Overwatch's 2026 April Fools' hero changes are so good they should be permanent

At least let me keep Cassidy's finger gun

Overwatch's annual April Fools' mode Underwatch is here, and the character kit changes are easily among the best seasonal gags in the game's almost decade-long history. So much so that I kinda wish most of them were permanent, or at least existed in a semi-regular arcade mode.

Take Cassidy's new skill, for example. When you emote "hello," he normally does finger guns. In Underwatch, he does finger guns and fires a piercing bullet that causes bleed damage. It's like his Silver Bullet perk, only there's no cooldown timer, a fact my teammates quickly became acquainted with when I clogged the message system with enough "hello"s to temporarily disable system text. Sorry (not really). Junker Queen's gun shoots knives in Underwatch, which is incredibly on-brand for her and, since they count as projectiles, a steep challenge for a player trying to gauge their trajectory. Or it would've been, if Queen hadn't slayed too hard, tanked everyone's framerates, and been taken out of the mode.

Breaking the game aside, what makes this year's April Fools' kits so good is that they follow the rules of telling a good joke, leaning into the familiar and juxtaposing it with something completely ridiculous. What if Freja couldn't move except by using her abilities? What if Pharah, the jetpack human, had no jetpack, but gained movement buffs under certain conditions? The answer is that after a few self-knockbacks from her Concussive Blast, she's hitting the skybox with every jump and moving at about 75mph. Swapping Mei to the tank role removes all confusion about why she never dies anyway, Blizzard said in the patch notes. (Au contraire, Blizzard; Mei dies a lot when I'm playing her, no matter the circumstances.)

Some of the changes are so useful that I wish they were perks, though. Moira has to attach her orbs to an ally for them to work, which is surprisingly effective in dive teams. And using Hazard's wall has him consume "Phreak Fuel," doubling his movement and attack speed and making him even more viable. Orisa has almost no movement abilities normally, but in Underwatch, her javelin throw pulls her in the javelin's direction — as useful for escaping as it is for leaping into the thick of things. Lunging into the enemy team, turning into a helicopter with Orisa's tweaked ult, hearing her shout "YEEHAW RODEO" (everyone has silly voice lines for the event), and wiping the entire team in one go? That's priceless.

Doomfist's changes are my favorite, though, and make me hope Blizzard ties seasonal passives to Overwatch's story in the future. Vendetta chucked Doomfist out of a window at the start of Overwatch season 1 and wrenched control of Talon, the Big Bad of Overwatch, from him. Now, he can see all current Talon members through walls, deals more damage to them, and receives more damage from them.

That said, I'll be glad to see the back of some of this year's gags, like turning the environmentalist-minded Lifeweaver into a tiny FernGully-esque guy who dies so fast. But the creative experimentation behind the event, where the design team stretches the limits of what can be done with a hero's kit, is something I hope we see a lot more of in Overwatch's future.