You heard it here first, folks: Tracer is still the face of Overwatch, despite not being featured in many major collaborations or promotional materials as of late.
We got the chance to sit down with the minds behind Overwatch at Blizzcon 2026 to discuss the game’s newest support hero, Doctrine, and the future of the franchise — as well as grill them about Tracer’s role as its supposed mascot.
When you think about Overwatch, you probably think of Tracer. She was essentially the star of the show when the game first launched in 2016, and was consistently featured in marketing materials, merchandise, advertisements, and more. Her iconic silhouette and speedy abilities were inescapable back then… but now, not so much.
We directly asked Overwatch’s Lead Hero Producer Kenny Hudson, as well as art director Dion Rogers, if Tracer is still the mascot of the game — or if she was ever really considered its mascot, at all.
Their answer was firm and decisive: Tracer is, and always was, the mascot of Overwatch.
“Tracer is still the mascot for Overwatch. Very much. ‘Tracer orange’ is a quote that the team uses all the time. The little cheeto on top of the sigil is orange. She’s still that girl,” Rogers told us.
Overwatch just got a brand-new support hero in Doctrine, a vampire-inspired character who has a long history with Doomfist. No, he’s not an actual vampire, but that motif was a key part of his design from the very beginning, says Rogers.
“The idea came from our lead narrative designer, Miranda Moyer, who actually asked the question of, ‘What would a vampire look like in the Overwatch universe?’ We always do our best work on heroes when we get a really cool theme to rally around, and ‘vampire’ just got the brain juices flowing on everything from kit, to concept, to art,” he explained.
“This one was fun, because with Hero 54, we’ve hit all the archetypes like cowboy, knight, ninja. Once we thought about the vampire, we were like, ‘Yeah, let’s lean into it and see if we can make a hero out of this,’” Hudson added.
“He’s still a scientist or a mechanical engineer, even his cape still feels like a lab coat from the sciency part of him. …we started him off as a scientist, a typical guy, lab coat, glasses. Sometimes it takes a team saying when they see an image, ‘That’s the hero.’ He didn’t quite feel like it yet. But we took the vampire thing that Miranda mentioned, we applied that, and he actually started to feel like a hero. You can see a theme, you can see a fantasy, you can see an archetype. Making him hail from Zimbabwe, Africa, gives him that immediate heritage and connection to Doomfist. He worked for Doomfist’s family at some point in his life, and helped build arms for Doomfist, so it made sense that he would reach out to him to get his arm back.”
Doctrine is the nearly the last of 10 characters who have come to Overwatch this year. With so much content dropping into the game in 2026, we had to ask about what peaks are left for Overwatch to climb, and what’s in the pipeline next.
“There’s always room for more heroes,” Rogers said. “There’s a lot more we’re cooking.”
“It’s not so much about hitting the targets we’ve already hit, but setting new ones and seeing where we can take it,” Hudson added. “We’re really excited with all the team has learned over the last couple of years to be able to really push ourselves into new territory and evolve in new, interesting ways.”
Doctrine was one of several massive announcements shown off at Blizzcon this year, and there’s still more to come; Hero 55 was also teased this weekend, and he’s a suave-looking Omnic who fans are already itching to play. You can out our recap blog for full breakdown of everything revealed, as well as our interview with the team behind the upcoming StarCraft open-world shooter coming in 2030.
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