Fortnite Season 8 released one year ago today. Let’s take a look back at the season.

Fortnite Season 8 brought us out of the winter theme of Season 7 into the summer, complete with a Volcano sprouting up in the Northeast part of the map.

This season represented one of the most mobile seasons at that point, with the implementation of pirate cannons, geysers, and overpowered Ballers that would eventually receive a nerf.

Of course, Epic changed our consideration of a “mobile” season with all of the mobility in Season 9.

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The pirate theme of the season seemed to be a one-off, similar to what we saw with Fortnite Season 7. There wasn’t an overarching plot involving the pirates in Season 8 – just a theme for the Battle Pass.

The jungle biome was the biggest change to the map in the new Season. Lazy Links was replaced by Lazy Lagoon and Risky Reels gave way to Sunny Steps. The Volcano was only the first stage in what would eventually become the base for the Mech in Season 9.

Looking back on the Fortnite Season 8 patch notes, it’s interesting to see that this season had one of the more iconic metas in Fortnite history. Spraying was still a popular strategy, but this was also the season that introduced the Boom Bow, Infantry Rifle, and Flint Knock Pistol.

The Boom Bow was widely considered overpowered, but players loved the Infantry Rifle and Flint Knock. This season also brought us Treasure Maps – which are now Vault Keys – Shadow Bombs, Peppers, and the underwhelming Poison Dart Trap.

The most impactful addition with Season 8 had to be the Reboot Vans. Fans were asking for these since the release of Apex Legends and they remain a staple of Fortnite to this day.

Season 8 hosted the bulk of the Fortnite World Cup qualifiers as well. This was controversial, in itself, as many players used Ballers to place highly in qualifiers before they were significantly nerfed.

The event for Season 9 was the unvaulting event, which culminated in the unvaulting of the Drum Gun and the destruction of Tilted Towers.

All of this set the stage for the map reboot in Season 9, the Mech vs. Monster fight, and the eventual return to the past in Season X. We even saw a teaser for the Season X secret skin during the unvaulting event, although we didn’t know this until later.

Season 8 might not be at the top of many lists regarding best Fortnite seasons, but it was a unique experience. We saw very few departures from the spray meta in Fortnite, but Season 8 was one of them.

What did you think of Fortnite Season 8? Was it better or worse than Seasons 7 and 9? Let us know in the comments and on Twitter.