Kingdom Hearts’ 25th Anniversary Celebration Takes On Tragic Meaning

There was a lot for Kingdom Hearts fans to digest at this year’s D23 event. A new trailer for Kingdom Hearts IV revealed Sora will go to a world based on Pixar’s Coco, segments featuring playable Mickey, Donald, and Goofy, and the much-anticipated return of Riku, Sora’s best friend and rival. During the “Deep Dive into Kingdom Hearts” panel, Haley Joel Osment and David Gallagher, the long-time English voice actors who have been playing Sora and RIku since they were teenagers, took the stage to talk about the series, and then did something they had surprisingly never done before in the RPG’ 25 year history: gave a live performance together as Sora and Riku. But what was a lovely moment for fans of Square Enix and Disney’s beloved series took on a much sadder meaning just a day later following the death of the original English voice of l Kairi: actor Hayden Panettiere.

Osment and Gallagher performed the ending of Kingdom Hearts II, which shows Sora and Riku opening up to each other in the Realm of Darkness. It’s been a while since the two have had a moment to just talk, having been on intertwined but separate paths since the first game. As they talk, a message in a bottle washes up on the Realm of Darkness’ shore, and inside, the two find a message from Kairi, the third of their trio of friends from Destiny Islands.

As Sora reads the letter, both Osment and Panettiere’s reciting of the words inside overlap, and a portal to the island opens, allowing them all to reunite at their home. Panettiere wasn’t at D23, and she hadn’t played Kairi since 2010’s Birth By Sleep, but her absence was felt in two distinct moments of the showcase. Actor Khleo Thomas acted as both the panel moderator and the narrator of Osment and Gallagher’s scene. As he describes the moment where Kairi and Sora’s voices are supposed to overlap with one another, he notes that neither Panettiere, nor current Kairi voice actor Alyson Stoner, is there to perform alongside them.

“We hear the text of the letter read out loud. Sora and Kairi’s voices blend together,” he says. “Today, we’ll leave it to Sora.”

After the actors complete the scene, Thomas wants to gather for a crowd selfie, but says that they need one more person to join them on stage.

“There’s only really one way to end this: We need one more special guest, don’t you think? I got Sora with me, I got Riku with me, I feel like I need Mickey with me?”

When I was watching the panel gathered with friends in one of our living rooms, multiple people jumped to the conclusion that someone, whether Panettiere or Stoner, would show up to represent Kairi, but when someone dressed in Mickey’s Kingdom Hearts mascot costume eventually arrived instead, it was a moment of, “Oh, yeah, sure. I guess.” At the time, 

I kind of shrugged it off, as Stoner didn’t voice the original scene in 2006, and Panettiere had stepped away from the role many years ago. I had hoped that a reunion of the original Destiny Islands trio could still happen some day, but news of Panettiere’s death surfaced the following day.

Panettiere had dozens of credits across her too damn short career, but her performance as Kairi remains the one most special to my heart, even as a Disney kid who saw and heard her in a lot of projects growing up. Sora and Kairi’s parting words at the end of the first Kingdom Hearts was the first time a video game ever made me cry, and while I commend Stoner for stepping into the role, I have missed the soul the young Panettiere brought to the role, even in her teenage years. 

Though she hadn’t been part of the franchise in many years, Panettiere was still a defining voice of some of the most important pieces of Kingdom Hearts. Without her light, the world feels a little bit darker.