When looking at the original Overwatch team, they have a lot of characters in roles that fit their stereotypes. For example, Mercy fits the blond woman appearance we’d expect from a doctor. Reinhardt is the bombastic musclehead we’d expect from a tank.
I have a feeling that some of the non-Overwatch members will eventually join the organization, with the narrative theme being a representation of the next generation of heroes receiving the torch from the prior generation. It’d be a parallel to the present concept of institutions becoming more diverse, and seeing someone like Baptiste or Lucio assume Mercy’s role for example would represent this theme.
Here are the roles I predict from the next gen Overwatch team:
Overwatch Commander - Winston
Second in Command - Tracer
Tank - D.Va (this would be a parallel to Reinhardt’s story, where both of them served in their country’s military before joining)
Engineer - Brigitte
Healer - Baptiste/Lucio
What do you guys think? Any objections? Suggestions? Please leave a reply. 
Thanks! 
4 Likes
I think Baptiste would fill Mercy’s role for being a Combat Doctor in the field since Mercy disliked battles and she wanted to focus on helping civilians.
Would Pharah be part of new Overwatch and specialize as a soldier?
6 Likes
Pharah’s a good character to bring up. I’d imagine she’d join and fulfill her childhood dream to be the soldier she wished her mother wanted her to be. I do recall Ana telling Pharah how she grew up surrounded by heroes, and joining Overwatch officially would make her story come full circle.
3 Likes
I feel like this is what’s expected, and it might be the direction the story goes in for a bit, but maybe the new generation will decide that one of the reasons for the fall of OW was the structure. It would be cool to see how they rebuild OW with maybe a different philosophy and way of doing things. Mostly though, I just want to see new heroes join and get a turn in the spotlight.
1 Like
Since when is the doctor archetype a blonde woman? I think you meant the white savior trope which is what Mercy is -_-
2 Likes
Honestly whenever somebody talks about doctor archetypes in video games I think of the medic in tf2 lmao.
Also want to add some more thoughts about this theme of passing the torch. I don’t think it should be as easy as saying that the current healer will pass on the torch to somebody else that’s a healer and etc. If we’re going with themes, even if Overwatch does not end up being radically re-organized, I think it would be thematically stronger for each member of the old guard to pass the torch to a character the represents a moral/thematic evolution in their views. Brigitte, for example, would represent a thematic evolution in Reinhardt’s romanticized view of knighthood, after whatever character arc she ends up going through (assuming she gets one). It makes the story stronger imo and adds depth to the characters beyond what their function is within the organization.
1 Like
A “white savior” is a white person who comes into a non-white community to fix their problems. Just because Mercy is white does not make her a “white savior”.
3 Likes
She isn’t a white savior trope, that’s exclusively the purview of media meant to soothe white guilt.
She’s a vanilla selfless, pacifist doctor trope: doctors, especially ones shown in combat or violent-crime adjacent media, are often portrayed as being philosophically opposed to violence, with deep moral opposition and drama stemming from the waves of patients who are hurt by the circumstances the doctor finds themselves in.
For similar tropes and examples see MASH.
Her being blonde is also pretty standard-issue for female medical professionals, not to mention Mercy’s whole angel aesthetic and how angels are constantly portrayed as blondes.
2 Likes
Tbh Mercy comes off as more of a prop than anything else bc ultimately she just does whatever the plot needs her to do with little to no regard for how in character it might be, but I would definitely side eye OW if she ends up being the sole/main person pushing for major changes in the organization. They have a roster of poc characters that can bring a lot to the table in terms of philosophical/organizational changes to OW due to their backgrounds (ex. Lucio being a freedom fighter that stands up for poor communities back home), so ideally it wouldn’t just come down to Mercy saying OW was bad before so it needs to change now.
It’s Blizzard though, so I honestly don’t have much hope for Overwatch having the guts to say anything meaningful about the military industrial complex, corporations, climate change, etc. “War is bad” is generic and acceptable enough to be as far as they go with some of their characters.
1 Like
just weird how the angelic, pure virtuous appearing character who goes to a poor country of brown people out of the feeling that she had a hand in its current conditions just had to be a white woman… in a literal angel costume!!! hmmm
you gotta admit you can’t blame someone for at least thinking that could possibly come off as… white savior-y
and don’t think i’m like… “omg i hate all white people” cause that’s not true and i’m half white myself but like… idk i just can see how mercy is kinda white savior-ish
A lot of Mercy’s “white savior” or “white guilt” tropes have less to do with her being white, and more to do with her being Overwatch. Mercy could have been that jacked black man from the concept art, and they would still be in Egypt tending to people who suffered because of Overwatch’s interference almost a decade prior.
1 Like
I didn’t say you made any proclamations about hating white people, just that white savior or mighty whitey tropes are parts of very different media.
Maybe that line in the short story was a bit tone-deaf, but again I’ll cite MASH, which overlaps a lot with the motivations Mercy is shown to have: the cast is explicitly teams of doctors who often feel guilty or at least recognize the moral greys of the fact that they’ve played a part in upending bystanders’ lives, even if indirectly. The cast is majority white and cranks a lot of drama out of their need to do good in compensation for the suffering that surrounds them and which they have complicated feelings about, but no one is going to characterize it as a white savior narrative.
Also, Western doctors in media are often shown as being in foreign locations because humanitarian crises, sadly, frequently occur in non-Western regions, which means that there is frequently a need, and Doctors Without Borders and similar programs exist in the real world.
At least with Mercy there is a well-established plot reason for her to be there- local instability originally described in Ana’s short story and the earlier comics- and the Doylist reason for her to be there is because it ties her into the existing narrative with Ana and Soldier, allowing that plot thread to get resolved without actually having to return to their view point, and provides a plot justification for why she wasn’t immediately available to join Winston.
A white doctor going to “a poor country of brown people” as part of a humanitarian mission that involves other doctors isn’t very white savior-y, it’s just Mercy doing what doctors do.
Now, if she was there alone and was doing more than just medical work (like trying to fix their economic problems or something), then it would be white savior-y.
1 Like
well then it wouldn’t look white savior-ish now then would it? because he wouldn’t be white
i’m just saying it kinda looks that way as it is
/Blink, /blink… What?
In what? Johnny Bravo?
XD
Angela is Swiss. Her country has always been fairly neutral in world affairs, at least in comparison to its fellow European states. England, Spain, France, the Netherlands, these are generally the countries who have been active in colonialism. Her motivation in coming to Egypt lied partly in feeling responsible for Overwatch, yes, but her primary motivation in the medical profession at all is to prevent children like her young self from being orphaned by another war. Had her background been from a posh and comfortable life, specifically in any of the above mentioned countries, her status as a white savior would seem much more reasonable- I’d more place her in line with a less murdery version of Batman. "I suffered greatly, and now I shall devote my life to preventing the same tragedy from occurring again.
It’s also worth considering that Overwatch’s involvement in Egypt mainly involved the quarantine of the Anubis “god program,” which, while having a negative impact on Egypt and Cairo in the short term, was shown to possibly have been the correct decision in the long run during “Mission Statement”. Anubis was likely created to automate and optimize the construction of infrastructure, but for whatever reason, was deemed unstable and had to be shut down- crippling the infrastructure, yes, but as Helix partially had to demonstrate, not allowing Anubis to assimilate the free will of Omnic citizens to its own ends. The damage caused by Overwatch in Egypt was a casualty of doing its job in ending the crisis, not intentional seizure of power in the region.
Mercy’s hero design is strange, overall, but it doesn’t particularly imply a savior story. The halo and Resurrect ability certainly seem Judeochristian, but her suit is named after the Valkyries of Norse mythology- her staff is named after Hermes’ staff (really should be the Asclepius rod but whatever). She’s a mix and match of different representations of mythology, but neither angels, Valkyries or Hermes really do what Mercy does ingame. Resurrection was kinda a Jesus thing, where angels were more relegated to the roles of messengers and foretellers of God’s actions. Valkyries and the trickster god of Greece were both better understood as psychopomps, not choosing who lived or died but simply transporting their souls to the rightful place. Her design is not thematically coherent enough to say that your stance on her character was intentional with the message you say it has. They certainly could have thought it out slightly better to avoid the coincidence of being white and being a savior from being drawn, but it does seem to be just that, a coincidence.
5 Likes
Thanks for summarizing her lore like that’s nice and all but she still looks like a white savior 
and I just think it’s boring and overdone
1 Like
So every support is white savior by your definition.
Yes Baptiste and Lucio, they fit the white savior trope perfectly 
On that topic, Vishkar as an organization fits White Saviour to a T. The difference is that their world is white, rather than their skin, which is probably a more global way to enforce the trope without allowing race be the sole determinant.
Although one can argue that Vishkar’s position is more along the lines of “White Man’s Burden,” but its the same mentality. Overwatch is going beyond race to apply these originally race-based tropes on a global scale beyond race.
1 Like