the clearest example of a Splatoon tradition that goes back to the first game. Callie vs. Marie, the last Splatfest of Splatoon 1, set up Callie's disappearance. The Grand Festival that closed Splatoon 3's run in 2024 asked players to choose between Past, Present, and Future, with the Squid Sisters, Off the Hook, and Deep Cut each championing one; Past, the Squid Sisters' team, won. Every one of these results is treated as history, and the developers have been careful to honor them.

That is a remarkable thing for a competitive game to do. It means the fandom is, in a small but real way, co-writing the setting. Every Turf War played on a Splatfest weekend is a vote, and the world of Splatoon is the sum of those votes. Chaos won in 2019 because millions of players decided it should. Splatsville, Deep Cut, and Side Order exist because of them.

Pearl and Marina remained friends, obviously. Off the Hook kept broadcasting from Inkopolis Square, appeared at Splatoon 3's Splatfests, and starred in Side Order. But the final Splatfest of Splatoon 2 was the moment their partnership stopped being a news desk and became a philosophy. Chaos or order, freedom or harmony: the series has never picked one for good, and the argument between the two friends is, in its own way, the most honest statement of what Splatoon believes.