just need something to steal.
Overwatch is an ongoing story, with intermittent tie-in media or map updates to show progression in-universe. What's next narratively for Ashe?In 2019, Blizzard released the animated short Zero Hour, which saw some of the disbanded members of Overwatch and other likeminded invidiuals answer Winston's recall to address a new Omnic Crisis. The short follows Winston, Tracer – you might recognise her as the covergirl – and Mei, alone on a shuttle out to Paris to fight an insurgence of Null Sector robots with a sinking belief that no one else will stand with them. As the fight against the colossus continues, more allies arrive – and Overwatch as an organisation is officially reinstated (sort of. They're still not, legally recognised with prior authority but, eh, giant robots that are gonna destroy everything and debilitating attacks on omnics worldwide… as Winston says, someone has to do something). Zero Hour was the precursor for the announcement of what would become Overwatch 2, with an included PVE campaign.
Yeah… yeah. There's a good chance you'll know how that went. What's next for, uh, any of the heroes narratively in Overwatch, after all that fanfare and set-up?
Sadly, probably not much.
Overwatch 2 launched in October 2022, now free to play so a cash shop could be introduced by which players, particularly new ones, would have to pay real world money for cosmetics – I'm not even gonna remotely defend that – the other reasons included the move to 5v5 and to formally launch the PVE.
Except we didn't get it. We didn't get the initial concept of skill trees and talents. We later got three playable missions a year on in August 2023, said missions reminiscent of past Archives events and primarily focused around the good guys in the roster: so, in Ashe's case, tumbleweeds, literally nothing to note – and is why the collection of short stories in Heroes Ascendant existed for the heroes who would not see the light of day in the campaign and to show where they were be now two years on in the timeline. After these three missions, crickets. The missions category was moved from core game modes to a sublist. And whilst it hasn't officially been cancelled in as many words, the only conclusion left was that PVE was being scrapped completely and would not continue.
Game development is at times, hell. Especially the way certain companies have treated certain teams.
So, where does that leave us, except for maybe five years and a new game engine later?
We continue to get bitesized bits of lore, but it's little. And if the character you like isn't directly involved in the groups taking part in the main conflict… even less. Thing is, being invested in this cast of characters is a longtime habit of much of the fandom. We got attached. We didn't want them to be unchanging named entities. We wanted depth and we wanted to know more: an unexpected thing, because this had never happened before for prior games in the genre. Overwatch, as it launched, was special. We as a community love this cast so – we dissect them for every little detail – and we speculate. This is me posing the question – what would Ashe do next?
I've thought long and hard about how Ashe could be integrated into a hypothetical PVE and drawn into Null Sector's war; and if she did have a chance to canonically meet other members of the cast, who I think she would get on with the most. If you do happen to read what I write for my fanfiction, this will give you something of an insight of how I progressively steer Ashe along into giving her narrative growth, rather than keeping her static, which you may find interesting.
I'll stress now, that these are my personal opinions. Though backed up by text, if anything they are inherently headcanons, and you might disagree. That's the joy of speculation and imagining your favourites in situations when the canon does not do it for you – and being a fan of sidelined female characters my whole fandom life, I've had a lot of practice and time doing it. Take these thinkpieces with a grain of salt.
On the slim off-chance Ashe does get narrative progression (I am not holding my breath), this page will remain for posterity, and I'll likely add a further analysis of some sort.
Bringing Ashe to the PVE: her investment
When the PVE was still in development and the devs would talk about it, they often hinted characters without allegiance would eventually need to be pigeon holed: in essence, two primary factions would come to the fore, one being good and one being bad, classic dichotomy stuff, and unaffiliated heroes would have to make a choice and take a side.At the time, we assumed these factions would be titular Overwatch or Talon. Talon are a terrorist organisation. They directly juxtapose Overwatch, in that they stand for disorder and conflict. Everyone who works under Doomfist in Talon is seeking their own ends and he's aware, and wouldn't have it any other way. At present, these sides are moreso Overwatch versus the threat that is Null Sector bringing about a second Omnic Crisis – although Talon are the ones who, in the shadows, have given Ramattra the means and money to enact his war.
We've seen how the cast reacts to this war or how they get involved in it, either in Heroes Ascendant or through the current or retired Overwatch agents who got to be in the PVE missions. By partnering with Null Sector, Talon creates an interesting conundrum for itself – in that many morally grey characters, not just Ashe, wouldn't now side with them, either because of Null Sector being omnics, or what they are doing to omnics.
Ashe is an example of a character written into a corner. She would be difficult to utilise with either side, because she has reasons to refuse both. Ashe has, a vendetta against Overwatch. it's not just Cassidy. Overwatch, as an institution, has ruined her multiple times. They soured her business and took her partner away: inadvertently turned him against her. She wouldn't stand for them – they're good Samaritans who help people. What's she doing there? What's her point? She's in anything for the money and prestige. If they had need of her and her perspective for something, you can't just have someone invite her in, she'd just say no. Send Cassidy and he's just gonna come back riddled with bullet holes. Strictly talking Talon, their chaos somewhat aligns with Ashe's desires: a black market arms dealer would thrive in a world embroiled by chaos as they describe – but she would never serve. She's her own king-pin.
And not in this war. Not again. It's not exactly the most down-to-earth perspective, but she remembers the fallout from the first time when she was a teenager, and not in a militaristic way: an ongoing one. She saw Bob return home battered and bruised and pays witness to Bars' continuing trauma; her parents profited off it at her expense; all her friends and found family suffered and lost loved ones because of it, and she makes her immediate world safe for them as no one else successfully would. Ashe would question the impact of a second Omnic Crisis on everyday people in a way others would not. You have to give her a reason – the easiest, most obvious one is her family. Ashe isn't a good person, but she isn't a wretch. Despite her claims that there isn't a heart in that chest its moral compass lies very close to home. She's the only known faction besides the Phreaks that takes people as they are. It doesn't matter if they're omnic or human. The sentimentality of watching others go through what her gang members once did might move her, making her inclined to do something given she was powerless to protect those around her last time. And the need to protect them, and the means to do so, might be the thing that would tip it.
Ashe doesn't like being powerless. She wants something, she gets it with her own two hands. I've talked about this previously in her relationship with Bob, that he cares about her and loves her and he would and did anything for her, would and will never give her up, and its reciprocal. She could tear Ramattra's argument down in an instant, but not against an army. She knows her limitations. She would never join up with Overwatch – unless she felt it was the only way she could protect Bob.
Such a strong feeling. Noble almost and she'd hate it, but if she had to, to guarantee it, she would.
It's a very unique angle to find in a notorious gang leader, and it's always made her likeable.
And if Ashe did somehow wind up in bed with Talon instead, there's no familial there. It's all everyone out for themselves. She'd also know about their connection to Null Sector, 'cause she wouldn't not find out – and when you lay it out like that, a complete misalignment of beliefs to what they are actively pursuing, by furthering a war that hurts the people she cares about, Ashe would not go to them or stay. Simple as that.
Whatever Ashe chose for the Deadlocks to do, she'd run it by everyone. A dictatorship for sure because the decision might already be made, but she'd rather they do it with her: no one left behind.
I think there's multiple ways she and Deadlock could be written into hypothetical missions though, to play either side or angle.
- A desperate heist, of sorts. Ashe needs money due to all her clients' frozen accounts. She works co-operatively with Talon to net herself an edge – any allegiance would not be long term. Cut to instant betrayal after getting what she wants mid-mission. Ultimately, she'd be sought out by Overwatch for whatever information she's gleaned, which she'd then use as leverage to keep herself distinct whilst perhaps working with slash using them for the remainder of the Crisis.
- Cassidy has to rebuild his bridge. For whatever reason, Overwatch needs Deadlock's expertise and manpower for something: so Cassidy has to go home to the Gorge with his tail between his legs. Cue a half hour mission of Ashe yelling at him over comms whilst he gets shot at – or them being forced to work together to get back to the drop ship and actively attempt to patch their relationship after a convenient arrival of Null Sector bots.
- Batten the hatches. A variant of two, less focus on Cassidy. The only people they need are themselves, so Deadlock bunkers down. This doesn't work. They hold out, but they're surrounded by Subjugators: collectively they make the call to go out on their own terms and take Overwatch's available assistance. Likewise, this would force them to actively move, and would leave Ashe feeling like she owes them something: she'd want to repay off that debt before taking business elsewhere.
- Nuance, secret third (fourth?) thing. Everything I've laid out about sides until now? Smithereens. Screw your rules. Third party status kept intact. Ashe rejects both options and puts herself in contact with the omnic underground and works with them instead.
The last of these would require longer exploration as a concept, with further development outside the boundaries of a playable mission rather than as a one-time focus. And I do think there is an argument for it as a conclusion of what Ashe would try to do in the interim before sides, plural, got to her, by bringing the underground munitions and intel that they need to outlast… for a price, of course. As seen in Luck of the Draw, the other gangs she's truced with may not be so co-operative when it comes to protecting omnics: and it's quite possible Deadlock would keep harbouring the civilians they saved from Vegas. Where else are they gonna go? She has her own reach and connections. Aligning her with those at risk would be an excuse to introduce more like-minded individuals with mixed family structures in the process.
(Cough, like Hazard. In fact, with the introduction of Hazard and his Phreaks, a group of human and omnic anarchists that are also like found family seeking equality, this option feels more plausible to me than ever.)
Ashe doesn't need it, but it could give her an arc of accidental redemption in helping omnics… and a sense of purpose – that she could be worth something after all.
In fact, I'll do it for you. The next arc of my ongoing ouihaw saga about Ashe and Amélie? It's her starting involvement with the omnic underground. Can you read it? Not quite yet: it still needs a lot of revising given it was first drafted in the early Overwatch 2 days before Ramattra officially had a name and we knew all these little details but, the crumbs are in there. What I'm saying is, one day I'll come back to this section and link it.
Connections with others: longterm, not just voiceline exchanges
First, there's Hazard himself. You might be wondering why I'd be mentioning him: surely, we see some of their likeminded factions working together other than solely through word of God? The Phreaks do rob cargo from Arbalest Arms – Ashe's parents' company – in Hazard's introductory comic, which got all the eagle-eyed Ashe fans supposing. I started writing this site a few weeks before Hazard's arrival in game, and I anticipated that I might have to redo a lot of what I'd already written about Ashe and her unique stance slash being out on a limb based on Hazard's voicelines, interactions, and lore… but I didn't.
It's tough, because they aren't physically in the same place. Both organisations have similar scope and global influence, but you can't just suppose that they see each every day and go on off-screen missions together like Overwatch or Talon do. Hazard's just as removed as she is, even more so because he's much younger and the Phreaks are less established in universe, and Ashe has the additional benefit of being in the game for seven more years. She's had time to accrue side content.
Ashe and Hazard do have several voicelines together, where she calls him by his nickname, and he's comfortable enough with her to talk about Suzie, his romantic partner, who is also an omnic; it's clearly implied the Phreaks and Deadlock have collaborated before. The confirmation we got of Hazard and Ashe's friendly stance towards one another was… through a TikTok video. Remember how I said lore in this game is scattered all over the place? There is no way anyone is going to successfully uncover that in a few months' time.
So what I'm asking for, primarily, is more. Show it to me. Show me the one friendship that Ashe has. Unfortunately, I fear the Phreaks will suffer the same fate as Deadlock for being too detached from the primary factions in this universe – being pro-human and pro-omnic simultaneously is surprisingly, a very unpopular opinion. So why not develop them together?
I think Ashe has enough antagonism with Cole to be getting on with – but perhaps there is another outlet for her nigh bottomless anger and frustration, such as towards Ramattra, the leader of Null Sector. Ramattra and what he stands for is a way to repurpose her anger at the world into something she can affect. She can't change the past, she can't keep Cole, and she can't kill him, either – not even due to narrative constraint. Face to face with the reality of it? Of him being gone for good? Ashe wouldn't be able to do it.
It wouldn't be softness. It would be a panic almost, an emptiness she couldn't bear. Focusing upon Ramattra wouldn't be long lived. This target is one she holds no remorse for: full crash and burn. She really could tear a whole strip off him and his ideas that what he's doing is an acceptable solution, because it isn't. Forget the moral stand-point, this is her family she's defending. It's a pit of hate to everyone who's ever treated Bob as lesser – of that he doesn't want to be there, or that he didn't make his own choice – that would finally be allowed to come to the fore.
That said, this might not be an ideal encounter for whatever story the team wanted to tell, because it simply would not end well and someone would die from this and I'd rather Ashe or Bob didn't. No more women in fridges.
It would be difficult, because she's Ashe, but I'd like to see her have a more fruitful interaction with someone, and there are a few heroes that personally fit the bill.
The first of these is Hanzo. This is another example of an encounter that would likely not end well, because they are too similar. The people around them shaped them too harshly and drove them to extremes. Whilst Ashe gained freedom by forming her gang and brought herself order in her criminal empire, Hanzo was shackled by the Shimada clan, and felt overwhelmed, to the point he was manipulated by the clan elders and forced into killing his brother when Genji refused to straighten out. If naught else Hanzo is an interesting commentary on remorse, given he's further along in his point of that story than she is in hers: and would force Ashe to confront the reality of vengeance, of really going all the way until it's truly something you cannot take back.
Their existing voiceline explores this, a little. "You and I seem pretty simpatico in the way we like things run." "For your sake, I hope not." One of his kill quotes remarks that her path only leads to loss. But it would be fun to go deeper.
Hanzo is another corner character. The solution for fringe characters – involved in minor factions or no – that the narrative team seems to have come up with is either dropping them into the new Overwatch for instant allies or introducing a new hero that they personally already know. For instance, Symmetra gained a long-lost connection through Lifeweaver where previously she had been fully isolated. Hanzo had no investment and still doesn't – so they gave him something else to do with Kiriko, in reparations for taking back his hometown from the Hashimoto gang that's stepped in to fill the void since he left his clan. He's done his time of wandering, and it's very unlikely he'd end up in a situation of encountering Ashe on the other side of the world at all.
In general, I'd also like to see Ashe interact with other omnics more on screen. This in itself would go a way to curbing some of the wildly inaccurate takes of her character by players who don't look at tie-in media at all, or those that just don't care.
Echo is the cargo Ashe lost. Once she got past the 'my property' aspect (which is sadly how it's presented in-game) Ashe would always see Echo as an individual separate from the woman whose memories she harbours, and would be quick to remind others of that fact; she is after-all one of the most open-minded humans when it comes to omnics and those that are omnic-adjacent. Realistically if she'd succeeded in getting Echo as a prize in Reunion a crisis of morality would have absolutely ensued and she'd have ended up keeping her as an effective prisoner instead of selling her on. As it is, Ashe would also understand the need to surpass, to leave a legacy and be distinct from the path pre-determined for you, and I think she'd have a positive effect on her. I doubt Echo would be overly pleased once she discovered the details of what Cole did in order to secure her, not only because it hurts him but because it's wrong of him to hurt someone in her name. This would encourage her to reach out – and perhaps persist through Ashe's prickliness.
It would be a one-sided sour relationship to start, but I actually think Ashe and Echo would get on rather well and she'd have much to teach her as a person, that she's not just a tool – that she has her own self.
Genuinely, I think Ashe would perhaps get on best with Widowmaker.
Now, I know what you're thinking. "Rems, don't you ship this". Yes. But— non-ironically. I wouldn't if it didn't have such strong potential foundations to build off of. Their hearts are so similar: they would have a deep understanding of one another. They were both raised in privilege. They both discovered their calling down a barrel of a gun. They had a person in their life they couldn't function without, despairing when they weren't in it – they miss something, someone they had and they lost, unbearably. Ashe would kill it, and Widowmaker already did.
I don't think you could necessarily say Ashe would be good for her in a redemption arc, but she would accept her. It's the hot and cold imagery: she's angry and emotional, she doesn't feel a thing…
If Widowmaker's conditioning continued to falter, and she felt she had to leave Talon behind… Deadlock is one place that could harbour her, independent away from everything else, where she still gets to feel her death seeking thrill. That's the kind of thing that I like; where a character has to work at living with their actions, still wanting these impulses and not desiring forgiveness, but channelling them into something else.
It's intriguing. So much so that I fell into it so hard once I gave it due thought. This is just the tip of the iceberg – because I sure do have a lot more endless things to say about Ashe and Widowmaker.
Though the above options would take time for their payoff, the fastest way to connecting her would be to put Ashe on a job with someone. Junkrat and Roadhog would be ideal for this: however the Junker brand of chaos and comedy kind of exists in its own genre that doesn't overly mesh well with Ashe's seriousness – the Junkers also don't have a stellar history with omnics which would further make it difficult. I feel like someone like Lifeweaver could work well. He is, as she says, almost an outlaw. He wanders. Though not in their usual wheelhouse, if he was in need of protection to go somewhere or retrieve something they could potentially provide it.
They also have a more recent interaction, talking about how he saw her parents but not her at parties as a child, and about the trouble two wayward heirs could have gotten into – which Ashe responds, "there's still plenty of time for that".
And I do honestly think— that maybe, he could get through to her; past every single one of those thorns, to the true Ashe that's underneath.
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