Reaper
“Death walks among you.”
You may think you know what Reaper’s all about. A guy in all black with a growly voice and wears a skull mask? Has to be an emo kid trying too hard, or maybe he’s pulling off Darksiders 2 cosplay. Or maybe he’s a ghost assassin of some kind. Even his bio on the actual website is predictably cagey about him: ” His identity and motives are a mystery. What is known is that where he appears, death follows.”
During the game, those who play as Reaper and go up against someone who’s playing as Mercy will get a little more information about his origins (“This isn’t what I planned for you.” “You know exactly what you did.”). Real name Gabriel Reyes, he led the Overwatch strike team and later became the head of Blackwatch, the organization’s black ops division. Furious with not receiving the credit of his actions while Jack Morrison did, he started a rebellion inside the organization that ended with the whole thing being disbanded and him and Morrison being assumed dead.
While Morrison later went on to become Soldier 76 and investigate the source of the organization’s downfall, Reyes was saved by Mercy and brought back to life. But her process made it so that his cells decay and regenerate at an increased rate. Since then, he’s been hunting down former Overwatch agents to kill them for money, though it’s doubtful he needs much convincing. On one hand, he’s a tragic figure in that he was made a monster by someone who tried their hardest to help him. On the other hand, given his actions, he kinda should’ve never been brought back to life in the first place.
