Overwatch never stays still for long, and so the question that is always on a Blizzard fan’s lips is ‘who is the next Overwatch hero?’ The original 21 – now 32 – heroes won’t keep everyone occupied forever, and Blizzard has always been upfront that Overwatch would grow, and for free, too.
Overwatch’s most recently added hero, Echo, was released on April 14, 2020 – and according to Jeff Kaplan, Echo is Overwatch’s last new hero until the Overwatch 2 release date, as the team is currently focused on making new heroes for the sequel instead. But that doesn’t mean no new Overwatch heroes full stop – or that we don’t have clues about who the next hero will be, when the time comes.
With Overwatch’s lore told the way it is, through vague hints and out-of-game stories, teases come easily and often from the big blue. Be it a dossier buried in some notes on a map, a name slipped into a blog post, or a long-known character finally being added as a playable hero, there are always hints as to who’s next – and we’ve gathered them all here.
A promotional trailer for Overwatch’s Archives event introduces us to Sojourn, the newest Overwatch hero. During the trailer, we’re privy to a decrypted audio message intended for Soldier 76. Within that message, the female Overwatch agent informs Commander Morrison of a new approach to capturing the game’s villain Doomfist.
Accessing archived file…
A recent Overwatch comic introduces us to a new Talon character called Mauga. While new character mentions isn’t usually enough to go on, the comic goes into quite a lot of detail when it comes to this new character, even describing aspects like his weapons. Mauga is a close friend of Overwatch hero 30, Baptiste, but is a lot less moral.
Recluse, aka Spider Tank
The image above is a very old piece of concept art for Overwatch, which we finally got a decent look at during Jeff Kaplan’s DICE talk in early 2017. In the centre is a strange half-spider, half-woman, laser-spewing baddie who remains the only unidentifiable hero in the piece.
Revealed as part of the Junkertown cinematic short and present in a picture on the map itself, the officially unnamed character that rules over Junkrat and Roadhog’s hometown was an immediate community favourite. Here’s the only picture there is of her:
This is much more of a guess, but one the community has built up a lot of evidence for. Alejandra and her mother feature in the Soldier: 76 animated short Hero. With the focus put on this character – even more so than Soldier himself, despite the latter actually featuring in the game already – many felt it was a hint towards a future hero. Some even pointed to Alejandra and Sombra being the same character, due to both having a connection to the Dorado map. While that doesn’t seem to be true (though who knows with Sombra’s unreliable tales of her own past), Alejandra’s significance hasn’t been downgraded in the minds of some.
Then there are the characters that could become full-fleshed heroes, but there isn’t strong evidence that they will. These are mostly minor characters from maps, comics or animated shorts.
That’s everything there is to know about the new Overwatch heroes so far. You can learn more about the last Overwatch hero by reading about Echo’s lore and Echo’s abilities.
