Reasons I can’t wait for the November issues is that I have questions and I am really hoping that the November release of Overwatch will answer them. So here are my questions/theories/head cannons, that are mostly about Jack. These are mostly copy pasted from the convo I had with @cyrioci
Text that are bolded are from Cy
I’m just thinking… how arrogant Jack was to accept that promotion… how he openly took it, yeah he’s a good man that kept the team together, yeah he brought out the best out of everyone, but did he even think about what he was accepting?
How… Selfish could you be? Did he even really think about it? What it did? What’s worst was he didn’t even consider Gabe to be his right hand, he took Ana instead and basically exiled Gabe into the underground with Blackwatch
Did he even care? Or was he selfish, arrogant jerk that only thought of himself? Make everyone believe he’s this naive guy from Indiana, war hero yes… but was he thinking?
Jack thinking he really DID deserve it over Gabriel. Did he really think that? Was he really that selfish and naive? Was he that arrogant? Given they were really young, given that they were really rash but was jack trying to prove something to everyone?Like was he jealous of Gabe?
Gabriel was promoted as the leader of the old Overwatch at a really young age, him and Jack are in the same age group. People talk about how Gabe was jealous of Jack, but has anyone ever thought of Jack being jealous of Gabe?
Gabe was his age.
Gabe was leading an elite force.
Gabe saved the world and ended a war with his leadership.
So has anyone ever considered that Jack was the petty one that was jealous of Reyes position? That once the UN offered him the job he took it without hesitation, because he wanted to prove something to everyone? That he can be a better leader than Reyes was?
It would make sense as well considering a lot of the spoken lines. with reaper saying “you always did have a high opinion of yourself” and in general just 76s lines.
But I feel like Jack Morrison was just a persona, that the real him is this Soldier 76.
I have a feeling that he was rash, he had a temper, he was arrogant, his personality just seems like the type that can easily be manipulated. He’s naive and he has never led a squad of his own, the UN literally gave him a global organization as his first role as a leader.
He has no experience at all with leading.
Yeah he brought people together, yeah he brought out the best of them.
But he was that really enough to lead a global organization? He had good intentions and he led Overwatch right, people talk about how he surpass the expectation of the UN but what if that was all just a set up to feed his ego?
A set up for Overwatch fall once it gets too powerful.
Jack did an amazing job, but what was the truth? I love Jack Morrison, but I just gotta know.
OK heres the problem with all of this… (and let me just pre-phrase with I do understand why people could come to these conclusions about Jack) Im just going to go down the list play by play, so bear with me.
Jack was under no obligation whatsoever to not accept that promotion. Period. I don’t think it even occurred to him that Gabriel would take his acceptance of it badly because he probably believed his then best friend would be happy for him. It frankly says more about Gabe’s character that he reacted as badly as he did. While I am all for the “Reaper being more than an angsty edgelord” I am not for that if it means were going to attack Jack’s character over it. The UN offered Jack the promotion for one major reason. He was able to get a group of radically different multinational people to work together as an effective unit. THAT is why Gabe was passed over. They needed someone capable of leading Overwatch outside the context of warfare.
I wonder about a lot of this too! I really like to think that the whole ‘Indiana boy scout who became off-brand Captain America’ deal is a PR trip (it’s just too perfect, and I work in PR, I’m telling you I smell spin) and that the truth about Jack is a lot more…human. He’s clearly got flaws, and some gigantic issues.
And I really REALLY like to think that Gabriel’s disaffection is rooted in something more meaningful and complex than “I wanted that job and will nuke a 10 year friendship forged in combat over it like a child throwing a tantrum, despite the fact that it won’t change anything retroactively.”
Honestly, he convinced most of Blackwatch to side with him in armed mutiny. McCree resigned over it, but he didn’t out them, and he’s a good man. If he’d thought it was just about his boss’s grudges, don’t we think he would’ve blown the whistle? So whether it was due to Jack’s fuck-ups or not, I think Gabriel had something real there. Especially since in the aftermath, 76 sounds almost as disenchanted with Overwatch as Reaper.
All that said, I feel a need to counter a couple of OP’s points:
“I have a feeling that he was rash, he had a temper, he was arrogant, his
personality just seems like the type that can easily be manipulated.
He’s naive and he has never led a squad of his own, the UN literally
gave him a global organization as his first role as a leader”
Arrogant and temperamental I can see (although honestly I would bet that holds true for both of them!). But there’s pretty much zero chance that this was Jack’s first leadership position. At least going by the real-life UN, which hand-picks their military leaders from among the personnel of their member states. Whether you like or respect the UN or not, a LOT of planning and politics-playing goes into choosing people for these positions. Unless you go with the idea that the UN as a whole has been subverted into a conspiracy, there’s no way you could get that many governments to agree to essentially be humiliated by having a no-namer get picked over their guys.
The second thing is that when you get offered a position like that, saying ‘no’ is not necessarily an option?
Like, okay, Jack got offered the job by the UN. BUT he was a member of the US military. If he had said no, MAYBE Gabriel would’ve been offered the position next–but that’s a huge ‘if,’ because Gabriel LED the first Overwatch strike team and on paper he was successful beyond anyone’s wildest dreams, and so somewhere in those conversations he MUST have been brought up and set aside as a candidate already. And the US military, whatever its virtues and faults, likes having pull in world affairs. I don’t think it would have been okay with taking the risk of losing that influence, when one of their men had the offer letter in his hands already. Jack would’ve been under incredible pressure to take the position, and if he had declined, his military career might well have ended on the spot.
That doesn’t preclude the possibility of conspiracy or shady influence. A lot of different people could have been in a position to pull strings and get Jack picked over Gabriel, for any number of reasons either good or bad. But Jack being offered and taking the position was definitely not as simple as a matter of selfishness or arrogance.
And I am not disagreeing that there’s something weird there! Do let us take a moment to think about how Jack’s team-building would’ve been an ephemeral effort–by which I mean it’s not the sort of thing that is easily documented on paper. How do you measure being there when your teammate needs you, knowing what to say when their confidence falters, a quiet personal word in the hallway when you see the trouble in their eyes? There may have been a whole stack of awards and commendations for Jack in that file, and I have no doubt everyone on that team deserved like 50 promotions, but the record would have shown that Gabriel Reyes commanded the team that saved the world. So it seems to me that either Gabriel did something that really sucked (which we see no sign of) IN TANDEM with Jack shining like a star, or else yes, there probably was some kind of favoritism in play–whether that was conspiracy, or racism, or half the UN smitten with Jack‘s compliment-delivering skills.
Third thing: We don’t know enough about Blackwatch to really speculate in a useful way, but it’s possible that giving it to Gabriel was an attempt to give him his own command. I…kind of…For Reasons headcanon Gabriel as Special Forces? (Actually I think they were both special ops, but Gabriel really gives off the Green Beret vibe.) And I mean the UN singled out him to lead the team to save the damn world!
Maybe he would’ve rocked post-Omnic Overwatch or not, but he’s clearly GOOD at special operations work. It’s his strong point. Special ops is a really delicate, involved and highly trained thing. You don’t just randomly put some dude in charge of it. So I don’t know if Jack gave him that or if the UN committee set that up, but what I’m saying is that Blackwatch was probably not a slight.
Worth noting in Gabriel’s favor, though: he’s got a good eye for redemption. Whether his personality was pretty enough for diplomatic summits or not, clearly he was invested in giving people like Genji and Reyes a second chance. Which doesn’t really fit with the cackling villain gig he’s running these days, does it?
