The Genji-Mercy relationship and the Overwatch team's attempts to retcon it: Part 1

Why did the Overwatch lore start pushing Mercy into a romantic relationship with Pharah? The preferences of one odd writer may be the answer

Back in Overwatch 1, the lore suggested a close relationship between Genji and Mercy. This could be seen in the many special interactions between them that could play before matches began. They bought each other chocolates for Valentines' Day. They stayed up having many "late-night conversations" on Watchpoint: Gibraltar as Overwatch agents. When they couldn't be together, they wrote each other letters.

But going into Overwatch 2, the writing team changed. The original writers who were around since the start, like Michael Chu, left. Someone named Gavin Jurgens-Fyhrie became the new Lead Narrative Designer, and the writing team hired interns like Reese Cornacchia, who openly shipped Mercy with Pharah.

Soon enough, people began to notice several odd changes. First of all, every single one of Genji and Mercy's pre-match interactions was deleted. This could potentially be explained by how most of the interactions from Overwatch 1 were deleted when Overwatch 2 was released. However, the old hero interactions were supposed to be replaced with new ones, which Genji and Mercy never received. For two years, Genji and Mercy had ZERO one-on-one spawn room interactions in OW2, which is odd considering the fact that Mercy literally saved his life.

By contrast, the writers of Overwatch 2 added flirtatious interactions between Pharah and Mercy.

PHARAH: If you ever need help, just fly to me, Angela.

MERCY: Ah, my hero! You’re like a knight in flying armour.

PHARAH: …That’s what I’m going for.

Then, in the Invasion PvE story missions, the writing team added a new semi-hostile interaction between Genji and Mercy that confirms, weirdly, that Genji and Mercy stopped writing to one another. The interaction clearly sets up that a rift had developed between Genji and Mercy. It also has Mercy and Genji speaking quite rudely with one another and generally acting out-of-character.

MERCY: Why did we stop writing to each other anyway, Genji?

GENJI: You sent me a beautiful sketch and I couldn’t think of a way to respond.

MERCY: Ah, I see. So you’re a terrible artist, a bad friend…

GENJI: A liar too. The sketch was awful.

In the past, Overwatch fans interacted regularly with Michael Chu and asked him questions about the lore. Chu was always glad to respond. Naturally, people assumed that this friendly relationship with the devs could continue, and hoped that the new Lead Narrative Designer - Gavin Jurgens-Fyhrie - would be equally as forthcoming. However, when people asked Gavin about these unexpected new changes, his response was to block them.

Disheartened, people began to notice that Gavin was extremely active among Pharmercy shipper circles and was personally friends with some of the biggest Pharmercy-shipping accounts. He constantly interacted with Pharmercy fan content and praised it, whereas he instantly blocked any account that mentioned Gency - regardless of tone or content. For reference, this is what his Twitter feed looked like:

When a notorious Pharmercy shipper was laughing about how Genji came off as a shitty person in the new interaction, Gavin responded, "Glad you like it!"

Perhaps worst of all, Gavin Jurgens-Fyhrie explicitly admitted that the new writing team made decisions to please @ClearTogether, one of the biggest and most aggressive Twitter accounts pushing Pharmercy and attacking Gency shippers.

The number of times someone on the Overwatch team said 'wait until Clear sees this'.

It's more than 5 times, I'll say that.

Also, Gavin and the new writing team have such unbelievable closeness to ClearTogether that she was aware of lore drops BEFORE THEY OFFICIALLY RELEASED. She was told, ahead of time, that Pharah would be receiving a certain “really gay voiceline”. In other words, OW employees would literally leak Overwatch news to Pharmercy stan accounts.

Take this second set of interactions between Gavin and the Pharmercy megafan. Here, ClearTogether hints that she knew Pharah would be confirmed to be a lesbian before it was officially announced.

Under the leadership of Gavin Jurgens-Fyhrie, the writing team scrapped existing lore about Genji and Mercy and began shoehorning in in their preferred-ship, Pharmercy. It was also concerning as there was evidence to suggest that the writers did this because they were personally friends with a group of Twitter Pharmercy stans and wanted to shape the lore to please them.

But this corruption wasn’t just limited to the lore team - it was also endemic to Overwatch’s art team, even affecting what skins each hero received. Click below to read Part 2…