When does Overwatch 2 Season 9 start? Champions launches next week!

Season 9 of Overwatch 2, called Champions, will begin February 13, and when it does, it brings an overhaul to Competitive Mode, including a rank reset. In addition, there are new trackers mid-game, so you’ll get to see your progress to the next rank, and there’s a new rank at the top, aptly named Champion.

For those of us who aren’t shooting for the Competitive Mode stars, the trailer for Season 9 gave us a glimpse of a lot of the visuals we can expect from the Champions Season — for more in-depth info on the changes to Competitive Mode and how they’ll work, Blizzard released a blog thoroughly explaining the changes. The Battle Pass for Season 9 will feature a sort of tentacle-y eldritch horror theme, and we got to see the Mythic Ancient Caller Moira skin in action on offer as the Battle Pass reward. It features eyeballs with a snakelike vertical slit as her orbs, a runed purple neon collar, and a very ominous dark hood over her head. This theme also carries over to what we can assume will be a new limited-time Event mode, featuring a gaping maw in the middle of the point on one of the Antarctic Peninsula maps, with ominous eyeballs scattered around the map. It seems like we may be fighting Moira as a boss there.

Season 9 also brings a new version of Hero Mastery, called Gauntlet. This seems like it’s going to be a co-op version of Hero Mastery — still PVE, but with other players in the mix nonetheless.

The trailer also shows off some new skins coming to the shop, and a few skins themed after the upcoming Valentine’s Day real-world holiday. And speaking of the trailer, if you’re an anime fan, you might want to watch it with the sound on.

That definitely sounds like the iconic opening song to Cowboy Bebop, Tank! by Seatbelts, played on the jukebox on Route 66 at the end there. But before we let our imaginations run wild with what exactly this means — crossover? — we’ll just have to wait until at least February 13 to find out for sure.