Overwatch 2’s cauldron of lore and characters has started to bubble over. As the free-to-play hero shooter keeps adding new personalities it seemsBlizzardhas decided to nail a few long-running questions down with definitive answers. Unfortunately, most of us are now scratching our heads in further confusion as thecanon ages of characters are now revealed for the first time ever. These ages make no sense if you pay the slightest bit of attention to the story. Some characters apparently grew up together despite having ages a decade or two apart, while romantic pairings once considered sweet are now more creepy than cute.
I admire what Blizzard is doing here, and adding canon ages to its dozens of heroes should give fans strong foundations to build upon both for headcanons and understanding the actual narrative and how different ages impact the dynamics between its characters. Tracer is 28, and thus still wet behind the ears as a member of Overwatch and oftentimes reckless. But she has a big heart and plenty of talent, while her partner Emily, whose age is not revealed as she’s not a playable hero, seems to be in a similar age bracket. Characters like Sombra, Ashe, Zenyatta, and Widowmaker are in their mid- to late-thirties, and that makes sense too. There are so many moving parts in this universe that it can be easy to forgive some awkward logic holes in the ages of its cast, but sometimes it reaches a point where a suspension of disbelief just isn’t possible.
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It’s the early days of Overwatch, its formation, and the members therein where things get a little muddy. An old image features a number of characters including Sojourn, Ana, and two young versions of Mercy and Pharah. Mercy is clearly a young adult, still learning all the ropes, while Pharah is a little girl nowhere near ready for combat.Given that Pharah was recently expressing an unrequited love for Mercy alongside revealing her lesbian identity in a recent comic, it feels strange to have the canon ages revealed and suddenly throw a wrench in the works. This art has been doing the rounds for years now, so it’s especially weird for Blizzard to introduce canon ages that don’t match up to the game’s own story.
Puberty either hit Pharah like a truck or the age gap between her and Mercy is more than five years. Kiriko is also said to have grown up alongside Genji and Hanzo in Japan, despite the Shimada bros being almost twenty years her senior. I can buy them knowing each other, but Overwatch is trying so hard to form worthwhile personal connections between its cast that, over time, wires have become crossed, and now there’s no way of fixing things without a major retcon.
Overwatch doesn’t have a solo campaign to tell an isolated, cohesive story within the world it has created. The gameonly recently added story-driven missionswhich, while innovative and the start of something bigger, weren’t enough after years of animated shorts and comics that tried to piece together the past, present, and future with a mixture of discordant snapshots. Bringing that all together with a cast so massive was never going to be an easy task, but Blizzard’s lack of care only serves to hurt a universe I was now falling in love with again.
Whenever a new hero is added or a new story is told from now on, Blizzard will have ages of each character awkwardly hanging over its head. Depending on the time period, players now have a bedrock of canon information to base their praise and criticisms upon, and part of me feels like it would have been easier to keep concrete ages under wraps to save itself loads of hassle. Birthdays are perfectly innocent, but the moment you smack definitive ages across a cast this big you only surface questions where answers are impossible to give.
