#I'm definitely not anti-redemption for Widow

[overwatch-does-stuff]

I was rereading your overwatch 2 speculation post when I saw that you said you can write a whole post about Widowmaker’s redemption through death. I would like to see this post please, for you and I have very different ideas about her redemption.

Thanks for the ask!

First off, just because I think it'll happen doesn't mean I agree with it.

To put my thoughts very, very simply: Widowmaker has done too much on-screen bad to ever be redeemed the proper way by Blizzard. There's a concept in storytelling called "character karma" which describes how to keep an audience satisfied by how characters act. It's a very basic concept: characters who do good things get rewarded, and characters who do bad things get punished. Generally, most stories that aren't explicit tragedies ensure that a character's karma gets appropriately balanced by the end of the story.

(There's a whole list of possible exceptions to this rule, of course, but please do consider: when was the last time you saw a villain win? Even if they win in the short term, they usually don't in the long term. Also keep in mind that Overwatch as a narrative (as its tone has been established so far) is not a tragedy. There are tragic characters, of course, but the overall story does not have a downward spiral. We as the audience know that Talon will be stopped at the end of Overwatch 2. I expect that I do not need to elaborate as to why, because we'd be here all week and I'd have to bring up the MCU.)

Okay, now back to Widowmaker- why do I think she won't get a redemption? Because she is Overwatch's most despicable villain. Hear me out.

She's Overwatch's most despicable because no other character in this franchise has killed an innocent person on-screen. By "on-screen", I mean depicted in a visual format- animated shorts and custscenes taking priority, then comics, then current-timeline short stories. And when we look at canon, on-screen killings, we actually have very few: we have Mondatta, and we have the mob boss that Reyes killed in Retribution. On-screen killings score the highest on the "bad guy" karma scale because they're tangible and immediate. They represent a character's current actions and they're things that directly impact the audience, too, who is invested in this current world and characters. Actions in the backstory and lore don't have the same punch for this reason.

The next step down on the "bad guy" karma scale is backstory/lore killing and torture, though- Doomfist, arguably the main villain of Overwatch, is hanging out right here with an unspecified number of murders at Numbani Airport, but the fact that the audience isn't shown it lessens the oomph. Hanzo would be here if Genji stayed dead, but given that he's not it significantly lessens the "bad guy"-ness of it. Similarly, I'd place Moira here, too, because we know she did the fucked up things to Reaper, Widowmaker, and (partially) Sigma, but we're only briefly shown Reaper's torture in her introduction short and that's it.

Given how much of a narrative and moral focus was put on Mondatta's assassination. . . I just don't think it's something that Widowmaker will be able to get away with. "Redemption" in storytelling is inherently a reward, and Widowmaker just doesn't have the character karma to justify that kind of reward, and I doubt Overwatch 2 will dedicate the screentime to it. Even though we as the audience know that she's a victim, Overwatch's narrative so far isn't painting her as someone who can be saved, not after she's crossed that moral event horizon.

However, however, however, it does leave one option- redemption by death. Redemption by death is a classic one because a heroic sacrifice does wonders to balance out character karma. It's quick, it's easy, it's free, acknowledging her tragic backstory while also making it so that they don't have to put the work in and ask the hard questions of "how would this character make up for what they've done?"

TL;DR: Because Storytelling Reasons, Blizzard isn't gonna spend the time to try and properly redeem her and will instead have her die for her sins.