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segadores-y-soldados · 6 years ago

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Those Who Rise Up

Part 2 of “Retribution and Reapercussions”: exploring the consequences of “Retribution” on the characters of Overwatch. The timeframe for this covers the end of the debriefings from the Venice Mission (“Retribution”) to the beginning of Null Sector’s uprising (“Uprising”), approximately a one-year span.

This part will cover the rise of Akande Ogundimu, both as the third Doomfist (“The Successor”) and as a new Talon leader; the creation of Widowmaker; and the hypothesis that the first Slipstream flight was sabotaged.

A follow-up to “Long Reasons Not to Trust Moira in Retribution”, “A Clash of Kings,” the post about the declassified Blackwatch memorandum on Venice, a post about Overwatch and Blackwatch investigating their own organization, “The Immortal Soldier?”, and other essays. The ones linked above are the most important at the moment.

Additional essays and posts related to this topic: “Tal Pai, Tal Filho”, a write-up on the new Lúcio story and interactions between Lúcio, Symmetra, and Doomfist; a reply to an ask about if the attack on Antonio was planned or not; “An Eye for An Eye”, hypotheses on the new Soldier: 76-Moira interaction and if Soldier is “in” on Reaper’s plan.

Warning: Like “Retribution and Reapercussions”, this essay will be long. As always, a “Read more” link/cut will be provided, but tumblr mobile is a buggy app, and you may encounter problems with opening this or other links on the app.

McCree: Our target was dead, so I guess he got what was coming to him. But still…it didn’t seem right. But that wasn’t the end of our problems: for the first time, people knew we were out there. New faces stepped up to fill the void in Talon. And I can’t help but wonder…if that’s where it all started to go wrong.

Even though Blackwatch was suspended in the wake of the compromised Venice mission, relatively little changed “internally” within Overwatch. We don’t fully know Moira’s status as a known Talon agent, but as described in Part 1, it is possible that Gabriel Reyes managed to secure her cooperation and her silence by permitting her to continue her experiments on him. He likely also convinced her that he was either “going rogue” and leaving Overwatch, or convinced her that she could “recruit him” if more pressures caused “visible” schisms between him and Jack Morrison.

We also don’t fully know if Moira was or is aware of this, but it is likely that Gabriel started this “masquerade” to begin a reverse-infiltration of Talon. Gabriel, and later his persona of Reaper, represent the spirit of retribution, and he was willing to bend or break “the rules” that Overwatch (and even Blackwatch) was forced to play by in order to do “the real work of keeping the world safe” (Gabriel’s own words). It is not known if Jack was in on this plan, or if the plan “evolved” over time. At the moment, in the immedate aftermath of the mission, it is possible that “Gabriel’s plan” was only in its beginning stages.

Externally, the public reeled from the revelation of Blackwatch’s existence.

However, while we don’t know the all of the details, the “Uprising” comic shows us that, even a year after the events of “Retribution” -

Overwatch and select, trusted members of Blackwatch continued to work as they normally did. This implies that Blackwatch’s suspension was essentially...just a masquerade of its own.

So, despite what seemed to have been implied by McCree’s ending narration of “Retribution,” Overwatch itself did not fall, did not struggle.

Arguably, it didn’t even really crack.

In Part 1, I posited the idea that Gabriel and Jack possibly welcomed the Blackwatch suspension, as an immediate and “official” way for them, Ana, and Gérard to begin cracking down on “compromised” Blackwatch and Overwatch agents. The suspension would have allowed them adequate cover to investigate their own organization and divisions, and clear individual agents or groups as trustworthy, in order to isolate the effects of Talon’s spreading infiltration.

In fact, the suspension and internal investigation don’t stop Overwatch from continuing its missions or external investigations. By the time of Null Sector’s uprising in London a year later, Overwatch has several on-going investigations or “active situations” it is monitoring:

(A lot more under the cut.)

This map is taken directly from the screen in Jack’s office in the “Uprising” comic. Though incredibly small, we actually roughly know the majority of the location of the dots. From right to left, they are:

Tokyo, Japan: likely the investigation of the Shimada criminal empire, as Genji is still present in Overwatch.

Cairo and/or Giza, Egypt: no mission is known, but an Overwatch official was killed there shortly before the comic takes place. It is also the present-day home of the Anubis AI.

An unknown location in Switzerland: possibly Overwatch’s internal investigation of itself, or an investigation into the UN’s Geneva base.

Either Oyo, Nigeria or Numbani: an investigation into the new “Doomfist”, Akande Ogundimu, and his “mercenary” troops

London, UK: this is Null Sector’s uprising

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: with the new revelation about Lúcio’s father working for Vishkar, this investigation becomes tantalizing to hypothesize about

Dorado, Mexico: though we don’t know what Overwatch was investigating specifically, the location is home to Los Muertos, the gang affiliated with Sombra (who was a new Talon agent at the time) and possibly the site of LumériCo’s then-new developments

Pacific Northwest, United States and/or Canada: unknown entirely, aside from being where Fareeha Amari’s biological father, Sam, is from.

Several of these locations can be double-checked against the map from the Soldier: 76 Origin video.

One obvious and major diffierence between the maps is...well...

Paris, France.

Which is almost certainly tied to:

Odette, Odile skin description: For much of her life, Amélie Lacroix was better known as an accomplished ballet dancer in Paris.

Overwatch went through several major decisions in the immediate aftermath of the Venice mission, likely in rapid-fire succession. Arguably, due to the speed and efficiency of the decisions (the debriefings, Gabriel working with Moira, the suspension), Overwatch was able to pretty quickly recover and return to relative equilibrium, with surprisingly few side-effects internally.

In fact, it was arguably Talon which went through much bigger and more significant changes after the Venice mission. The effects of Antonio’s death rippled throughout the paramilitary organization’s core, likely setting off a number of events in the days to months that followed.

The most important and - quite frankly - “world-changing” of these consequences would absolutely be:

The True Successor: Akande overthrows Akinjide

We know from the Blackwatch memorandum and an interaction in “Retribution” that the “Doomfist” associated with Antonio was actually the second one:

Akinjide Adeyemi, also known as “The Scourge”.

McCree: Did Antonio have any associates? Gabriel: There’s the one who will probably take over for him - Vialli. Don’t know too much about him. Then Doomfist in Numbani, and an Omnic, who runs a casino in Monaco - uh, Maximilien or something.

While we don’t know for certain if Talon was organized the exact same way then (8-9 years ago) as it is during the events of the “Masquerade” comic, it seems fairly reasonable to conclude that the major aspects of leadership were roughly the same: a council made up of select leaders, each of whom runs a major faction or component of the organization, and who form “alliances” to achieve their objectives.

At the time of “Retribution,” Blackwatch did not fully know: 1) the exact nature of these relationships and connections between Talon “leaders” and 2) the extent of them. In fact, the whole point of the Venice mission was to grab Antonio and get information from him, to help Blackwatch conduct a more thorough investigation and coordinate covert operations against Talon.

This is significant for two main reasons:

The first is that - as part of the “Gabriel is infiltrating Talon” theory - Gabriel Reyes does not actually know all of the Talon leaders at the time of “Masquerade”. In fact, it is very likely that the crux of his infiltration plan is to find all the major Talon leaders and...well, enact retribution upon them (hence the references to Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Masque of the Red Death”).

“Retribution” rather subtly slips in an important clue: Gabriel Reyes did not know exactly who “Vialli” was at the time of the Venice mission. He knew him by name, and knew that he was associated with Antonio, but he could not actually recognize him in person.

And roughly nine years later, “Reaper” still cannot recognize Vialli in-person.

Getting access to the secretive Talon council is vital for Gabriel’s infiltration, or everything he’s done between “Retribution” and “Masquerade” will have been a hugely wasted and incredibly costly effort - he’s arguably “lost” everything in exchange for this “retribution infiltration” mission against Talon.

However, unlike “Retribution-era” Gabriel and Blackwatch, “we the audience” have additional sources of information at our disposal: we know who Vialli is, we know his relationship with Antonio (who was his “predecessor”), we know his relationship with Akande (though there are a number of interesting plot twists there), and we know what he eventually becomes after Overwatch falls (the main “leader”/commander of Talon).

We also know the rough structure of Talon’s council and its overall hierarchy: Talon should be viewed as a sort of network of alliances between powerful, cunning, and extreme individuals who manage either actual mercenary or paramilitary troops (such as Antonio?):

Or who control access to resources or funding (such as Maximilien):

Or who possess the abilities or technical knowledge to apply certain extreme technologies, enhancements, or augmentations to Talon assets (such as Moira).

From what we know from Akande’s Hero Profile, Akinjide Adeyemi was a member of Talon who actually led and organized mercenary and paramilitary units:

We don’t know when exactly Akinjide recruited Akande, or what he said to encourage Akande to join him. Akande did not “start” in Talon, but instead was brought on as a mercenary (much like another Talon character, hmmm). Implied in the wording is that Akinjide wanted to see what Akande’s enhanced capabilities were actually “worth” before he brought him to Talon, and therefore made him do a lot of “mercenary grunt work” before he started introducing Akande to his Talon forces or - more importantly - his Talon associates, notably Maximilien.

However, even though it isn’t directly stated in Akande’s Hero Profile or in the “Masquerade” comic (likely because the latter occurs much later in the story), it’s important to realize that what Akinjide said may have mattered significantly less to Akande than who Akinjide was.

Or at least...who he represented.

There are a number of “Doomfists” in the history of the Overwatch universe, so it’s sort of a title that’s been carried by different characters. The original “Doomfist” was a really good guy - one of the heroes of the Omnic Crisis...

(Source: Michael Chu)

Ages and ages ago - before any real aspects of “Doomfist” had been fully revealed - I wrote one of my first “big essay” posts discussing his then-immenient release. It was titled “Doomfist: Lineage and Legacy” and essentially, it analyzed the names of the three main “Doomfists” (and originally postulated the possible existence of a fourth). What was most important about the essay was that: it established that there was a mythological/historical inspiration for the “lineage” of Doomfists (which is similar to how many Overwatch characters have mythological inspirations), that there was a certain amount of “regality” and “kingship” among the three (maybe four) Doomfists (which was shortly confirmed by the literary references in the “Masquerade” comic), and that the usage of the Gauntlets was being transformed from a tool for justice into a weapon of war.

Not all of it was correct: obviously, the idea of a “fourth” Doomfist was wrong (at least...for now, lol). But what was correct was the concept of “rightful inheritance” and “legacy”, along with a twisting transformation of both ideas from one of heroism to one of “war”.

To begin with, the first Doomfist was a man named Adhabu Ngumi.

It means “Doom Fist” in Swahili.

However, it is not so much his direct name meaning that is the significant part, but the fact that it is Swahili, which is found in the region of the African Great Lakes (for example, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Tanzania, etc). This is notably east of Nigeria.

Adhabu is also dressed in an extremely militarized manner - he is wearing body armor, what appears to be a biotic field (compare to the yellow one on the Strike-Commander Morrison skin), and a military beret. He is framed with a rising sun, showing him as a heroic, bold figure.

This, coupled with his title “The Savior,” implies that he was a military figure in Africa - arguably Eastern Africa.

However, given the backstory of the OR-14s, we know there was an Omnium in Nigeria:

“Originally put into service before the Omnic Crisis, the OR14 “Idina” line of security robots was built in Nigeria’s massive manufacturing omnium. After the war, they were taken out of production, along with many of the other models used during the crisis. Twenty years later, Numbani revived and recommissioned the OR14 program to protect the city from external threats. These new OR15s were deployed for a short time before they were destroyed in an attack by Doomfist.”

Which means that it’s very, very likely Adhabu was the man who led African military forces to triumph over the Nigerian Omnium.

It may be possible that Numbani itself was built in Adhabu’s honor.

Although Adhabu is Swahili, he seems to bear some references to the Oduduwa mythology of the Yoruba people (whom the Scourge and Akande are a part of): he “hails from the east,” and appears to be “a bringer of light.” Oduduwa is considered the ancestor of all Yoruba kings.

Many of his details referencing Oduduwa is important: regality and kingship are deliberate and intentional choices in Akande’s design.

“We really wanted to give [Akande] colors that made him feel very powerful like red, gold - and really adorn him with that regal presence.” - Arnold Tsang, Doomfist Hero Preview video

Moreover, the concept of “kingly inheritance” and “kingly successorship” is integral into the entire “Doomfist” title and lineage: Adhabu set the precedent, both in presence and in story. He came from the east, represented by his Swahili origins and the sun, and helped save Nigeria and other parts of West Africa from the Nigerian Omnium. He is a noble, heroic figure, a modern-day king-commander (not unlike a few other characters in Overwatch, mainly Gabriel Reyes, Jack Morrison, Fareeha Amari, and Hanzo Shimada), and he represented how a human with added augmentation (his Gauntlet) could become powerful - more powerful than literal machines. The people of Numbani still hold him in high regard, bestowing the title of “The Savior” upon him.

This goes further than just Adhabu:

Because even though his “title” is “The Scourge,” Akinjide Adeyemi has all the hallmarks of “a king”.

(Again, wrote this before Doomfist/Akande was released.)

Much like how Akinjide eventually took Akande under his wing, it is very plausible that Adhabu taught or possibly even raised Akinjide. The meaning of Akinjide’s full name - “the strong one who is worthy of the crown has returned” - certainly bestows a weighty and powerful “right” of successorship upon him. Like names like “Gabriel Reyes” or “Moira O’Deorain”, “Akinjide Adeyemi” is a name that gives us the sense that he was supposed to be a heroic and just figure - a true inheritor of Adhabu’s title, Gauntlet, and legacy. That he should have been another “Savior” to Numbani and Nigeria.

Instead...he became a “scourge” upon the city and the region.

Akinjide took his version of the Gauntlet (or perhaps even Adhabu’s own Gauntlet) and recrafted it: he made it bigger, more aggressive, more powerful, and more weaponized. He took what was originally a symbol of hope, power, and honor, and transformed it into one of destruction and despair. Whatever ties he had to Adhabu were severed when he began to abuse this power and “worthiness” for ill.

A young Akande grew up through all of this - the Omnic Crisis, Adhabu saving Nigeria, the construction of Numbani, the growth and flourishing of the city and region. He watched his family’s prosthetic company change the lives of those injured during the Crisis, making them stronger, better, more powerful. He witnessed how a single man, a single commander - Adhabu Ngumi - could change the course of history of parts of the world with a single, powerful tool.

What Akande witnessed was that war - perhaps the greatest war in Overwatch’s fictional history - did not weaken humanity.

War had made everything around him grow. Thrive. Flourish. And improve.

Numbani and Nigeria rose from the ashes of the Omnic Crisis with a burgeoning economy and rapid advancements in technology. It was a vision of the future, a vision of what humanity - coupled with new technology, new ideas, and new power - could create.

And Akande himself had gotten stronger because of the Crisis.

Though perhaps...at the time, he did not think so:

Here, we have a collision.

Akinjide - a man who should’ve had the world in the palm of his hand - running mercenary groups, raiding off the edges of Numbani’s wealth and advancements, coming in contact with Akande - a man who should’ve inherited the wealth, technology, the power, and the prestige of his family - completely discontent with his life...

Discontent with his destiny.

Two inheritors of two similar yet different legacies, both of whom had lost them for different reasons - Akinjide for reasons unknown, but for methods we know about (he abused his power), and Akande for the reasons above, who lost all interest in simply “running a company,” even if the company was prestigous and doing remarkable work.

So perhaps, it was not specifically Akinjide who Akande was interested in working with, but rather, the “legacy” he was carrying:

His Gauntlet

His title of “Doomfist”

And eventually - his “army”.

We know from Akande’s Hero Profile that he excelled in his new line of work, first as a mercenary, then as a “rising” Talon leader. He worked his way up the ranks, proving himself as a capable, calm, tactical commander, and others in Talon...took notice of his “greater potential”.

We are bedeviled by the mysteries of creation. Science can reveal the truths that lie behind these many questions. What we learn can unlock the true potential of humanity.

- Moira (source)

We don’t know when or how Akande and Moira met, but it is clear that - at their cores - they share a similar vision, though the means and methods they use to achieve those are different. Akande focuses on conflict as a way of driving technological advancement, while Moira is more interested in the research aspect of progress. However, both individuals are extremely loose in their ethics, and capable of switching to alternate methods when necessary to achieve their goals.

Symmetra: Doomfist, you are mistaken - only with order can humanity evolve! Doomfist: Order…chaos… means to an end.

---

Moira: Well, that was certainly a decisive solution to the Antonio problem. McCree: It’s not how we do things! Moira: Well, it seems we’ve had a change in methodology. McCree, muttering: …A little too much change.

Both Akande and Moira found pre-Retribution Talon suitable to their then-purposes: Akande, listless in the direction his life had been taking, found a place where his “true potential” as a visionary king-commander could thrive, while Moira, who had lost her life’s research after Overwatch had shut down her original lab, found an organization whose lack of ethics (and seemingly endless supply of human test subjects) suited her own amoral experiments.

There was, however, a problem.

...Or rather, two problems.

The first and most important, of course, was Overwatch: Overwatch was a militarized organization with the authority and actual power (e.g. resources, agents, teams, divisions, and motivations) to enforce peacekeeping and other regulations. While Numbani had grown from the ashes of the Crisis, so too had Overwatch, expanding from a team of five known individuals into an international, UN-chartered organization that helped build global peace and stability. And despite what Akande and Moira claim, Overwatch did support scientific, economic, and social advancement, such as helping fund the development of different research divisions or different projects (see: Mercy, Winston, Mei, and Torbjörn as examples).

However, while Overwatch was not perfect about stopping global or international crime, it made a concerted effort to do so: disbanding arms-trafficking groups like the Deadlock Gang or focusing missions against criminal networks like the Shimada clan.

In fact, it is loosely implied that Talon was formed specifically to counter and undermine Overwatch: a conglomeration of “well-funding criminals” who wanted to see the peacekeeping organization destabilized so they could run their “profitable” crimes, from operating mercenary groups to arms-dealing to laundering money through casinos (currently only implied). A hint at this comes from Genji in Retribution:

Genji: Talon once tried to recruit my father. Gabriel: He didn’t take them up on their offer? Genji: He did not find them to his liking. Their aims did not…coincide with his own.

(Source)

And we know that even though Hanzo has left the clan in the present-day, Akande and Widowmaker very actively try to recruit him into Talon, bluntly saying that they could help him restore the Shimada clan to its former glory at the head of a criminal empire. Talon - then and now - makes a concentrated effort to recruit people who are powerful in the...unethical side of the story.

However, we now run into “Retribution-era” Akande’s and Moira’s second problem:

The Talon leadership at the time of Retribution was...“narrow-minded” in its focus, purpose, and methods.

Adeyemi was a useful asset to Talon, but the organization saw far greater potential in Ogundimu, with his intelligence and his ability to inspire as a commander. While Adeyemi was content to profit from raids on Numbani, Ogundimu had a grander vision.

(Source)

Petty “raids” on wealthy cities, disjointed and unorganized attacks on Overwatch facilities -

Attacks that didn’t even work in killing or harming their intended targets:

After all, the explosion on the temporary Blackwatch base in Rome was meant to kill Gérard Lacroix, but not only did it fail to do that, Gérard was set to make a full recovery. Instead, approximately fourteen Blackwatch members - possibly even just support staff or third-party contractors - were killed. While those numbers were still emotionally upsetting for Gabriel and Jack, they did not actually impact Overwatch’s or Blackwatch’s ability to function.

We can conclude that with individuals like Antonio and Akinjide in charge of Talon, these semi-randomized attacks on Overwatch had been going on for awhile, maybe a few months to a year, and that they were largely unsuccessful in harming the overal integrity of the peacekeeping organzation (but they were successful at emotional “wear-and-tear” on Overwatch’s leaders).

Antonio’s lines in “Retribution” show us this sort of “narrow-minded” focus:

Antonio: …Good evening, Commander Reyes. Ha, how will this look on the news? Overwatch unlawfully abducting a respected businessman? Even if you take me now, my friends would have me released within the week. All these…theatrics have been a waste of our time.

All that Antonio is focused on is “appearances” - the news coverage of his arrest, his public “respected businessman” stature, how he derides the back-and-forth exchanges between Overwatch/Blackwatch and Talon as simple “theatrics” (“theatrics” which resulted in deaths that impacted Gabriel). His message to Gabriel is surprisingly simple: Talon and Blackwatch can keep playing these “theatrics” of not-really-harming each other, or Gabriel and his team can turn around, walk away from the situation, back off of the investigation of Talon, and turn a blind eye to Talon’s future crimes.

No talk of “visionary futures.” No talk of “true potentials.” No talk of dedication to research, experiments seeking the truth. No talk of ideologies of how war reshapes humanity, how conflict is the “crucible through which we evolve”.

Just “business” and “theatrics.”

So like -

Is it really that surprising that she’s happy to see Antonio die?

As I wrote in this answer, I don’t think Moira particularly expected Antonio to die. I think she expected to put Gabriel - one of her current “research interests” - into an extremely tough “experiment” against her other “research interests” (the Talon paramilitary agents), and see who came out on top. If it was Gabriel, well, she knew he was bound to her by her research, and if it was the Talon army, then great, her new experiments were a success.

However, instead, she was excited to see an unexpected “result” of her experiment:

Gabriel’s intense and sudden “change of plans,” which result in Antonio’s death.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it as many times as I need to: Moira’s sense of “loyalty” obviously runs by a different “ethical code” than most people. Her loyalty is to her research first, and those who support it second. If Antonio was as “narrow-minded” as Akinjide or (for example) Winston or Mercy, of course she’d be pretty happy to see him removed from Talon, just as she would be happy to undermine Overwatch. Her “loyalty” is not about who is giving her a paycheck or protection, but who best aligns with her vision of free and “unrestricted” research.

In his own way, Antonio and the “old” Talon leadership hindered Moira almost as much as Overwatch did.

We don’t exactly know who or what compelled Moira to join Blackwatch when Gabriel recruited her. We know from Michael’s implications and her paper on curing degenerative diseases that it’s pretty plausible Gabriel recruited Moira mainly to solve his SEP side-effects, but we don’t know if that alone was enough to catch Moira’s interest.

However, considering the wording on her Hero Profile (which implies she was already a Talon agent in Blackwatch), her obvious hatred for Overwatch, the themes of “parallel retributions gone wrong” (e.g. Gabriel’s retribution vs. Moira’s retribution), and her obvious amorality in using, leaking, and “repurposing” Gabriel’s biodata, I don’t think it’s very surprising that someone probably encouraged her to accept Gabriel’s request and enter Blackwatch as a Talon spy.

“We stand on the brink of a breakthrough in human evolution. I have dedicated my life to unraveling its secrets. I take risks that others would consider to be ‘unwise,’ for I do not share their caution. Overwatch held back the pace of scientific discovery for decades. They believed my methods were too radical… too controversial…

“And they tried…to silence me.

“…But there were others in the shadows, searching for ways to circumvent their rules. Freed from my shackles, the pace of our research hastened - together, we delved deeper into those areas forbidden by law, by morality…and by fear. “New patrons emerged who possessed an appetite for my discoveries. And with this knowledge…what new world could we build?”

- Moira Origin story (source)

Someone encouraged Moira. Though her Origin video wants you to think it was Gabriel, we know from the “Retribution” comic that his priorities were on protecting Jack and Overwatch. In that case, the part about “others in the shadows, searching for ways to circumvent [Overwatch’s] rules” almost certainly implies Talon as a whole.

But the line “Together, we delved deeper into those areas forbidden by law, by morality...and by fear” is stronger, but in different ways.

If Moira is talking about Talon, then she appears to be describing both her experimental work on the Talon paramilitary agents, and - most likely - her work as a “spy” in Blackwatch. Talon has no problem breaking “law and morality,” but “fear” is an interesting one, because the sentence structure makes it sound like Moira is talking about her own fear.

As if someone had to help her get past her fear of being an untrained, noncombatant spy entering Blackwatch, a division specializing in covert operations.

Adeyemi was a useful asset to Talon, but the organization saw far greater potential in Ogundimu, with his intelligence and his ability to inspire as a commander.

We know one member of Retribution-era Talon who had the ability to inspire others to be “courageous.”

I don’t know if Moira joined Blackwatch under Akande’s orders or interests. I don’t know if she saw him as a “king-commander” or if she saw him as an associate, or even as a friend. However, 8-9 years later, Moira has answered Akande’s “call to war” seemingly without hesitation:

In the present day, we know that other characters like Maximilien and Sanjay are also apparently loyal to Akande, along with a few others that we haven’t seen. “Reaper” appears to be acting as an “inspired” henchman to Akande, though we know he helped Sombra sabotage the Volskaya mission, and he might have deliberately thrown the “stop Recall” and “reclaim the Gauntlet” missions as well.

At the very least, at the time of Retribution, Moira and Akande’s intra-Talon interests aligned:

They would see Overwatch brought down.

And if “sacrifices” within Talon had to be made in the name of science and progress, then so be it.

This is Akande’s moment.

When we look at it from his perspective, we see a long sequence of events that have finally “aligned”:

Akinjide, who initially appeared promising to Akande as the “successor” to Adhabu, has proven to be a disappointment, ideologically and motivationally weak compared to Akande’s own “grander vision.”

Moira, who has slipped into Blackwatch as a Talon spy, has found a number of abilities to experiment with, and has possibly found a critical weakness to one of the founding members of Overwatch.

Against all odds, that exact member of Overwatch - Gabriel Reyes - has actually killed Antonio, who was a “weak willed” and “narrow-minded” leader of Talon, and one of Akinjide’s allies.

And - perhaps what is truly shocking (or motivating) to Akande - is that Antonio’s new experimental army and paramilitary units have been decimated by Gabriel, two additional Blackwatch agents, and Moira, who was more or less there to keep herself alive.

If there is ever a time to remake and reforge Talon, it is now.

After all, only through conflict do we evolve.

And Akande is going to fulfill his “true potential.”

Akande is a male Yoruba name meaning "firstborn." Ogun is a Yoruba god of war and metalwork, and dimu is Yoruba for "grasping." Akande Ogundimu can therefore be roughly translated as, "heir to the god who grasps iron and war.”

And he is going to remake and reforge the Doomfist legacy, from a “savior” to a “scourge” to a true “success(or)”.

Humanity has always been tested. Conflict and war is the crucible through which we evolve. Every battle makes us stronger. Those who fall will be forgotten. Those who rise up - their names will be remembered forever. (source)

History is written by the victors... Ha. You know my name. (source)

By killing and overthrowing Akinjide, Akande would embody - in name, in title, in inheritance, in legacy, in motivation, in literal “armaments” - his ideology of conflict making people (and organizations) stronger.

As the new Doomfist, Ogundimu rose high in Talon and helped to orchestrate a conflict that the organization hoped would someday engulf the world.

With Akinjide and Antonio gone, a new set of alliances is made among the remaining members of the Talon council. Incredibly, Maximilien - the casino-owning French Omnic - survives the coup (we’ll get a little more into him later), no doubt using his political savvy and money to persuade the new “successors” to Akinjide and Antonio (Akande and Vialli respectively) to keep him around. It is not known if Moira is able to contact her allies in Talon, but she is obviously intelligent enough and clever enough to survive whatever situation she is in.

Secured in his new position on the Talon council, Akande sets out to make his “grander vision” a reality. He is not going to make the same mistakes as Akinjide and Antonio. His “grander vision” is noble, honorable, powerful. It will require the abilities and inspirations of a king-commander, the genius of brilliant but troubled scientists, and the craftsmanship of engineers and architechs (lol).

Akande is going to use all the resources at his disposal to make more tactical, precision strikes against Overwatch.

You don’t break a dam by chipping away at the top, and you don’t weaken an organization by killing random agents.

You break a dam by destroying the foundation -

And you weaken an organization by taking down important targets.

Swan song: the death of Gérard Lacroix and the creation of Widowmaker

Moira: How are you feeling, Lacroix? Widowmaker: I don't feel. That's the point, isn't it?

Gabriel Reyes had shown that he was “too hard to kill” in a direct confrontation, and if he had formed some sort of negotiations with Moira, he may have been “safe” from further Talon attacks. Similarly, Jesse McCree and Genji Shimada had also proven themselves pretty difficult to kill in Venice, and with Gabriel vouching for their loyalty, they may have been extra “guarded” by Overwatch.

Furthermore, the Blackwatch suspension would’ve made it impossible for Moira or any other Talon double-agents to make any aggressive moves against the organization (if they were even allowed in the Overwatch facilities).

Inside Overwatch’s “castles,” the core members of Overwatch and Blackwatch were relatively safe from direct Talon attacks or from Talon infiltrators leaking information (at the moment). Business resumed some degree of normalcy.

After Gabriel Reyes, Jesse McCree, and Genji Shimada, Gérard Lacroix was arguably the most important member of Blackwatch (that we know of). He was the principle investigator in the anti-Talon operations, and he was also a crucial witness in Gabriel’s debriefing:

However, inside Overwatch facilities, Gérard would have been secure, surrounded by allies and medics who could help him. Because of Gabriel’s debriefing, Gérard would also have been aware of Moira’s role as a Talon infiltrator, and like Jesse and Genji, would’ve kept his guard up around her.

He might also have been the first person to start identifying other Talon infiltrators (if there were some).

Removing him would’ve become the top spot on Talon’s priority list.

With Akande now leading Talon, it was time to try a different set of tactics. Aggressive but semi-randomized attacks had failed to take down the most important Blackwatch and Overwatch leaders and agents. Even direct ambushes had proven dicey, as Talon had lost one of their own major leaders in their last attempt at that.

However, there was one avenue that had proven to be effective.

Extremely effective:

“Hope” had been Overwatch’s greatest strength for nearly 25 years -

And much like how Moira had found “hope” to be Gabriel’s weakness -

All the virtues that had helped make Overwatch strong would be its undoing.

Love, courage, loyalty, determination, and hope -

Moira had proven with her “experiment” that these things could be used to put Overwatch and Blackwatch agents in critical situations, where their guards were lowered and their judgments weakened.

Other methods had failed, but with a new “visionary” at the helm of Talon, perhaps they could try her “new methodology.”

It is believed that in her former life, Widowmaker was married to Gérard Lacroix, an Overwatch agent spearheading operations against the Talon terrorist organization. After several unsuccessful attempts to eliminate Gérard, Talon decided to change its focus to his wife, Amélie.

We don’t know where, when, or how exactly Amélie’s kidnapping occurred, but based on her Odette and Odile skin descriptions:

For much of her life, Amélie Lacroix was better known as an accomplished ballet dancer in Paris.

She was probably kidnapped in Paris.

We don’t know how long she was missing, or where she was found again, but we can surmise or hypothesize about a few things:

Talon operatives kidnapped her and subjected her to an intense program of neural reconditioning. They broke her will, suppressed her personality, and reprogrammed her as a sleeper agent. She was eventually found by Overwatch agents, apparently none the worse for wear, and returned to her normal life.

Now, we don’t exactly know if Moira was involved in her reconditioning. Personally, I believe that if Moira did get involved, it occurred at a later phase, when Amélie’s physiology changed. It would be extremely strange for a geneticist to be involved in brainwashing, though considering Blizzard doesn’t have the best track record for “accurate” science fiction, I wouldn’t be surprised if they somehow threw that in there.

However, we do know that Talon - especially Akande’s new Talon - was full of extreme, powerful individuals, many of whom shared the same intense ideology and principles of “conflict/stress/experimentation makes us stronger”, “we are part of a grander vision/truer potential/greater order”, and “the ends justifies the methods”. In fact, Widowmaker’s “reconditioning” has a very strong parallel in another character:

Now, let me make this very clear: I do not think Satya Vaswani has been deliberately brainwashed like Amélie Lacroix. I do think Vishkar has been such a massive and looming part of Satya’s life for so long that it has an incredibly strong grip on her views and mindset.

We also know that Vishkar demands an extreme amount of loyalty, dedication, and ruthlessness from its employees. This point had long been implied by Satya’s dialogue and her behavior, but it was more overtly confirmed by a new interaction:

Lúcio: Vishkar’s using you - just like they used my father! …You just wait - you’ll see. Symmetra: Your father was a Vishkar employee. He understood our company’s vision…a shame he never educated you.

We don’t know when exactly Sanjay Korpal joined Talon: he appears to be relatively young, but so do Moira and Akande, who are both in their 40′s, and they were part of Talon before the events of the Venice mission. An intriguing “hint” that Sanjay might have also been part of Talon during Retribution comes from the Blackwatch Venice memorandum:

On the “Organization Profile”, the list of known members of Talon is different than the list of Antonio’s known associates.

Notably, Akinjide Adeyemi was not listed as a member, but was later identified by Blackwatch as a Talon associate (when they monitor his fight with Akande):

Both of the [redacted] names are relatively short - approximately the same length as “Maximilien”. “Sanjay Korpal” could fit in one of them. The only other member of Talon at the time (though we do not know if Blackwatch was aware of her) was Olivia Colomar, better known as “Sombra”.

Also the fact that the Talon Assassin appears to use hard light and sonic technology for her blades and her increased speed:

While I would not be surprised for Blizzard to released a new character who is directly responsible for Amélie’s brainwashing, I would also be unsurprised if the role is pinned on Sanjay and/or Moira.

After all, Moira is already responsible for parts of another character’s “condition”:

Moira: How are you feeling, Commander? Gabriel: Fine, no ill effects so far. Moira: Let me know if that changes.

Which is suspiciously parallel to:

Moira: How are you feeling, Lacroix? Widowmaker: I don’t feel - that’s the point, isn’t it?

In fact, Widowmaker’s story has a number of intriguing plot elements that pointedly mirror Reaper’s.

The first is that both appear to have been - or currently be - double-agents or sleeper agents. Amélie was made into a sleeper agent on behalf of Talon, killing her husband Gérard and then returning to Talon for further conditioning and training. Gabriel, on the other hand, appears to currently be infiltrating Talon as a double-agent, notably after having a “falling out” with his “partner”, Jack Morrison.

The second is that they both claim - admittedly for different reasons - to not feel any emotion in regards to their actions, but both of these are lies.

This is an outright lie by Reaper. Even if he is genuinely angry with Jack, Reaper refused to kill Ana Amari when he had a chance because he got emotional.

Meanwhile, in the above interaction with Moira, Widowmaker claims to feel nothing, but during the events of “Reflections”, she visits Gérard’s grave and brings a rose:

(Amusingly, she also claims she cannot feel “the cold” in Volskaya, but wears a coat here.)

Widowmaker also retains Gérard’s picture in her mansion.

Which - while we haven’t seen this in the present day - has a side-eyeing parallel to Gabriel’s situation room during the “Retribution” comic:

Lastly, both of them have had major emotional virtues undermined as their points of weakness by Talon:

Gabriel had his trust and hope betrayed.

Amélie’s love and loyalty were taken from her:

Two weeks later she killed Gérard in his sleep.

Personally, I’m not a fan of the “Gabriel is brainwashed” theory because I think it removes a lot of his in-universe agency and decision-making power from him (which, admittedly, I don’t love that aspect of Widowmaker either), but I do think there are strong parallels and connections to be made between Widowmaker and “Reaper”. As I said earlier, it appears that Moira may be holding onto Gabriel’s “cure” or blackmailing him about his “secrets” to have him work as a mercenary for Talon (though obviously this could be perceived differently to one or both of them - hell, it may even be a relatively “mutual” agreement between them by the time of Recall). In both situations, Talon seems to have a “grip” on an emotional or meaningful aspect of both Widowmaker’s and Reaper’s personal lives and motivations, and Talon appears to have targeted a “virtuous emotion” (love, hope, trust, etc) and transformed it into a weakness or even a weapon -

An opening to kill Gérard, or an opening to bring down Overwatch.

I also personally think that, given that this was his reaction to Gérard getting hurt:

Gabriel almost certainly escalated his “plans” for Talon upon Gérard’s death.

Again, I don’t know if Jack, Ana, Reinhardt, Torbjörn, or McCree were aware of Gabriel’s plans. Based on Ana’s reaction in the “Old Soldiers” comic, and her’s and the other characters’ interactions with “Reaper” in the game (though not necessarily canon, Reinhardt and McCree’s reactions certainly feel like they would be genuinely angry to find out that Gabriel had “switched sides” for Talon), I would say that many of the characters closest to Gabriel were unaware of his “change in methodology.”

And that, if there was any one character who knew about Gabriel “intensifying” his mission against Talon -

It would be Jack.

As I wrote in “An Eye for An Eye,” it’s hard to tell what exactly Soldier: 76 is aware of in terms of Reaper’s “masquerade” inside Talon. I think it’s pretty safe to conclude that he knows what Moira did during Retribution (or at least was convinced of it during Gabriel’s debriefing), but how aware he is of “what Reyes had been planning” is more vague and open to wider interpretations.

However, unlike Ana and McCree, who have much stronger reactions to Reaper in-game, Soldier: 76′s interactions with him are...surprisingly calm, almost joking at times. It’s not unlike how Reaper and Sombra talk to each other, actually (which is an important point, given that Reaper and Sombra are allies in this “masquerade” in Talon).

It’s also difficult to say where Widowmaker falls in Reaper’s “plans”. According to Michael Chu, “Reaper” had no involvement in Widowmaker’s conditioning:

And based on Gabriel’s close friendship with Gérard, I cannot see him as willingly authorizing or approving of Amélie’s reconditioning or Gérard’s assassination.

A popular fan theory - which works in tandem with the “Gabriel is infiltrating Talon to bring it down” theory - is that Gabriel is attempting to save Amélie (or whatever remains of her) from Talon. It is a theory I am personally a fan of, but I recognize that, aside from the above parallels, there isn’t a lot of direct evidence for it (as opposed to the other elements of the theory, e.g. Sombra is working with Reaper). Reaper makes little to no effort to protect or help Widowmaker, even undermining a major assassination mission for her, so while I like the idea, currently, it doesn’t really have much to support it.

And speaking of “pure speculation theories”...

Time keeps on slippin’: was the disappearance of the Slipstream an accident or sabotage?

Pharah: Helix should keep the peace in Vishkar developments! Symmetra: We does not need an army to keep the peace. We prefer our own methods...

Lena Oxton (call sign: "Tracer") was the youngest person ever inducted into Overwatch's experimental flight program. Known for her fearless piloting skills, she was handpicked to test the prototype of a teleporting fighter, the Slipstream. But during its first flight, the aircraft's teleportation matrix malfunctioned, and it disappeared. Lena was presumed dead.

She reappeared months later, but her ordeal had greatly changed her: her molecules had been desynchronized from the flow of time. Suffering from "chronal disassociation," she was a living ghost, disappearing for hours and days at a time. Even for the brief moments she was present, she was unable to maintain physical form.

(source)

Overwatch was looking for a hotshot pilot to test their next-generation teleporting fighter, The Slipstream. Enter Lena Oxton - call sign: “Tracer”! Haha, that’s me! It was the sort of opportunity I had dreamed of my whole life. But on my first flight, the teleportation matrix malfunctioned, and I disappeared! I was missing for months! And no one knew where - or when - I had gone.

By the time Overwatch found me, I was little more than a ghost...

(source)

It seems innocent enough.

After all, pretty much every story involving a teleportation device, or a time machine, or some sort of “time-and-or-space” controlling element involves a plot point of someone or something getting “lost” in time and/or space, right? It’s a common enough trope that no one bats an eye over it. “Of course the Slipstream was going to fail - you don’t mess around with teleportation, something always goes wrong.”

Right?

But like I said earlier -

We have concrete evidence of a major company with ties to Talon that specializes in teleportation that will literally go to extremes to undermine any “competition”:

Yes, “A Better World” takes place approximately a few months to about a year before the events of “Recall.” However, I personally have been skeptical of Tracer’s profile and Lena’s Origin story narrative since I first read and watched them. Remember: both of these have “a perspective”. The former is meant to be vague or just...“thin” enough to cover the surface, while the latter is told from Lena’s own perspective.

She was young at the time - only 18 - and brand new to Overwatch. We know she admired Overwatch, and dreamed of joining their ranks “[her] whole life.”

But at the time, Tracer probably didn’t know what was happening in the upper levels of Overwatch: that Overwatch and Blackwatch were starting to unravel, holes being poked through their defenses, critical individuals being blackmailed, threatened, hurt, or even assassinated.

Just like McCree in Retribution -

It is not that Tracer’s narrative of the Slipstream flight is untrustworthy -

It is just extremely limited.

If, after the fall and disbandment of Overwatch, Vishkar is willing to blow up a rival construction company in order to secure a building contract in a new location -

What would Vishkar (read: Sanjay) have done to prevent Overwatch from developing a teleporting, rapid-flight fighter jet from being successful?

For the last year and a half, I thought of the possibility of Vishkar sabotaging the Slipstream test flight as little more than an interesting hypothesis, a funny little “red conspiracy string” idea that had some distant and “barely there” connections. Interesting, intriguing, but unlikely. Tracer’s “story” hadn’t been looked at since Uprising last year, and even then, the details of her Slipstream flight were just taken for granted - background elements to the “current plot” of Null Sector and Tracer’s first mission.

But then came this:

Which showed how easy it was for a trusted third-party to enter “secure” Blackwatch bases.

And then during the Retribution mission -

She shows up.

And much, much more recently, we have new interactions indicating that Vishkar had access to “hyper-speed-inducing, light-and-sound-based” technology, possibly even at the time of Retribution:

Mercy: Lúcio, I never realized your father was the one who made Vishkar’s sonic technology! Lúcio: The core tech was his life’s work, owned and patented by Vishkar…but it’s mine now.

— Lúcio: Vishkar’s using you - just like they used my father! …You just wait - you’ll see. Symmetra: Your father was a Vishkar employee. He understood our company’s vision…a shame he never educated you.

Lúcio, who has an intimate and personal history with the sonic technology, fully believes that Vishkar has either “wrongfully” claimed the rights to his father’s work, or is likely misusing it. His Hero Profile implies the latter:

Lúcio wouldn’t stand for it. He stole Vishkar sonic technology that had been used to suppress the people, and he converted it into a tool to rally them to action.

We don’t know what Lúcio’s father intended to use the sonic technology for (but given that there’s the possibility Lúcio is a synesthete, it might have originally been meant to help him manage his sensory perceptions), but if Lúcio’s father was anything like Symmetra in the present-day, then he was probably unware of how Vishkar was misusing it.

We know that by the time of “Uprising”, Overwatch is investigating an “active threat” in Rio de Janeiro:

It is possible (again, not saying how likely this hypothesis is, just that it is possible) that Overwatch tracked down the technology that made the Talon Assassins and traced it to an engineer/architech in Rio - but that he himself was likely not directly involved in the creation of the Assassins.

And from Talon and/or Vishkar’s side of it, there is an additional...complication.

If it is true that the Assassin is using prototype hard light and/or sonic technology, she represents Talon/Vishkar’s attempts to create a some sort of “hyper-fast, speed-boosted” warrior, an agent capable of appearing, killing, and then disappearing.

But again - consider her screams. Her disjointed movement. How seemingly every “Assassin” in the Retribution mission dies to Blackwatch.

If the Assassins are “Vishkar experiments” -

Then they are failures.

Vishkar, and Talon, likely give up on the Assassin tech, as it looks to be a combination of too dangerous and too ineffective to utilize in a serious manner. It’s not that I personally think characters like Moira or Sanjay are worried about safety, but when “high cost” experiments/assets like the Assassins and Snipers keep dying, it might be worthwhile to set those “projects” aside and come back to them later (like...maybe when you don’t have the “pressure” of Overwatch and Blackwatch breathing down your neck). And if Overwatch has its “eyes” on the architech who developed the technology, it might not be a bad idea to “lay low” while Akande puts other plans into action (like, say, reconditioning the wife of the anti-Talon investigator to kill him?).

That said, if or when Vishkar and/or Talon discover that Overwatch is making a teleporting, rapid-flight fighter jet, how would they have reacted to that?

Imagine if Overwatch and/or an unsuspended Blackwatch could literally appear over known Talon hideouts, infiltrate them, either kill Talon’s paramilitary troops or take information and technology, and then leave in the blink of an eye?

Well...let’s just say that “Retribution” probably could’ve ended in a very different way if the Slipstream had been available at the time.

Hell, even Null Sector’s uprising probably would’ve been much easier to deal with if Overwatch had not needed to worry about those “anti-air defense systems” by simply materializing fighter jets out of a timestream.

Point is, a teleporting fighter jet could’ve revitalized Overwatch’s “aging” military technology, pushing it ahead of Talon, Vishkar, and possibly other “competing” groups like Helix and reestablishing Overwatch’s peacekeeping efforts in Talon-stronghold or “anti-Overwatch” regions.

And if Vishkar and/or Talon did sabotage the Slipstream, their efforts appear to have paid off - the Slipstream is never mentioned again, as the project was likely dropped from Overwatch’s development docket for being too dangerous and too unstable.

But what no one expected was a different success.

Winston, who was probably well-known within Overwatch but kept a lower profile in the public, develops his first big, internal “claim to fame” moment when he creates the chronal accelerator and saves Tracer from her disassociation condition.

And this is why Tracer and Winston are the two biggest “mascot” characters for Overwatch:

“Hope” does not die.

No matter how it gets undermined or betrayed -

No matter what horrific losses and heartbreak it faces -

No matter how frequently it gets hurt or lost -

Hope and heroes always rise.

All the virtues that made Overwatch “weak” to Talon’s infiltrations, “weak” to disruption, “weak” to sabotage -

Are the same virtues that will help it return in the future.

But at the time of Lena’s accident, Talon doesn’t know this.

With Akande commanding the new Talon leadership, Talon deals what they believe are decisive blows to Overwatch’s power: Gérard Lacroix is dead and unable to “track” Talon’s movements. The Slipstream project is abandoned, and Talon thinks their ability to start more intense, “global-scale” conflicts has reached a new high.

As the new Doomfist, Ogundimu rose high in Talon and helped to orchestrate a conflict that the organization hoped would someday engulf the world.

Doomfist, on King’s Row:

Omnics will not be kept down forever. The ashes of the Crisis still smolder. This city is a powder keg that could ignite the world. And Talon is the flame.

Akande would embody uprisings.

And his new version of Talon would help others do the same.

Jack: This is Morrison. London has been attacked! King’s Row has fallen. We’re on the brink of open war. Ana: Hundreds are dead, and thousands injured! Jack: Team, it’s up to you.

In the next part, analyzing the implications that Talon fueled the Null Sector uprising in King’s Row, and how they plan to do it again, starting with Mondatta’s death.

And in a rather retributive turn of events, Akande gets arrested:

Probably because someone wanted to see him fall.

“Many were happy to see you go away.”

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