Remember back in 2012 when people thought the world was going to end because of an absurd misunderstanding of how the Mayan Calendar works? People were churning out books, songs and even Minecraft mods based around it, and yet on the 21st December, nothing happened. Which, being a major skeptic of the whole business in the first place, I wasn't surprised at all. Besides, as long as you didn't take the mass hysteria over the whole deal into account, there were absolutely zero signs of this so-called apocalypse about to occur during the "build-up" to it.
...Except in Club Penguin. For about a week, the apocalypse really was coming. And it was the most badass moment in the franchise of all time.
It's exactly ten years since the famous Operation Blackout mission occurred and ended in Club Penguin. Originally planned to last from the 14th November to the 4th December 2022, it received so much positive feedback that it got extended by two days.
The live-action Disney Channel promotions were outright dire and didn't get the whole scope of the mission across. It was just teenagers explaining to each other what you had to do and making it seem like light-hearted fare. The adverts made by the game itself though really let you know what you were in for. It showed that for once, Club Penguin as you knew it was know more and would now go into straight-up dystopia territory.
Essentially, longtime villain Herbert P. Bear, after failing to stop the E.P.F. spy organisation that protects Club Penguin Island, finally proved he was more than a joke villain. He now planned to block out the sun in order to freeze his penguin enemies to death. He'd already made the machine, which was causing an eternal winter to come about the island in response...and he successfully destroyed the E.P.F. base to make sure they couldn't do anything.
Of course, Herbert had ended the P.S.A. (the originally spy organisation) sometime back when he blew up the facilities...with a popcorn bomb. Yep, you read that right. A popcorn bomb. And despite the place looking pretty bad on the inside as a result of the explosion, that was the extent. Barely anyone except the P.S.A. themselves reacted when the explosion happened, and the E.P.F. replaced it soon afterwards anyway. Certainly a far cry from setting another building on fire and having fire engines failing to put it out.
Why Herbert planned to block out the sun and freeze the island over when he himself hates the cold and would have risked death himself is a mystery. I'm guessing though that he was planning to give them an ironic death and was making sure to stay safe in his own lair, so that when the penguins were no more, he could just undo everything and then turn the island into a warm paradise for himself.
Fridge logic aside, the rest of the mission is ingenious. All the other E.P.F. members are being hunted down and being cryogenically frozen in order to stop them from interfering with Herbert's plans. Meanwhile, you as the player have to complete set tasks in order to shut down the machine that Herbert is using to block out the sun. Oh, and the whole time, Herbert has turned the island into a dictatorship where fun is banned and the only play you can watch is of his "life story".
Yes, this all happens in a family-friendly online game. It's both horrifying and amazing at the same time. Both a mixture of dystopia and spy thriller. If you encounter anyone who claims that Club Penguin was just simplistic "kiddie" fair, let them know about this mission and it will help change their mind.
And as for when you do complete the mission? You get treated to an epic cutscene in which sunlight returns to the island, the E.P.F. are freed and Herbert is forced to watch his plans fall apart from a distance. It's not even like the other cutscenes that you received in other missions - it has a genuinely cinematic vibe.
Best of all though? The Director, previously one for hiding their identity, finally reveals themself...and it's none other than Aunt Arctic everyone's favourite agony aunt and the top suspect for being the Director's true identity in the eyes of the fans. It's a wonderful moment, and the voice acting that they chose to add for the scene really heightens it.
In the eyes of many fans, this is where the franchise peaked. The story was brilliant, the gameplay amazing and it really changed the course of the game. It had gone to places it would never have explored beforehand, Herbert was no longer a joke and the Director's identity was no longer hidden. It's kind of a bummer that everything else that happened in the franchise afterwards was just Disney using it to piggyback their own franchises, but the mission still has a positive impression on fans today.
For more discussion on why Operation Blackout was such an awesome moment for Club Penguin from a Club Penguin fan's perspective, I highly recommend checking out YouTuber Keyan Carlile's video essay on the mission and its history here, which really helped give me a new insight into it and goes into depth on the love and talent put into it by the game developers and fans. There are also many fan projects that exist out there linked with it, as well as the walkthroughs that you can watch in case you were unable to play the mission while it was happening.
