With Overwatch 2 and Hero 32 en route, I thought it would be a good idea to make a thread dedicated to not just the candidates for 32 and launch, but all the characters I feel have a good chance to become heroes at some point in the near future.
The “Confirmed” 2:
Mauga - Confirmed to be in development - When Sigma took his place, the devs said that they were gonna go look at Sigma again, and hoped that they could make him into his own hero.
Junkerqueen - Confirmed to have big plans - Most likely means that she will be a hero, especially based on Jeff’s comments at Christmas. Small chance that she will instead just be some kinda OW2 NPC, but I doubt that, considering she was said to be in concepting.
The most likely of the unconfirmed group:
Lynx-17 - Fairly popular and unique omnic. Brings a different take to hacking, if they feel like revisiting the mechanic or making a more supportive version of Sombra. Hasn’t been mentioned since their debut in Searching.
Sanjay Korpal - Sym’s boss, Talon council member. A pretty prominent character that hasn’t had much of a spotlight. Hard Light means that Sanjay has infinite possibilities for his kit. Also my personal top desire.
Hamid Faisal - The archeologist from Petra. Also has ties to Overwatch/Ana/Jack, as well as a bunch of other maps that are lacking in ties like Ilios, Ayutthaya, and Oasis.
The Null Sector Omnic from Storm Rising - Has no name, but was recently confirmed to be part of Null Sector (if it wasn’t obvious from the context of the discussion/purple.) Will probably be playable in OW2 or some kinda big boss encounter. Personally, I place this guy as second most likely for hero 32, but I think Echo blows him out.
Honourable Mentions:
Sven - I would love to see Sven make a comeback. I think that he could be an interesting character, sort of a standalone mercenary/profiteer. He reminds me of Kano from Mortal Kombat, but through his Ironclad ties, he could be an interesting take on the builder archetype. He also had a stun gun in the comic Destroyer, which was his last mention.
MEKA Pilot - There are 4 of them. Casino, D.Mon, Overlord, and King. Each of them have their own mech with their own potential. The problem is the mechs might make them too similar to D.Va (and Junkerqueen/Hammond, the gladiatorial mech champions) but they are worth mentioning, each with their own pros. My list, sorted in my order of interest:
– Casino - Potential ties to Monaco, maybe ties to Talon. Would be interesting story wise.
– Overlord - Has that VTOL mech, the drones, and the minigun. Most interesting mech in my opinion.
– King - D.Va’s rival. Also has that cool artillery cannon on his mech.
– D.Mon - D.Va’s teammate. Also the only girl, which is probably why she’s the most popular. I think her mech looks boring.
Edit 1: Crossed off Echo and Liao, since one became a hero and the other was killed off. Edit 2: I forgot about MEKA somehow.
He’s not brought up a lot compared to other “most wanted heroes” but I really hope we see Hamid. The recurring themes of archaeology, statues and artifacts being dug up in some of the maps is such a specific addition to the game, I really wanna know what’s going on with it.
I think they’re really messing with us with Junkerqueen. During the Storm Rising stream, the streamers asked Jeff about 3 heroes. I believe the other two were Echo and Sojourn - but Jeff explicitly said that those two other characters were heroes in the works. When the streamers repeated and asked about JQ, Jeff was very hesitant and said the “big plans” thing and that Tsang had drawn a lot of artwork of her… but said nothing about her being a future hero when he explicitly said the other two characters that the streamers mentioned would be heroes in the future. It seemed like he was definitely being very careful with his word choice about her during the stream. Why would he be open about two other known characters becoming a hero but not a third known character other than the fact that they don’t plan on making that character a hero (in their current pipeline)? Only explanation I can think of is that they plan on making JQ an important NPC, but don’t have her in the works as a hero, but they don’t want to say “not a hero” because they “never say never”.
That, plus Geoff’s “tease” at SDCC asking the crowd about whether she’d be a Tank or DPS plus Jeff’s similar “tease” during the Yule stream… they don’t typically give out that much info about heroes beforehand and certainly don’t ask or wonder out loud to fans about it.
From what we’ve seen so far, I really think the idea of Junkerqueen being a hero is an inside joke among them and they enjoy teasing the community about it. That said, she’ll probably be an important NPC character at some point.
The devs admitted that Emre was a throw-away name they made up for the Brigitte teaser, so it’s unlikely he’ll turn into anything (unless he gains a massive following, like Doomfist did).
Sanjay works for Vishkar, and currently resides in India. His nationality is most likely not Indian- the dev team like having lots of inclusion, and there’s already an Indian character, so it’s likely that they’ll put in a different nationality.
