New Hero Speculation - "Cute" Season 4 Hero

Story Discussion
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With recent hints towards a “cute” hero I had to rethink my entire list of speculation. Not a single character that we have seen on my list (other than Overlord who was already deconfirmed) could be classified as “Mercy cute.” To define how I am interpreting it as a character who is seen as “pretty/cute” attractive, rather than cute like a pet (like Orisa or Hammond) or cute in personality (like Mei or the version of Kiriko we got in the short.)

Before getting to the meat of this thread, I want to give a shoutout to the one unknown character that lots of people are probably pointing at. The Collective hero, who I speculate is from Peru based on the very-obvious-hero-teaser posters on Antarctica. People want a “cuteboy” character in this game, so I can see them making the Collective hero fall under that and be described as “Mercy cute.” The character could be the adopted son of the Martins too, who knows.

This led me to start rethinking about what the hero could be, and look at older notes and found something interesting, a bit of a crazy speculation as it requires the leap that the two names are tied to the same person.

Dr. Jiayi Chao

First, Dr. Chao is an older character we were introduced to way back with Storm Rising, when Winston mentions her in a voice line. She is the head of Lucheng Interstellar, and knew Winston from the Space Colony 10 years prior, before it all went disastrously bad. She is suffering from bone strength problems from her time in space and is implied to not be in the best shape, judging by the interaction where she was introduced.

  • Mercy: Don’t forget Winston, you need to be mindful of your bone strength. Especially if you’re going to be bouncing around like that.
  • Winston: I’ve been taking my supplements.
  • Mercy: You spent a lot of time on the moon, you need to take it seriously. Remember Dr. Chao.
  • Winston: I wonder how she’s doing. It can’t be easy running a giant company.
  • Mercy: Last I heard, they were working on a new space station.

On Lijiang, we have a wheelchair at a very important desk, with a photo of Dr. Winston next to it, so in the past we drew the conclusion that Dr. Chao was a wheelchair bound CEO of Lucheng, and not that important past that. At least for the time being.

Fastforward to recently, where we received a new Mei voice line on Lijiang. In all of OW1, Mei had exactly 0 ties to Lijiang, making the Chinese hero have nothing to do with the Chinese map, something a few people pointed at as a problem or with annoyance. Now in OW2, we have a new voice line that goes along the lines of:

  • Mei: My friend Jiayi works here! She and I had a lot of fun in grad school. Maybe too much! (Giggle)

When I first saw this line, I handwaved it as something that would be talked about in the Short Story due to be set in Lijiang, and thought it was just giving Mei a companion in the area. But with recent “Mercy cute” ideas, I had to start thinking of new concepts again. Then I remembered this interaction and thought… What if they’re the same person? Dr. Jiayi Chao not just “works here” in Lijiang, but works as the CEO of Lucheng?

To make this link sound less crazy, the last time we got a teaser similar to this would have been for Moira way back in 2017 with the debut of Oasis. Reaper was visiting “a friend” and on the map we had “Soldier 24” file folder linking it to Reaper in the Hall of Genetics. This in turn lead up to the hero being Moira.

For here, we have a map-specific callout for someone with hero potential. And the only known hero-potential tie or other interesting note of speculation is the wheelchair in Lijiang, belonging to Dr. Chao. It fits the timeline (Jiayi would be around a decade older than Mei) and it gives the biggest country in the world a second hero. It also gives us a hero in a wheelchair, something that would be popular among groups of fans looking for diversity as it is a very visible disability that doesn’t hold her back from being a strong hero. On the other side of the coin, it is also a design reminiscent of Professor X or Barbara Gordon for people who want a familiar and cool design. A wheelchair bound hero is also unheard of in the FPS genre, and Blizzard loves treading new ground in that respect as well.

TLDR: Dr. Jiayi Chao, the wheelchair bound support with ties to Mei, Lijiang, Horizon, and potentially Sigma. A unique archetype never before seen in the genre, and fits all of the teasers we’ve had thusfar.

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Cool theory! A hero in a wheelchair would be neat, and if done well could make a lot of people happy.

I do have one question about the Mei thing you mentioned though, didn’t she have a specific voice line on the map about her favorite tv shows?
Or are you not counting that since it’s not really lore heavy?

Just curious cause I could have swore that line was map exclusive.

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Hmm, I dont think I’ve ever heard this line personally. While I play a lot of Mei, I don’t really pick her if I load into Lijiang Towers that much.

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Yeah I think it was removed in OW2, but I’m pretty sure she also had one saying it was “good to be back home” at least.

Still, a surprising lack of ties there lol

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First of all, Mai is not cute in any ways! OW charectors buit around their weapon, main mai’s weapon buit to freeze so she can shoot terrified victims between open eyes with cold blood .

Secondly, blizzart follows agenda, so it very likely will be some cute trans like Bridget from guilty gear

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LOL that got a chuckle out of me. So true…

That would be so cool, and apparently the someone in the next batch of supports is suppose to be mechanically simpler like Moira/Mercy. If she is that hero, I hope the sweaty tryhards don’t ruin her kit or whine about her playstyle.

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Personally, I’m thinking it might be a character that we haven’t met yet. We’ve had a few new characters who are all deep lore additions recently (Sojourn, Junker Queen, Ramattra) while only getting one hero who hasn’t really been teased all that much.

Also, does anyone else find the phrase ‘Mercy cute’ kind of… strange? There are a lot of words I would used to describe Mercy, but I don’t think that ‘cute’ would be among them.

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I would add that there is certainly little interest in talking about Lucheng in ow2 soon, with a Reaper voiceline referencing the interstellar Lucheng business.

it’s a nice theory. the only thing that leaves us unconvinced is that the developers talked about a character we had already met (or maybe I remember it wrong), and so far my only “cute alternative” is Efi Oladele. but the logic according to which we would then see Overwatch characters “killing” a young girl may not be.

other cute alternatives could instead involve a cute mascot that accompanies the character (such as ganymede and snowball). In that case we could have a huge expansion of possible characters. Maybe Hamid faisal (the Petra archaeologist) with a probius-like drone from Heroes of the storm?

I think with “mercy” they are not talking about a cute girl… but maybe a gameplay that doesn’t have offense as a default kit (in fact mercy uses the caduceus of healing as a basic kit). in this case we could see a character highly based on how you move between teammates and not how you aim the enemies.

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This is something that became too popular because of misinformation spreading on Twitter. The exact quote was:

Currently in terms of future heroes, where do we want to build out new things, but also in terms of the existing lore who are the heroes that we also craft. You’ll see a mix of it. You’ll see new things that don’t necessarily exist in the lore yet that we create and figure out how to introduce them into Overwatch. And then you’ll see some familiar faces that you may have seen previously that become heroes later.

All that was said is that future heroes will be a mix of existing characters we’ve seen, and characters that don’t exist yet in the lore. Not that its a character that is a literal familiar face.

Also, Efi will never be a hero. That’s why we have Orisa. We’re not going to put an 11 year old in an FPS so we can blast her in the head with buckshot.

Or boy. I think they just mean its a pretty/attractive character in a way that is attractive as a contrast to, say, Widowmaker/Ashe or Baptiste/Cassidy.

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