Turns out there are quite a few candidates.
Whenever Blizzard officially announces a new hero is in development, there’s typically a 2-3 month wait until the actual reveal. In Overwatch’s latest developer update, Jeff Kaplan reveals that Hero 27 is officially in testing which means that it won’t be long until we get to try them out ourselves.
Giving us even more reason to get excited, Jeff was asked about the new hero in a recent interview with PCGamesN. His response “[It’s] a surprise that has perhaps been hinted at.”
This means that Overwatch’s 27th hero has already likely appeared in an extension of the Overwatch universe. Our gut instinct is that the upcoming hero has most likely made a cameo in an existing animated short or digital comic.
In this article, we’ve put together a few thoughts on who the new hero could be, based on this most cryptic of teases.
If you want to get up to speed on Overwatch’s latest support hero, make sure you check out our Moira guide – it’s filled with tips, tricks and strategy advice!
Who could Hero 27 be?
The Junker Queen
Cast your mind back to August 2017 and you’ll remember the moment when the brand new map Junkertown was officially revealed.
Blizzard announced this map with a mini-cinematic which showed Junkrat and Roadhog attempting to blast into their old home and steal the huge horde of treasure which lay there. Although the excitement for the map was certainly a highlight, it was somewhat overshadowed by another trailer later that day which gave us a hint that the Junkerqueen was here to stay.
When the map launched, players were quick to find a poster of the Junkerqueen which showed a brilliantly designed, menacing leader. Perhaps it won’t be long until she’s playable? We’ll have to wait and see.
Bridgitte Lindholm
At BlizzCon 2017 Blizzard lifted the lid on a truly epic cinematic which focused on Reinhardt’s origin story. It showed him fending off Omnic forces at the battle for Eichenwalde with his old mentor Balderich.
At the start of the cinematic we see Reinhardt talking to a female character named Bridgitte Lindholm, Torbjorn’s daughter.
Now we’ve had the time to do a little more research, it turns out that Bridgitte and Reinhardt’s relationship extends into the comics where she works on his armour in “Dragon Slayer”.
There’s always the chance she could turn out to be Hero 27, but part of believes it may be a little too early to see her in-game just yet.
Maximilien
In numerous comics – and most recently in Moira’s reveal trailer – we’ve seen images of Talon meetings where one Omnic in a suit is always present. This character is called Maximilien, and unlike his tranquil, do-good counterpart Zenyatta he’s constantly scheming.
We know so far that Maximilien is wealthy and an important member of Talon’s inner council. This means he holds relationships with Doomfist, Widowmaker, Reaper and Moira who are all playable in-game. Overwatch is lacking another humanoid Omnic like Zenyatta, so it’s possible this is our new hero.
Hammond
Cast your mind back to Horizon Lunar Colony’s tease last year before its eventual launch a few months later. Not only did it tell us that the new map would be set in the reaches of outer space, it also gave us an insight into Winston’s upbringing.
Long story short, Winston grew up as a test subject alongside another gorilla named Hammond and both were part of an experiment to test the effects of prolonged habitation in space. Unrest grew as certain gorillas responded adversely to testing and this led to an uprising which resulted in the colony’s collapse. Only two test subjects made it out – Winston and Hammond.
Thematically it would make sense to bring Hammond into Overwatch’s hero roster as he’d be a gateway into learning more about the colony and perhaps embody the anger of the revolt through his gameplay mechanics. Evil ape, we’re certainly up for it.
???
Finally we come to a figure that we can only speculate on. It’s an image that was found in the background of Moira’s origin story video and can be seen just behind Maximilien’s head in the Talon board room scene.
While it’s a long shot, we have to remember that heroes have been teased in all sorts of small ways. For instance, Moira was first revealed in the Doomfist “Masquerade” comic and was a character sitting in the background during – you guessed it – a Talon meeting.
What’s particularly interesting is that if we compare the final scene in the trailer to the original artwork that was released by the artist, we can see that the character wasn’t present at first.
If we look a little closer at the picture we can just make out that it’s a tank sporting a bulky exo-suit of some kind. The community’s been calling for another tank hero for a while now, so this is certainly a strong bet for Hero 27.
Seeing as Blizzard has a habit of teasing heroes in this manner, it’ll be interesting to see if this new tank emerges.
That’s all we have for now, but if you’ve got any suggestions or evidence for who Hero 27 might be, drop us a comment down below!
