Apex confirms Ash is Dr. Reid

Respawn finally gave fans a reveal they’ve been waiting for since season seven.

Apex Legends’ latest Twitter comic confirmed today that Dr. Ashleigh Reid, Horizon’s deceitful assistant who left her stranded on the outskirts of a black hole, is actually Ash, the simulacrum from the Titanfall franchise that first appeared in Apex during season five.

The reveal came as part of a season 10 Twitter comic, which shows Horizon’s efforts to discover who Ash was before she became a simulacrum. The storyline so far involves Horizon, Revenant, and Ash, with a little help from Crypto.

In the story, Horizon wants to discover Ash’s old identity to help figure out a way to get back to her son. She believes Ash was Lilian Peck, founder of Olympus and Horizon’s old friend. Peck was the only person who knew the Olympus access codes that Ash had on her during seasons five and six that Hammond Robotics wanted.

She goes to Revenant for help and asks him how his programming failed and let him remember his first life. The simulacrum, aware of Horizon’s plan and the misery it could cause to Ash, was bent on stopping it. He failed, however, and the scientist woke Ash up using codes she acquired from Crypto.

Instead of finding her old friend Lilian Peck, however, she found a different identity: Dr. Ashleigh Reid, her former assistant. Not only did Reid leave Horizon stranded, but she also caused the deaths of Pathfinder’s creators.

Fans have been waiting for the reveal since the build-up to season seven. Horizon’s episode of Stories from the Outlands was the first glimpse of Dr. Reid, but fans have been connecting the dots ever since. Writers left breadcrumbs of clues and callbacks that drew the two characters together, including during one of the teasers before Horizon’s release and in in-game teasers involving the scientist.

The reveal has strong implications for the lore of Apex in the future, considering Ash/Dr. Reid’s pivotal role as an antagonist so far. She also has ties to Kuben Blisk, current Apex Games commissioner, which may play a role in coming storylines.

Ash first appeared in Apex at the end of the season five quest, The Broken Ghost, when the legends assembled her as part of a convoluted plan by Loba to obtain the location of Revenant’s source code.