I JUST NEED TO TALK ABOUT HOW FUCKED Jack is in this comic, though?
This is just the ultimate in ‘damned if you do, damned if you don’t.’ The news is blistering with ‘Overwatch anti-sovereignty?’ ‘Japanese government complains about Blackwatch!’ ‘Investigation into Cairo Incident!’ ‘New civilian leader for Overwatch?’ Everybody is mad at them and criticizing every move they make. Jack’s position is being threatened. He says himself that Overwatch can’t afford another PR nightmare.
And then all his agents are telling him how they NEED to go into London, despite the Prime Minister telling them to stay out. People are going to die if they don’t! They won’t be able to handle the fallout if they wait!
I mean you can see how Overwatch could have come to this. There are so many crises all the time, all over the world, and as an international entity, you have to choose: do you go in and help people even if you’re being told not to? What gives you the right, when you’re supposed to be serving and protecting the governments of the world? But then what if there’s a genocide happening, or the government itself is deliberately persecuting part of its own population? Floods? Rampant disease? If you don’t intervene, then people die. If you do, then you’re violating international borders. Either way, as the guy making the call, you’re screwed. You’ve got the blood of thousands on your hands, or else you’re a walking diplomatic incident. But meanwhile, the world’s governments are getting more and more unhappy with you because you keep meddling in their affairs.
Jack chooses–for probably the thousandth time–to save lives, even if they’ll all pay for it. We might be seeing the very moment when Jack murders his career and takes Overwatch with it.
#it’s the same debate that happens with the UN #who has what power #and if u go into a country without the permission of the government u r effectively undermining the sovereignty of that nation #that action is usually considered an act of invasion and/or war #interesting thought
These things exactly. Overwatch IS the UN, or at least a part of it.
At this point, what I’m thinking the Uprising comic shows us is that for a golden 10 or 20 years after the Omnic Crisis, Overwatch HAD that blanket permission, almost by default, to enter pretty much anywhere they wanted to go. And that maybe Jack asked for permission every time anyway, because if he hadn’t then eventually things would have blown up, because if you have tacit permission to go into your neighbor’s house whenever you want, and eventually one time you do that and you break something, there’ll be hell to pay.
But things blew up anyway, because eventually Overwatch started making calls the nations didn’t like and there was hell to pay anyhow.
But also, Overwatch abused that trust through Blackwatch, because Blackwatch DID go in without actively asking and did what they thought they needed to whether anybody else liked it or not. And when that came out, again, there was hell to pay.
Jack’s method of going by the book eventually, inevitably, wrecked them. Gabriel’s method of taking advantage of the trust they were given to do what he thought needed to be done also eventually, inevitably, wrecked them. If Ana had been in charge? Her way, whatever it was, however she threaded that needle, would probably have eventually, inevitably, wrecked them. Because Overwatch’s failure wasn’t about anybody making the wrong call. It happened because the conditions that let them operate in the boundaryless, unconditional way that let them change the world so drastically and tackle issues as elaborate as climate change–those conditions were ephemeral and were never going to last. The very nature of Overwatch that let it be such a heroic, inspirational success in one political climate where also what destroyed it when that climate reverted back to normal.
And this is a bit more speculation, but now I wonder if all the fighting and destruction at the end were about: Who gets to own Overwatch after its founders are removed from the picture? As long as Jack and Gabriel and the rest were there, no one could really wrest it from them. Whether people liked them or not or agreed with their methods any longer, they created it. They WERE it. Only once they either willingly passed on the mantle or were forcibly removed from the picture could Overwatch pass into other hands.
And look at what we’ve got. We’ve got Jack and Ana and Gabriel putting things into the hands of young people like Tracer, Mercy and McCree. We SEE them grooming the next generation, the agents with the kind of mettle and heroism to continue to uphold Overwatch according to their original vision. And we have news scrolls accusing Overwatch of being ‘anti-progress,’ asking if the next leader will be a civilian. A civilian who, incidentally, is breathing down Jack’s neck. The leadership of the next generation of Overwatch is in active contention.
We also know that Reinhardt was forced into retirement. Ana was assassinated (at least attempted) by someone who must have had inside intel on where Ana could be found on that mission. Jack and Gabriel were killed by what, in context, seems like a very convenient explosion. Someone systematically eliminated the obstacles.
And there is also a running theme through the lore of shady corporate/political collaboration, of the sort that in the real world leads to bought elections and the gentrification of poor communities and defense contractors sometimes seeming to run the military more than the military does. And just imagine what Overwatch in civilian hands–civilian hands that can be nudged or bought–could do. Imagine a civilian-led Overwatch ‘saving’ a war-torn nation by selling it off to a firm like Vishkar. Even more of the same bloated corporate corruption that plagues us today.
Imagine Jack and Gabriel both seeing this, and fighting about the right move. Destroy Overwatch so it can’t be misused? Or pass it on to another generation who can be trusted with it? They’re both perfectly good solutions, and they both have perfectly good rebuttals. Neither of them was wrong.
But in the end, whatever went down between Jack and Gabriel and whatever other forces were entangled in this, Overwatch was scrapped as a lost cause. NOBODY got it.
from Tumblr http://ift.tt/2q3sIVG