Some are accusing of Blizzard pulling a JK Rowling with an “actually, Dumbledore is gay” reveal after the fact, despite that it never came up in the books or movies. And romantic relationships only come up sporadically, if at all, as it never did when both Soldier: 76 and Tracer had their own animated shorts, for instance. Since Overwatch is a multiplayer shooter, practically all of its story and character development occurs outside of the game in cinematics, comics or stories like the Ana one. I’m genuinely not sure about which characters have even been confirmed as straight at this point (Torbjorn and Ana come to mind first as their children are in their game and we’ve seen their spouses in the lore). There are, of course, currently 29 heroes in Overwatch, and only two are confirmed queer in canon, however high profile they may be. The list is painfully short, and the highest profile character on it is probably Ellie from The Last of Us. So to have both Tracer and Soldier: 76 be gay, that’s rather significant in an industry where almost no major gaming icons are confirmed to be LGBTQ. Solider: 76 is one of the founding members of Overwatch and the ultimate OG of the squad, not to mention he’s effectively the game’s “starter” character as he’s who you play the tutorial with, and who most players will use to learn the ropes. Even though Overwatch is an ensemble game, Tracer is literally the box art character and the most iconic OW hero. This is a big deal because Soldier: 76 also joins Tracer as an LGBTQ character, who was revealed to be in a relationship with a woman two years ago in a comic release. Jack’s big reveal is far from the point of the story, despite the fact that it’s the main takeaway everyone is running with.

There’s a passage where Ana questions Jack about a past flame, Vincent, in a conversation about how having relationships in their line of work is tough.

Tracer overwatch