Objective complete: Widowmaker, Talon, and Recall

Overwatch was officially disbanded thirty years after its founding, after allegations of corruption and gross negligence — as well as infighting between the troops — slowly tore it apart. Yet there were those within its ranks who sought to reform the organization, despite the fact that any Overwatch activity had been deemed illegal after the implementation of the Petras Act following Overwatch’s disbanding. Winston saw what the world was coming to, and the spark of a new Omnic Crisis in Russia was almost enough to make the risk worthwhile, in his eyes.

But the threat of a new Omnic Crisis wasn’t the only thing former Overwatch agents had to worry about. In fact, one of the biggest terrorist organizations had yet to be taken down… and they had a new target to focus on: the fractured remains of Overwatch.

Talon

Not much is known about the terrorist organization Talon — but then, there was plenty of activity within Overwatch that was kept classified. However, we do know that the group was under fire from Overwatch throughout the years following the Omnic Crisis, along with other groups like the Shimada Clan and the Deadlock Gang. Why Talon was such a focus for Overwatch is currently unknown.

But unlike the Shimada Clan and the Deadlock Gang, Overwatch was never able to successfully shut Talon down. Their activities continued long after Overwatch’s disbanding, and they’re still active today. One Overwatch agent, Gérard Lacroix, was the man in charge of spearheading the campaign against Talon in Overwatch’s golden years.

Talon didn’t let his efforts go unpunished — they sent agent after agent to assassinate Lacroix, but their efforts were unsuccessful in actually taking Gérard out. It was a standoff of sorts — Gérard couldn’t take down Talon, but Talon couldn’t take out Gérard, either. So Talon switched their tactics… and their target.

Widowmaker

Amélie Lacroix was Gérard’s beloved wife. Talon decided if they couldn’t get to Gérard directly, they’d take the next closest route, and kidnapped her. While she was imprisoned, they subjected her to intense neural reconditioning, suppressing her personality, breaking her will and reprogramming her as a sleeper agent. Eventually she was found and recovered by Overwatch agents, deemed perfectly fine and returned to her normal life at her husband’s side.

Two weeks later, she murdered Gérard while he was sleeping.

And after that, she returned to Talon, a perfect agent and a living weapon for the terrorist organization to use. Having proved her worth as a killer, Amélie was subjected to further conditioning and training in assassination and covert ops. But that wasn’t all — Talon apparently had access to genetic enhancements of some kind, because her very physiology was dramatically altered, slowing her heart and turning her skin cold and blue. Numb and no longer able to experience human emotion, Amélie was given a new name — Widowmaker.

Whoever Amélie was before her conditioning, she didn’t exist anymore.

Overwatch: Recall

After Overwatch was disbanded, Winston eventually headed to Watchpoint: Gibraltar, a remote outpost overlooking the Mediterranean. From there, he worked on various projects and experiments with only Athena, the Overwatch system’s AI, to keep him company. And he also thought about reforming Overwatch — he thought about it a lot. The world was still in peril, a second Omnic Crisis was threatening Russia, and there was simply a global need for heroes, whether the government sanctioned it or not.

But Athena continued to remind him that any Overwatch activity was forbidden, illegal, and subject to prosecution… until one day, when Talon once again made an appearance. Widowmaker was nowhere to be seen, but they had another apparent ally on hand — Reaper. Whether Reaper was working for Talon or the other way around wasn’t clear, but one thing certainly was: Reaper, and Talon, wanted the Overwatch agent database.

Winston managed to stop them, and “killed” Reaper, but simply the appearance of Talon was enough to finally prompt the scientist to send out the recall order to every known agent Overwatch had. The first person to immediately answer that call was Tracer — and she and Winston quickly got to work.

Talon’s future

It appears that both Winston and Tracer decided the most important order of business was trying to sort out exactly what Talon was after… and they appear to have figured it out in the Overwatch cinematic trailer. Reaper returned, with Talon agent Widowmaker at his side, and the two of them were after Doomfist’s gauntlet, an incredibly powerful weapon. With the unlikely help of a couple of kids that were visiting the museum, Winston and Tracer managed to put a stop to Reaper and Widowmaker’s plans. The world’s saved, time for some cheers, right?

Not so much. It’s becoming increasingly clear that Talon — working together with Reaper — is trying to systematically take out every former Overwatch agent out there. This would be understandable if Overwatch hadn’t already been disbanded. Winston didn’t make the call to reform Overwatch until after Talon tried to get their hands on the list of former agents out there…so what’s Talon’s agenda? Why are they trying to take out a team that’s already out of commission in the first place?

More importantly, where does Reaper fall in all of this? As a former Overwatch agent himself, Reaper — then Gabriel Reyes — was constantly at odds with Jack Morrison. He even led an internal rebellion against Morrison’s leadership, and had members of the Overwatch team on his side. But all that came to a head when both Reyes and Morrison supposedly died in the explosion at Overwatch’s Swiss headquarters… so what is Reyes up to now?

Is he trying to clear his name? Or, considering how elegantly Talon managed to turn Amélie Lacroix to cold-hearted killer, was Reyes in fact a sleeper agent of Talon all along? Why is Talon focusing their efforts on an organization that’s long since been left in the dust? Is the manhunt simply for the sake of taking out Overwatch, or is this all in preparation for some larger plan that Talon’s been working on?

As for Widowmaker, we’ll be seeing more of her on Sunday, when Overwatch‘s next animated short, Alive, makes its debut. We may gain a little more insight into Widowmaker’s former life — and we may gain a little more insight into just what Talon is up to as well.