Blizzard announces the arrival of Overwatch2‘s next heroine, a character codenamed Space Ranger, for her arrival in the game’s next season. Earlier this week, along with the launch of Overwatch2In the new Transformers crossover, a (somewhat) mysterious object appeared on the game’s Dorado map: an empty escape pod that presumably brought Space Ranger back to Earth.
This escape pod contained some clues to the identity of Space Ranger, which Blizzard announced at BlizzCon last year. A Morse-coded message and a photo attached to the inside of the escape pod suggest that the character could be an old colleague of Mei’s – or at least someone who white My.
Shortly after the escape pod was discovered in Dorado – it is located in the middle of the attacking team’s spawn room – the players deciphered the secret message that came from the spaceship. It reads:
J HAS LANDED
TRANSMISSION ATTEMPT TO RPT
PLEASE ANSWER
“J” could be a character named Jiayi, who is mentioned in one of Mei’s lines in Overwatch2. On the Lijiang Tower map, Mei sometimes says, “My friend Jiayi works here. She and I had a lot of fun in graduate school. Maybe too much.”
Lijiang Tower is the headquarters of Lucheng Interstellar, the Chinese company that built the Horizon lunar colony in the Overwatch storyline, where Winston and Hammond originate from. Lucheng Interstellar also appears to have been involved in the development of a Mars colony; two parachutes connected to the escape pod in Dorado bear the Lucheng logo and the words “Project Red Promise,” suggesting a foray into Mars.
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Image: Blizzard Entertainment via Polygon
A photo of Mei and a person who could be Jiayi is attached to the inside of the escape pod. However, Overwatch fans have also speculated that the “J” could refer to another character, namely Jiayi’s daughter, since Jiayi, like Mei, would be in her early to mid-40s. The illustrations we’ve seen of Space Ranger so far suggest that the new hero could be younger.
Anyway, it would be good news for Mei if she saw an old friend (or her friend’s daughter) again. All her other friends are dead.
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Image: Blizzard Entertainment
Hailing from a colony on Mars, Space Ranger will be a “highly mobile support hero who has quite a bit of vertical mobility,” the developer said at BlizzCon 2023.Overwatch2: What’s next?” panel. It will be armed with an intelligent submachine gun with burst fire capability and retractable, shoulder-mounted rocket launchers.
We don’t yet know Space Ranger’s true identity, nor what the heroine’s final name will be, but it’s likely that Blizzard will continue to leak new details ahead of her arrival in Season 12. Overwatch2which is scheduled to go live in mid to late August. When it goes live, Space Ranger will Overwatch241st hero and ninth support.
If Blizzard continues to offer pre-release versions of new heroes like they did with Mauga and Venture, we might get our hands on Space Rangers in the next few weeks, if only to try them out.
