How Overwatch 2’s novel hero Juno went from alien fighter pilot to troubled Martian teen

Warnings 2The newest character, support hero Juno, is finally here. The “Space Ranger” who hails from Mars joined the playable roster Tuesday with the premiere of Season 12 Warnings 2. Juno is unique in some ways, as she has a backstory to existing (and deeply embedded) characters and was revealed to the public earlier than almost every other Overwatch hero — 10 months before she even appeared in-game.

Before Juno officially arrived at Warnings 2Polygon spoke with Blizzard Entertainment’s art director Dion Rogers and narrative designer Joshi Zhang about the development of the novel hero and her place in the Overwatch story.

We invite you to read our interview, which has been edited for clarity.

Polygon: How did the character of Juno come about?

But we knew we wanted a support hero. So we thought, “How can we combine this idea of ​​a fighter pilot or a Space Ranger-style hero with the gameplay set that the game design team shared?” A couple of things that we started with was at one point there was a mech suit for the hero, but because he was a support, it felt too massive for a support-style hero.

I’m also interested in narratively how she kind of connected. You mentioned her having an alien, there’s also the connection to the Mars colony, the connection to Mei. How did Juno fit in narratively?

So we started with: What will this hero’s personality be? She looks youthful and she looks like she’s ready to take on different tasks, and how do we weave that into a character that resonates with the community? So we thought, OK, well, it would be fun if she was this awesome alien who twirled around and shot things. But what if she was also a little… edgy? What else brings in alien vibes like curiosity? Maybe she’s never seen something before, like she grew up on this distant planet. So we came up with this personality type that was a little bit weird, a little bit anxious, very curious, but with a really wide range of emotions, where she’s really excited to learn about certain things.

Jiayi and Mei were close during their graduate studies, and in East Asian culture it’s pretty essential that if you’re very close to someone, you treat them like family and will want to do everything you can for their child. Mei sees herself almost as a godmother. She feels it’s her duty to look after her best friend’s daughter while she’s on Earth.

When Juno is in the game, people will know who she is, people will interact with her normally as if she has always been there. How will this manifest in relation to Mei?

Some of my favorite interactions with Mei are when they both open up a little bit—we see emotional sides to both of them. Juno has fears. Mei has the baggage of knowing what happened to her in Antarctica. She’s still very clearly affected by that to this day, but now she knows that another one of her friends is dealing with tragic experiences on Mars.

She seems, more than many people on the Overwatch roster, like a fish out of water. Is she commenting on the fact that her companions are a talking gorilla and a hamster in a giant mech ball? Or are all of these things normal to her since she’s been living her entire life on Mars?

Zhang: It’s an captivating space that she’s in because there are probably certain things that she takes for granted more than others. I think she’s probably not as surprised that Hammond is in a mech as compared to something as mundane as a school bus. You can hear her talking about different areas of the world where she’s had surprising experiences. She’s, like, shocked by all the water in the Rialto. Or there’s a conversation that went around after her hero trial where she sees Ashe and she’s like, “Wow, a real cow!” I think you can definitely expect that fish out of water vibe. That’s definitely something that we wanted to promote and push.

It’s a little more into the game, but Juno is kind of one of the champions whose skills overlap with other champions, like Lúcio. Are we kind of at a point in Overwatch where champion skill overlap is inevitable?

Rogers: The overlap in skills is good in a way. Sometimes a player might think, “I’m not a huge fan of Lúcio, but I have a character with a very similar set of skills that I can still enjoy. I like Juno. I feel a little bit of what Lúcio is doing.” People have their favorites and characters that they like and dislike, and some of the overlap is just giving players a choice. They can still get a set of skills or skills that they like and a character that they can relate to more or resonate with more. We have no shortage of ideas for what skills or powers characters have. So it’s more about the fantasy of the character, and sometimes that creates some overlap with their sets of skills.

Juno was shown already in November 2024, next to Venture and another, still unannounced hero. What was it like for you to work with those early character reveals? Does that very early feedback affect your work?

I think it’s frigid to share what we’re doing sooner rather than later, you know, and get all the feedback and act on it as much as we can. We’d like to do more of a preview of champions – similar to the Clash previews we did, just to get some early, initial thoughts or feedback from players. So you might find that we’ll try to do that even more often in the future.

You mentioned that some of the armor was removed from Juno from that initial concept art. Do you know if you have any idea why that aesthetic change was made? Was it for silhouette, simplicity, or…?

Rogers: A lot of that was because of the silhouette — to change her silhouette from other flying heroes in the game. Some of that knowledge was just: What would she really wear on Mars if she went outside? There was a balance to be found in trying to really establish what she looked like and where she came from.

What is it about Juno’s background, her training, and her upbringing on Mars that makes her a support champion? Many other Overwatch characters have very specific reasons for being healers. What is it about Juno’s past that pushed her toward this role?

Zhang: I see her story and her community as kind of a village setting, even though it’s a futuristic technological Mars base. There’s only a handful of people there, maybe 20 or 30 at most. She was in that environment where those people are all they have and they take care of each other. She’s lived that way her whole life, so when she was aged enough, she was given this spacesuit and the opportunity to facilitate. And she wanted to, because she’s always been curious and wanted to get involved. She wanted to facilitate. It just made sense to us that she would have the skills to shoot rocks and blow up debris and all that stuff, but also have the knowledge to facilitate and heal people if need be, with all the technology that they have with them.

Is there a narrative explanation for Juno having access to an orbital healing beam hovering above Earth? Is that her ship up there?

Rogers: They want her to be safe and sound. So this is the most candid version of why this technology exists on the ship for her.

People in Mars Colony – Are They Okay or Not? NO Okay?

Zhang: For now, it’s OK, as if they’re coping with the conditions. The circumstances are so solemn that they can’t afford to risk Juno’s life.

Will we learn more about what happened at the Mars colony and what forced Juno to leave?

Is Juno directly related to the next hero? I ask because people saw the comic teaser for the next hero and were like, “Is that a Martian?” How close is that speculation? Is Juno directly related to the next hero?

I think it’s probably too early to tell how closely those two things are connected, if they are at all. But when you see those little images, our team is kind of playing around with the early thumbnails, and as the character develops, that thumbnail suddenly becomes, you know, the real version that helps us understand where the character is in its development.

We were at the Horizon lunar colony thanks to the elder Oversee game map. Will we be able to play on Lucheng Mars Colony at some point? From a narrative perspective, it wouldn’t make sense for Overwatch to fight on a Mars colony, given the whole 55 million kilometers minimum, right? But does that prevent us from going to a Mars colony at some point?

Rogers: It doesn’t! Actually, that’s a good comment. We want to do that more often, when a champion is released, there’s a culturally relevant map or something historically relevant that connects them. That’s something we’re trying to plan for in the future. Maybe another frigid space map, right?