YEUP so what I keep thinking is that yeah, by the end of KH3, Sora’s gonna be Kingdom Hearts itself. Either he has been the whole time and we just didn’t know, or he becomes it, or embodies it, or there’s time travel shenanigans again, or it’s because of some other unknown WTFery that Nomura suddenly pulls out because goodness knows his penchant for doing that to us!
There’ve been a bunch of various things throughout the games that seem to hint in that general direction, here’s just some I remember:
A WHOLE lot of Ansem the Wise’s speech at the end of 3D:
Coupled with this from the very first game:
Reinforced with repeated stuff like this:
Even with all the bonkers plot craziness of there being like six Soras and seventeen Norts and all that junk, there’s one thing that’s stuck out from it: Sora is really good at making or fixing people. Hell, he accidentally made three entirely independent people with their own hearts and wants and such just because he loves everyone that much and it kinda…spills over into the circumstances he gets into.
It makes him and Xehanort into complete foils: Xehanort tries to spread his own self out, erasing (or at least attempting to erase) other hearts and just replace them with himself. Sora does the opposite…he takes hearts in to himself to make them safe, and makes new ones just by being himself.
Considering all this, I can easily see a scenario wherein Xehanort manages to “win” the final fight (I mean, all the Book of Prophecies stuff and anything else tying into KHUX seems to be very insistent that Darkness Will Win no matter what; although I only have secondhand knowledge of KHUX so I may be really off-base with that. That’s the impression I’m getting from that and word of god, tho) But yeah, Xehanort wins, is totally set to restart the universe because that’s what he’s wanted this whole time and what fascinates him and what he’s worked for years and years towards, and…then no, he’s rejected or unable to, because he’s still missing that most important thing.
And instead Sora opens that door, and becomes Kingdom Hearts, and in the end has to restart the universe, because that’s just the kind of person he is.
And the really sad thing about it is that it’s not something he would want! He just wants to friggin’ go home and be with his friends! But, if circumstances get that dire…making a new one probably isn’t outside his ability.