#oopsalltext

despite how innocuous this throwaway line appears on the surface, it's actually an extremely revealing rabbit hole into how an individual reinterprets what is being said based on hindsight because, when it comes to retroactively analyzing magolor's dialogue, most people latch on to what he specifically admits to lying about. this is fair of course because the other things that he claims aren't nearly as important as him explicitly not being from halcandra - but i do think that this particular line is worth securitizing a bit more thoroughly.

there are two main possibilities regarding this, which are dependent on how trustworthy you think most of what magolor says is in the long run: he's either lying or he's being honest.

POSSIBILITY #1: MAGOLOR IS LYING AGAIN

this one seems like the most obvious answer given the circumstances. him being dishonest is an aspect of his character that is constantly referred to, so it's only natural for his status as an experienced traveler to be put into question. the "return home" attached to the end is without question halcandra, where he is verifiably not from, which gives off the impression that the entire statement is meant to be disregarded as a lie instead of just a single aspect.

the main reason why i think this is a strong possibility is because of how exactly the lor was excavated. we know for a fact based on the wii version's extra mode that magolor 100% found the lor ON halcandra and not somewhere else, but i find the circumstances that are implied in dialogue to be a little questionable because it means that magolor had to do significant repairs to the lor specifically in landia's volcano. how did he do that. how did he do that without getting caught. this literally isn't explained at all and it drives me nuts. even though the master crown is clearly landia's defensive priority, surely it would also be invested in guarding other ancient relics technically in its possession?? i find it really difficult to believe that it just let magolor waltz in and do whatever the fuck just because he wasn't messing around with the crown just yet, and yet magolor says word for word "I excavated this ship from the volcano where Landia dwells and repaired it. And I couldn't help but make a few upgrades before taking it for a spin."

all of this is to say that, based on this particular interpretation, i don't think magolor is nearly as acquainted/familiar with the lor as he says he is. i think he had enough time to restore it to basic function and apply some slight upgrades to it before it was trashed by landia once he started trying to get his hands on the crown. it should be noted that more dialogue does imply that he has tried to get the crown multiple times, which makes the idea of magolor being seasoned explorer somewhat strange as that suggests he, for some reason, got sidetracked from completing his main goal..????

the simpler explanation is that he repaired the lor and then immediately started going for the crown as soon as that was done seeing as how he was already on halcandra. two birds with one stone type of deal. logically it doesn't really make sense for magolor to repair the lor and then leave halcandra to do exploring before THEN coming back to try stealing the crown. that just feels too complicated.

POSSIBILITY # 2: MAGOLOR TELLS THE TRUTH FOR ONCE

even though i have my qualms with this theory, i do still think it has a lot of merit. despite his propensity for lying, the "traveling to other worlds" bit does actually get mentioned more than once. he never goes back and says that he lied about this particular claim like he did for halcandra, and this line automatically holds more significance because it is stated more than once.

if it was just a one-off line i would just write it off as him talking out of his ass to seem impressive because that is totally in-character for him to do, but i can't fully disregard the repetition in this instance because of magolor's pre-game knowledge of kirby's existence. given that we don't actually know how he learned about kirby, it's reasonable to assume that he would have gained this information during theoretical travels he might have had before crashing the lor. my issue here is that there's still an equal chance that he might have learned about kirby from his ACTUAL homeland (wherever that happens to be since that isn't mentioned either). we simply don't have any direct confirmation as to how magolor heard about him.

based on magolor's confidence in the engineering of the ship and his ability to keep this part of his story straight, i do think that believing him to be sincere in this instance is still valid, but i find there to be a lot more cracks here. magolor's technical prowess may not have come from his time fixing the lor, as it might be something he was already good at. in that same vein, he was able to keep his story straight about coming from halcandra as well, but that turned out to be a total lie! so we don't actually know shit about him!! hence why it's really hard for me take this claim at face-value.

not to mention that he does outright admit to telling several lies. he just conveniently leaves out what were lies and what weren't apart from halcandra. you really expect me to believe this dumbass has been piloting the lor starcutter for an extended period of time?? okay buddy

at the end of the day, it honestly just comes down to whether or not you think it's funnier for him to be lying in this situation... and to be honest i consider that to be the ideal outcome because not only does it open more discussion and theory-crafting, it still works either way. if he's lying or if he's being honest, it works out regardless of what you believe. i'm simply of the opinion that there are way more interesting opportunities of the comical variety if this is also a lie