What happened with the crusaders after eichenwalde?

Story Discussion
1

i wonder what happened with the crusaders and the soldiers?

2

The soldiers mourned in silence except Reinhardt who spent the rest of the day gross sobbing.
He also stole balderichs pillow and sniffs it every night before he goes to sleep.

…LORE~

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3

We dont know how the crusaders are structured but they didnt look like a by the government controlled organisation but rather like an own group of people who worked together with the german government
Balderich was their leader and he pased away. We dont know if there are any people that can take over his leadership. If no one could replace Balderich the crusaders just vanished. Balderichs last request was that Rein joined Overwatch, not to lead the crusaders

As for the soldiers I guess theyre just soldiers of the german army and after the incident they just kept doing german soldier things

4

The organization probably ended there. Going into the fight, we see 4 crusaders. Coming out of it, we see 2 die on screen, and Reinhardt quits to go join Overwatch. With 75% losses, I dont think the organization stuck around for too long afterwards.

5

But we dont know for sure if there are only 4 crusaders. There could be many more we just dont know about
There were fights breaking out all over the world, its not super unlikely that a few crusaders were stationed in other areas of germany

It sounds pretty unlikely that an “organisation” with only 4 people coorperates with the german government

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6

There probably were more Crusaders in the country. But their leader fell, and second in command joined Overwatch. Even in the Last Bastion, we only saw 2 Crusaders in the battle of Eichenwalde, outside the city limits (one was Balderich). Even if there were more of them, it couldn’t have been that many, and even fewer survived the whole war.

After all, the Overwatch that had support from the UN to end the Omnic Crisis was only 6 people.

7

Remember, their leader only died because Rein overextended and left his team behind (nyahaha the game parallels)
If there were more highly talented crusaders like Balderich during the war its not unlikely that they are still living. I also think that the crusader organisation dissapeared after Balderich died but as for the members I doubt all of them died. Rein survived too and who knows maybe those very few survivers joined the german military or something
Theres even a chance that we could get a 2nd crusader into the rooster. Rein answered Winstons recall I believe? maybe he meets one of his former crusader buddies on his way

Overwatch had only 6 founding members? I thought it were more than only 6?
Also Overwatch has many more members. The ones that are playable IG (including Reaper and S76) + the ones mentioned in the recall cinematic are far more than 6

8

30 years ago, Overwatch had 6 founding members. After the crisis ended, they started to grow.

  • ~20 years ago, McCree joined.

  • Sometime within that decade, Mercy joined. Probably near the end.

  • 13-10 years ago, Winston landed on Earth and joined

  • Mei also joined at some point and met Winston before going to Antarctica.

  • Moira joined after Overwatch shut her down 10 years ago.

  • Genji was saved by Mercy, and weaponized just over 8 years ago.

  • Tracer became an agent 7 years ago.

Aside from the 6th founder (Liao), thats just the playable ones. Gerard, Fio, Emre Sarioglu, Mirembe, Kimiko… There are plenty more. But the founders were 6, and they were small for a long time. It wasn’t until the decade Winston/Mercy/Mei joined that it exploded in size.

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9

Aye 6 founding members I looked it up myself too. nya
but its also said that the UN formed an elite group including those 6 people and named it Overwatch. So the UN founded Overwatch and therefore supported it because it was “their own task force”(?)