Is Soldier: 76 gay in Overwatch 2?

In Overwatch 2’s fourth season, the title introduced its first openly pansexual character Lifeweaver, adding yet more depth to the diversity on offer within an already colorful cast of heroes. But the Overwatch team hasn’t always flirted with the idea of confirming a character’s sexuality upon their release, instead leaving it to side stories and later lore drops once other elements of the character’s backstory have been established.

This is most apparent when it comes to the game’s launch heroes. Tracer was the first hero to be revealed as canonical LGBTQ representation via the Tracer: Reflections comic just over half a year after the launch of Overwatch. It was also the first time any romantic relationships were explored for the characters, but it wouldn’t be the last time.

Soldier: 76 may be best known for his grizzly attitude and the role he’s taken on as the team dad through the lens of both the community and many cosmetics, but his lost love was at the center of an Overwatch short story that gave players their first proper window into the man Jack Morrison used to be.

Is Overwatch 2’s Soldier: 76 gay?

Soldier: 76 is a gay man, as confirmed by the 2019 short story Bastet. Despite the story not being focused on the relationship, it was the first explicit mention of the fact that Soldier: 76 was once in a relationship with a man called Vincent.

Vincent was a boyfriend from Soldier: 76’s youth, one that he eventually broke up with due to the demands of the Omnic Crisis preventing him from being able to give Vincent the life and relationship he felt he deserved. Despite hopes the war would end quickly and he could return to a life with Vincent, the war instead dragged on, and Vincent eventually settled down and married another man. Soldier: 76 still keeps a photo of the two of them, despite everything.

The reveal that Soldier: 76 was gay in Bastet marked the ex-Overwatch commander as the game’s second confirmed LGBTQ hero. He also remains the only gay man on the cast as of now, although flirty interactions between Lifeweaver and other heroes such as Baptiste could lead to additional revelations on character sexualities coming in the near future.

With Pride month only a few more months away too, the Overwatch 2 developers are undoubtedly planning on either expanding the backstories of their previously confirmed queer heroines or bringing yet more established characters into the fold of representation.