Here’s what we know about Echo, one of Overwatch’s future heroes

The “Reunion” cinematic at BlizzCon 2018 gave us a little bit of a fake out, in that the short was jam packed with characters who could be an amazing Overwatch hero... but in the end, we only got one: Ashe. (Well, two, if you count her ultimate, BOB.) That being said, we know that the Omnic known as Echo will probably join the Overwatch cast in the future. She’s may not be ready now, but “Reunion” gave us a few amazing hints.

Here’s everything we know about Echo.

Echo won’t be Hero 30

Unless there’s a severe change in the hero schedule, Blizzard doesn’t think Echo is ready to take the prime stage in just a few short months. We’re going to have to wait for Echo to join us for some time; there are six heroes being developed at the moment, according to Overwatch game director Jeff Kaplan, and Echo is just one of them. While we can guess that she likely plays some kind of supportive role, she’ll remain a gameplay mystery for some time.

Echo and McCree have a history

When McCree brings Echo out of her pod, she takes his mechanical hand in hers and asks what happened. This is interesting because the last time we’ve seen McCree without his mechanical arm, he was part of Blackwatch. Echo doesn’t seem to have been involved in that black ops organization; we didn’t see her during the Overwatch Archives: Retribution mission, and it seems unlikely that a Blackwatch-centered event and comic wouldn’t at least touch on a powerful Omnic ally.

Indeed, she seems uncertain with Overwatch as a whole. (She doesn’t know who Winston is, for example, based off her surprise at hearing “monkey.”)

Ashe did recognize Echo’s value on sight, which might suggest that Echo was part of the Deadlock gang or at least utilized by them. Ultimately, though, there are a lot of questions around Echo and her relationship with McCree.

We may have seen hints of Echo since day one

Echo is a new character, but we’ve seen a glimpse of a very familiar Omnic before. Think back to the opening cinematic, with the museum.

Blizzard Entertainment

This screencap isn’t exactly “canon”; Lucio and Zenyatta are both there, despite them not being part of Overwatch’s golden age (or part of the organization at all). But if you look next to Tracer, you’ll see a character who looks very familiar. It’s been long speculated that this character is Athena, Winston’s AI ally. It could be Athena, and Echo is a similar model of Omnic, potentially even an “echo” of Athena who fulfills similar functions. It could also be an early concept of Echo that changed over the years.

Whatever you think of Echo, it seems unlikely that we’ll be in the dark on all these mysteries for very long. It seems inevitable that we’ll be getting more lore about Echo, McCree, and the newly reformed and illegal Overwatch.