Meet Wuyang: Overwatch 2’s New Support Who’s Battling Family Expectations — Free Trial Aug. 14–18
Overwatch 2’s next support hero, Wuyang, arrives in Season 18 with a story that focuses on family expectations and personal guilt rather than a traditional supervillain. The character is tied to a new in-game faction called Wuxing University, which is based in the game’s version of Chengdu and draws on a five-element philosophy.
- Who Wuyang is and his ties to Wuxing University.
- How his family background and exam results shape his narrative.
- Comments from Overwatch 2 narrative and art staff about representation and design.
- Related recent hero examples and external references, including a trial weekend and Season 18 release date.
Wuyang’s background and the Wuxing faction
Wuyang’s backstory centers on his family and the expectations that come from a military and martial legacy. His parents were fire-aligned experts in martial arts and military defense and are described as celebrated veterans of the Omnic Crisis. As a result, Wuyang felt strong pressure to follow their path. However, he performed below expectations on his college entrance exams and had to enroll in the water college instead of the fire college.
Meanwhile, the faction that frames his story is Wuxing University. The university is inspired by the historical Chinese concept of five elements — wood, air, water, fire, and metal — and is presented in-game as a pioneering institution of technology and military strategy based in Chengdu.
“We wanted to represent this side of Chinese culture because [Wuxing] is a concept that dates all the way back to the Han Dynasty,” Overwatch 2 senior narrative designer Joshi Zhang said in a recent roundtable interview. “It’s present in things like music, astrology, martial arts, military strategy, traditional Chinese medicine. We already have Mei on a sort of global adventure, so we wanted to really take that traditional route this time when we were exploring like what it means to have to represent China as a country.”
“There’s a lot of pressure for young students in that area to like live up to that legacy, and so his story is he’s trying to find his own path,” Zhang said. “He’s really struggling with these feelings like he let his parents down because they worked so hard to defend his country and train him up. And instead he wasn’t able to live up to that. So the story touches on themes that I think would be very poignant to a lot of our players, but also especially our East Asian players.”
“This was a really, really personal hero for me,” Zhang continued. “When I was writing the story, I drew on a lot of very deep personal experiences about confronting my own feelings of wanting to give back to my family, the shame and guilt that comes with that, and exploring what it means when you fall short of your parents’ dreams and how you pick yourself up from that. I think it’s something that people don’t talk about a lot.”
Design approach and representation
Blizzard has continued to shape Overwatch 2 characters with an eye toward representation and relatable backgrounds. For example, Hazard is a tank hero added in December 2024 who is described as a boy from a broken family in Glasgow who became a Robin Hood–like figure for his community.
Moreover, Blizzard used Pride celebrations in 2025 to highlight LGBTQ+ characters and to remind players of visibility amid global challenges. The celebration materials included a video focused on Soldier 76’s life and relationship, presented publicly by Blizzard.
Additionally, Blizzard published a message during Pride that reiterates support for LGBTQ+ players and encourages pride and solidarity.
https://overwatch.blizzard.com/en-us/news/24205281/standing-together-and-celebrating-pride/
The art and design team has said it prefers heroes who are somewhat aspirational in appearance and role. As lead concept artist Daryl Tan put it,
“We always will approach making Overwatch heroes… aspirational in some sense,” lead concept artist Daryl Tan said. “They’re aspirational in their physique, in their expertise at what they do, and just being really cool heroes that we can look up to.”
At the same time, the team has indicated it will continue to include non-human or “oddball” characters occasionally and plans to “sprinkle” them over time while noting “exciting stuff down the road” in that regard.
Furthermore, the team cited a move away from characters like Wrecking Ball and the giant omnic Ramattra in favor of more conventional designs. For discussion of Ramattra in community forums, see the thread on the official Blizzard forums:
When you can play Wuyang
Blizzard is hosting a trial weekend for Wuyang from Aug. 14–18, allowing players to try his abilities ahead of the full release. Wuyang will be added to the live game with the start of Season 18 on Aug. 26, when he will be available to players as part of that season’s hero lineup.
