When Blizzard revealed the newest support hero coming to Overwatch 2, Lifeweaver, the developer noted that the character is openly pansexual, and that players will see that “reflected in his voice lines, conversations, and other content.” Players can already see that, nearly a week ahead of Lifeweaver’s release, in early gameplay previews. And one of the Thai hero’s voice lines may reveal a little something about another hero, Baptiste, who has a very flirty exchange with Lifeweaver.
On the Overwatch subreddit, fans took note of a lobby conversation between Lifeweaver and Baptiste, in which the following flirtation takes place.
Lifeweaver: I’ve got reservations at a fantastic restaurant, but I’m not too sure who to invite…
Baptiste: I know a guy!
Lifeweaver: Is he, by any chance, a dashing ex-mercenary from the Caribbean?
Baptiste: [chuckling] He might just be!
Now, a skeptic might just think, “Hey, maybe Baptiste’s just hungry.” And perhaps he is. But the delivery between the two — amplified by Lifeweaver’s clear flirtation — appears to support a theory that Overwatch players have had since they learned of Baptiste’s former partner in Talon, a Samoan tank of a man named Mauga, and their close relationship. It also appears that the writer behind some of Baptiste’s lore intended for Baptiste and Mauga to have had some sort of romantic relationship.
In 2019, Blizzard released the Overwatch short story “What You Left Behind.” In it, author Alyssa Wong told a story about an unwelcome reunion for Baptiste: His former partners in the terrorist organization Talon, Mauga and Nguyen, had tracked him down after four years in Baptiste’s home country of Haiti. The tension in that story is thick, and not just because Mauga could easily overpower Baptiste to get what he wanted — which was for Baptiste to join the ex-Talon gang for a classic “just one more job” mission.
That short story also came with this artwork of Baptiste and Mauga:
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Wong later said that they were “obsessed with two (2) types of fictional relationships: ‘you were never good for me, but I loved you more than anything,’ and ‘you were the best thing that ever happened to me, and I destroyed that with my own hands (possibly on purpose).’” And in response to a fan pointing to Baptiste and Mauga’s relationship as potentially fitting that mold, Wong responded, “That’s how I wrote them!” Wong also added a winking-face emoji, presumably to emphasize their intentions.
And to make it even clearer, here’s the author of Baptiste’s primary source of lore shipping those characters.