We Now Know the Next Gay Character in Overwatch

When Blizzard announced via a Christmas Comic that Overwatch’s Tracer was gay, the internet collectively lost their crap. Overwatch had always been a hero shooter second and a platform for people’s gay fanfiction first, and the fact that Blizzard was making some of that canon was both charming and rather forward-thinking. I’m not going to say it’s especially “bold” to make a conventionally attractive female a lesbian, but making their cover girl a member of the LGBT+ community was, objectively, a good thing.

But then Blizzard kind of cashed in all that goodwill by making an event out of it, and announced that there were YET MORE gay characters in the game that they would reveal later. And… sure, fine, if you want to make “sexual orientation reveal parties” a thing, all the more power to you. But it stops being noble at that point.

Still, it matters to a lot of people. So in that spirit, let me announce we now know who the next gay Overwatch hero is: Soldier 76.

We learn this from a short story published earlier called “Bastet”, which is just sort of a chat between Soldier 76 and Ana. In it, they reveal that Soldier 76 used to be dating a dude called Vincent, before they broke up because Soldier 76 is more gay for justice than for other dudes.

The lead writer of Overwatch, Michael Chu, then revealed to the fawning public that, indeed, Soldier 76 is gay. Not bisexual, just straight-up, dude-slobberin’ gay. However, unlike the last time this happened, he did not follow up with a tease that there were other gay characters in the cast. But that doesn’t matter. Because they could release a short story where all the characters talk about how straight they are and fans would still think they’re all gay.

And in a weird kind of way, that’s part of what makes Overwatch so beautiful.