Overwatch Is Teasing A Potential New Character

The name Liao has been present in Overwatch lore since 2016, leading to much speculation about who the sixth Overwatch founder is. A tweet from the official Overwatch account has broadcast a screenshot of the “Personal Log of Dr. Mina Liao”–finally giving the character a full name.

From the log, we can now gather that Mina Liao is an artificial intelligence researcher who worked on the Athena prototype.

Earlier this year, Overwatch lead writer Michael Chu tweeted a response to a fan’s questions about Liao, stating that they were “definitely still an important character.”

For years Liao’s gender was unknown, and for some time the character was assumed to be an unidentified male character in an artwork tied to Ana’s release. It’s still possible that the unidentified white-haired woman on the cover of the cancelled Overwatch graphic novel First Strike could have been Mina Liao.

While this teaser could just be an expansion of the game’s lore, it’s likely that the cryptic tweet is leading towards the release of a new hero. Fans have speculated that it’s most likely to be Echo, a robotic character who was first teased over a year ago. It’s possible that Dr. Mina Liao could be a playable character herself, however.

Blizzard is currently in development on Overwatch 2, which is still without a release date but will come to PC, Switch, PS4 and Xbox One when it’s ready. It’s unclear whether Overwatch will release any new content for the base game before the sequel is released.