Characters / Overwatch: Widowmaker

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Amélie Lacroix (née Guillard) / Widowmaker

"I aim to devastate."

Species: Enhanced human
Age: 33 (1), 35 (2)
Birthday: November 19th
Occupation: Assassin
Base of Operations: Annecy, France
Affiliation: Talon
Appearances (shorts): Cinematic Trailer, Alive (focus), Ana Origin Story, Infiltration
Appearances (comics): "Legacy", "Reflections" (cameo), "Masquerade"

"One shot, one kill."

Voiced by: Chloé Hollings (English and French)^note Other Languages:Erica Edwards (Latin American Spanish), Conchi López (European Spanish), Shizuka Itō (Japanese), Flavia Saddy (Brazilian Portuguese), Francesca Perilli (Italian), Vera Teltz (German), Ji-hyun Lee (Korean), Sylvia Wang (Taiwanese Chinese), Yángmènglù (Mandarin Chinese), Anna Sroka-Hryń (Polish), Tatyana Shitova (Russian)

Widowmaker is the perfect assassin: a patient, ruthlessly efficient killer who shows neither emotion nor remorse.

In her former life, Widowmaker was known as Amélie Lacroix, and belonged to the once-influential Guillard family. She was an accomplished ballet dancer married to Gérard Lacroix, an Overwatch agent spearheading operations against the Talon terrorist organization. After several unsuccessful attempts to eliminate Gérard, Talon decided to change its focus to his wife, Amélie. Talon operatives kidnapped her and subjected her to an intense program of neural reconditioning. They broke her will, suppressed her personality, and reprogrammed her as a sleeper agent. She was eventually found by Overwatch agents, apparently none the worse for wear, and returned to her normal life.

Two weeks later, she killed Gérard in his sleep. Afterwards, she returned to Talon, her mission complete. They completed the process of turning her into a living weapon. She was given extensive training in the covert arts, and then her physiology was altered, drastically slowing her heart, which turned her skin cold and blue and numbed her ability to experience human emotion. Amélie was gone. Despite that, there are hints that Amélie's personality still resides within Widowmaker, as she still defends her late husband when someone criticizes him. Regardless, Widowmaker's persona is still dominant.

Widowmaker acts as the game's main sniper, keeping vigil over a friendly objective and swifly dispatching targets who enter her line of sight.

• Widow's Kiss, her main weapon, is mainly used as a sniper rifle with a scope to zoom in on enemies from afar and dispatch them with a well-aimed headshot. However, it can also act as a close-to-mid range automatic rifle for Widowmaker to protect herself from enemy heroes that venture close to her.
• Grappling Hook lets her pull herself to almost any location and evade enemies.
• Venom Mine, allows her to protect her flanks by deploying a spider-shaped mine that will explode when a foe comes close, releasing poison gas that lightly damages nearby enemies and lets Widowmaker temporarily see them through walls.
• Her ultimate, Infra-Sight, activates Widowmaker's heat visor for a long duration, during which she and her allies can see enemies through walls and structures, allowing them to ambush and set up killshots before their foes even know where they are.

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A-F

• Achilles' Heel:
  • Close quarters. At long ranges, she's lethal, and, as demonstrated in Alive, she can control the terrain to her advantage if she's able to stay mobile and out in the open. But get her cornered with no means of escape, and she struggles. Case in point, her response to Winston dropping directly in front of her in the cinematic trailer was to freeze up and fire off a few weak rounds, and when Tracer cut off her escape route, she was able to disarm her and send her running without any trouble.
  • Also a viable tactic for dealing with her in-game, as her equipment's effectiveness manifests the most at range: if you can rapidly close the gap with her and deny her any terrain advantage or an easy way out with her grappling hook, she's as good as done.
  • Shields. While she has the raw damage to kill any opponent in two fully-charged shots, she does not have the rate of fire required to put a dent into shields in any reasonable time.
• The Alcoholic: Château Guillard has multiple wine bottles, glasses, and marks from where she's set them down scattered around the map, which implies she's been making extensive use of the wine cellar.
• Amazing Technicolor Population: Justified, though exaggerated. Her skin color is a result of extremely low blood circulation (a trait that would be very useful for accurate precision shooting). This has done nothing to make her any less attractive, however.
• Ambiguously Human: Though technically human, Widowmaker has gone through such heavy alterations both mentally and physically that she can barely be considered a human being at this point. It's unclear exactly what she should be called after her transformation, other than a living machine designed for killing.
• Ambiguous Situation:
  • She knows Gérard is dead, but whether or not she knows that she was the one who killed him and under Talon's orders is left up in the air. It's also unclear if she knows exactly what Talon did to her, or if her memories were altered in this case, the latter being very feasible but not yet confirmed. In Overwatch 2, Moira seems to be regarded Windowmaker with suspicion, and Windowmaker tries to downplay the fact she's being more emotional and acting more distant to the Talon leadership, implying she's been actively hiding things from the organization.
  • The hints of her old humanity that slowly unravel with time. Is this Amélie Fighting from the Inside, or are they just remnants of her past self? Much like the above, it's not perfectly clear.
• And I Must Scream: Even though her original personality has been suppressed, there are a few signs that she's still in there and somewhat aware of what she's become.
• Animal Motifs:
  • The black widow spider. A tattoo of a female black widow spider decorates most of her back; in addition, her goggles echo similarities to a spider's face, her Grappling Hook can be likened to a spider's thread, and her Venom Mines look like spiders as well. In the Alive cinematic, the motif is made even clearer with her soliloquy; she once feared spiders, but now associates herself like them in that "at the moment of the kill, they are never more alive".
  • To a lesser extent, the swan: both of her Legendary skins, "Odette" and "Odile", respectively, make reference to the White and Black Swans of Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake. Her tattoo of a spider (which is located on her back) is replaced by a swan.
• Anti-Frustration Features: Widowmaker's Grappling Hook automatically locks onto the ledge/wall closest to where you aimed at so that when you hook onto it, you're almost always guaranteed to actually position onto it instead of clipping it and falling off without having to be incredibly precise. That said, you should probably aim for precision anyway, since it might lock onto the wrong thing, or it might actually fail at bringing you up, though sensitivity adjustment was later added for it.
• Arachnid Appearance and Attire: Her overall appearance from her spider face-like goggles to her black widow tattoo invokes the spider motif. Her Halloween Terror-exclusive "Spider" skin adds even more of it, particularly by adding several spider-web patterns on her outfit and gun.
• Arch-Enemy:
  • First, Tracer. They are the most visible hero/villain pair in the game, having multiple on-screen encounters (instead of confining it mostly to backstory), to the point where it's even bled into the marketing for both this game^note The Mirrored Confrontation Shot on Blizzard's subpage for the game has two teams facing down each other; Tracer and Widowmaker are both in the foreground rows of their respective teams and are by far the most prominently featured and Heroes of the Storm^note Nova gives Tracer a bit of a start in the latter’s introduction trailer by shifting into her Widowmaker skin without warning. For Tracer, the root of their conflict is very personal, as Widowmaker is responsible for a murder in Tracer’s hometown that destabilized the already tense situation between humans and omnics into all-out chaos, personally causing Tracer a substantial amount of grief and injury in the process. In turn, Tracer played a role in botching her and Reaper’s museum heist, which signaled the beginning of Overwatch's return and makes her partially representative of the first real opposition that Talon has had to face in years. These two have been at each other’s throats since day one, and every single one of their interactions in-game is dripping with antagonism.
  • Second, Ana, fellow Sniper from Overwatch who got her eye shot out by Widowmaker when she hesitated to shoot her and the latter single-handedly ruined her mission that might have become the catalyst of Overwatch's overall downfall. It's also implied they used to have a friendly relationship before, which turned sour since Ana believes Amélie was Evil All Along and is unaware she was Reforged into a Minion. Meeting each other again in-game results in a metric ton of Passive-Aggressive Kombat between the two women, with Widowmaker calling Ana a "shell of a woman" and Ana stating that Gérard was a fool for ever loving her. Widowmaker makes cutting remarks if she kills Ana's daughter Pharah in combat, and Ana throws Widowmaker's catchphrases back at her if she kills her.
• Aristocrats Are Evil: The Château Guillard map reveals that her ancestry dates back to French nobility, which was likely deposed during or around The French Revolution. She certainly didn't start out that way, but her current identity encapsulates a lot of the "haughty, disdainful elite who looks down on those she thinks are below her" aspects associated with this trope, and her "Comtesse" and "Huntress" skins appear designed to evoke the imagery.
• Awesome Anachronistic Apparel: Her "Comtesse" and "Huntress" skins resemble military uniforms from the 19th century.
• Badass Boast: Gives one of two (depending on her equipped skin) when using her ultimate:
  Widowmaker: No-one can hide from my sight. / No-one can hide from the Huntress.
• The Bad Guy Wins: At the end of Alive. Also, during Ana's introduction story, Widowmaker was in charge of Talon's operations of holding hostages. Widowmaker won that one too, made Overwatch fail the mission, and Ana took the opportunity to let the world think that she died.
• Becoming the Costume:
  • While equipped with the "Huntress" and "Comtesse" skins, her ultimate callout changes from "No-one can hide from my sight" to "No-one can hide from the Huntress."
  • Her "Medusa" skin redesigns her based off of the namesake Gorgon of Classical Mythology, with her dialogue being changed to reflect the new sinister snake motif. Among the new dialogue is changing her hero selection line to "I aim to petrify.," as well as her ultimate callout to "No one can survive my sight."
• Being Evil Sucks: She may enjoy her job, but as it turns out, there are some serious downsides to her life as an assassin. Her husband is dead, she has no friends, and all connections to her family have been presumably severed. This is highlighted in her single-panel appearance in the "Reflections" comic: whereas most of the other characters have a nice Christmas with their loved ones, or at least have some company, all she has is the tombstone of Gérard to mourn to out in the pouring rain. Further hinted at that she's been drowning her sorrows with alcohol at Château Guillard, with many, many wine stains found around the home. And she keeps a picture of her and Gérard on their wedding day, presumably as a Tragic Keepsake.
• Berserk Button:
  • As of Ana's introduction, bringing up her husband Gérard — especially bad-mouthing him — is not a good idea. It's one of the few things aside from killing that will make her react strongly.
  • Blizzard heavily implied in a tweet that pointing out her blue skin directly to her may not be the best idea.
• Beta Outfit: Before settling on the Spy Catsuit we have now, Widowmaker had at least two different outfits that were quite different from what we know today. The first was a grey and light brown outfit with a midriff section, cleavage, and light armor that looks much less stylized than her current attire. She wore this while training as a Talon agent, as her skin was normal (but her eyes and hair were not) because her heart rate hadn't yet been slowed down. Sometime afterwards, she would don even less stylized, plain, yet remarkably practical Talon fatigues that stood in even bigger contrast to her current outfit, as shown in Legacy.
• Big Fancy House: Her home stage, Château Guillard. While it appears to be somewhat abandoned or under renovation given the amount of crates, paint buckets, and tarps over furniture, it also appears to still be Widowmaker's current base of operations to some extent (as evidenced by her open laptop on a table and her rifle propped up next to it), and at the very least she's been there recently to schedule her flight to Monaco (referencing "Masquerade").
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: It's complicated, but she would look like this to those that doesn't know how her origin story goes, such as Ana, deeming Gérard to be a fool to even love her. Widowmaker is a bitch, yes, but she really doesn't see the need to hide behind a sheep's clothing in the current time, and there was a time that she was a pure sheep as Amélie.
• Black Widow: Downplayed. Her name 'Widowmaker' is an obvious allusion to the trope, and while she did earn it by murdering her own husband, it was due to her being turned into a Manchurian Agent, and not by her own intention, nor it was part of the plan for her to inherit anything. And despite her Femme Fatale demeanor, none of her missions for Talon seem to involve seduction.
• Blood Knight: She loves, and her lines suggest she enjoys it even more if it gives her an actual challenge, even calling her targets a "dance partner".
• Blue Blood: Heavily downplayed, as their titles were stripped away during The French Revolution or during the following century, but the Guillards were nobles, judging from the crest that can be found in their estate.
• Bond One-Liner:
  • After scoring three sniper kills in the gameplay trailer:
    Widowmaker: Go to sleep.
  • From the Alive short, after assassinating Tekhartha Mondatta:
    Widowmaker: "Looks like the party's over."
• Boom, Headshot!: Playing her optimally revolves around consistently landing headshots. Where the rest of the roster has a 2.0x damage multiplier on landing shots to the head, Widowmaker is the sole exception of having 2.5x on her scoped shots. A fully charged shot to the head deals 300 damage, more than enough to kill most of the cast in one hit (and deal plenty enough for tanks to switch gears and go on the defensive). One shot, one kill indeed.
• Boring, but Practical: Infra-Sight is unusual for an ultimate ability, since all it does is grant global vision of your enemies to you and your team, which doesn't sound all that exciting since the best it does for Widowmaker herself is make it easier to find and snipe people, something you should have already been doing without it. That said, giving your entire team what's essentially a legitimate global wallhack is far from useless, and a well-practiced Widowmaker player can charge it up relatively quickly and use it to put constant pressure on the enemy, making them afraid to break out of cover and risk getting sniped even more.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: She was kidnapped by Talon and brainwashed into becoming their sleeper agent. She also enjoys killing people way too much.
• Break the Cutie: As Amélie, she was subjected to this by Talon. It's been described that they completely broke her will using Cold-Blooded Torture, and what has become of it is quite tragic.
• Camera Abuse: In her "Mistletoe" highlight, Widowmaker holds up the mistletoe, only to use a palm strike to knock the camera to the ground and then apparently steps down on the "cameraman's" neck.
• Card-Carrying Villain: Despite the circumstances of her backstory, she clearly takes pleasure in her new role as the world's deadliest assassin and revels in the thrill of killing and the pain she inflicts.
• Cold-Blooded Torture: Was subjected to this during her conversion to Widowmaker, as part of the process to break her will.
• Cold Sniper: Made to be so, both literally (her body was modified to run at a much lower body temperature) and figuratively (utterly emotionless and amoral).
• Crippling Overspecialization: Nearly all of her power comes from her sniper rifle dealing critical damage, with things like her Grappling Hook and even her ultimate being designed to make finding targets relatively easier. As a result, players who don't have consistent aim and/or can't take advantage of her tools might find little to contribute with her.
• Dainty Little Ballet Dancers: Widowmaker was a ballet dancer before her Face–Monster Turn into one of the world's most feared assassins. The trope is played with, since In-Universe she was treated as a harmless civilian (and her original persona was, when contrasted with her current one), but it also meant that she was physically fit enough that she was a threat after becoming Brainwashed and Crazy.
• Dark Action Girl: A deadly female sniper that counts among the few playable characters that are explicitly villains.
• A Day in the Limelight: She is the protagonist of the Alive animated short.
• Deadpan Snarker: Only she's less funny and more sadistically venomous (no pun intended) and smug.
• Deadly Gas: Her Venom Mine deploys this.
• Death Seeker: Implied. If resurrected by Mercy, she can lament that she's still alive. It's a pretty clear hint that Amélie is still somewhere in there and probably wants to die.
• Designated Girl Fight: In-story, the only character we've ever seen Widowmaker directly battle are women: Ana and Tracer. Even during the museum heist, she did little more than take potshots at Winston. Her main opponent was Tracer while Reaper dealt with Winston.
• Difficult, but Awesome: FPS snipers are already typically some of the most mechanically demanding characters to play, and Widowmaker is no exception. What makes her stand out from other "snipers" such as Hanzo and Ana is that all of her team-wide value comes from sniping and one-shotting enemies, meaning that all of her abilities serve as utility to complement the player's ability to land constant critical hits, including her ultimate, which won't help decide games in the same way other ultimates in the game will. This means if you don't have good aim or produce as much damage to consistently pick off squishy targets, you aren't taking advantage of her potential, ergo possibly wasting a good hero pick. That said, those who can master her are complete nightmares to face against, and she can shut down entire teams unharmed from a distance.
• Doing in the Scientist: It's hard to see, but her "Comtesse" and "Huntress" skins have a set of puncture wounds on her neck, giving a much different explanation for her demeanor and physiology. She also doesn't have blue skin in either of those, and she has red pupils as well as her usual yellow irises.
• Double Meaning: Her codename "Widowmaker" carries two equally applicable meanings. One refers to an object with the potential to kill a man. Given that she's little more than a Living Weapon of murder for Talon, the name fits in that sense. In a more tragic example, it also refers to the fact that she made a widow out of herself after her first mission, where she killed her own husband Gérard.
• The Dragon: She's not considered to be part of the Council of Leaders that Doomfist and Reaper are members of. However, she is their most effective assassin, essentially making her this to the Council.
• Dramatic Unmask: In the comic short "Legacy", Ana shoots whom she assumed was just another Talon soldier, only for the helmet to come off and reveal Widowmaker, whom Ana was implied to have known before Talon kidnapped and brainwashed her. Ana's shock at the revelation lets Widowmaker shoot her in the eye and escape.
• The Dreaded: Quite possibly the most feared assassin in the Overwatch world, and with good reason. Even in her early days as a Talon operative, before Overwatch's total collapse, she had gained a reputation for being a deadly sniper so mobile that it was said she could be in two places at once.
• Drowning Her Sorrows: If the many wine bottles taken from their cellar throughout Château Guillard are any indication, she's been doing loads of drinking.
• Eagleland: Seems to view the United States as a Type 2, as she'll say "Americans..." in a not-so-flattering tone when she kills Cassidy or Soldier: 76. Then again, she also mocked the way Tracer speaks, so it's possible that she either doesn't really mean anything by it or just Hates Everyone Equally.
• Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette: In her Comtesse and Huntress skins. It's likely that this was what she looked like pre-kidnapping.
• Emotionless Girl: It varies. Supposedly, her conditioning relieved her of all emotions and made her an unfeeling tool of destruction, and she does tend to carry out her objectives with calm, stoic precision. Yet she's also been shown to actively take pleasure in her actions, gloat about them to her enemies, and react with shock, confusion, and frustration when a plan goes off the rails. She also behaves more solemnly when her husband is involved and sometimes openly grieves for him. It's possible she's only devoid of emotions that would hinder her performance as an assassin — such as pity, empathy, or remorse — and is otherwise capable of feeling in ways that either motivate her or involve a personal trigger.
  Moira: How are you feeling, Lacroix?
  Widowmaker: I don't feel. That's the point, isn't it?
• Emotion Suppression: When she was Reforged into a Minion, her neural reconditioning suppressed her ability to feel emotion, so she could better serve as a Living Weapon, thus she become The Stoic who could only feel "alive" when she was killing her targets. But this trait seems to have been slowly disappearing as her character develops and she starts to emote more, with the In-Universe justification being her slowly fighting off the conditioning. By the time of Overwatch 2, she's notably more emotional, something that even Moira takes notice of, which alarms Widowmaker.
  Widowmaker: Our foes make such a nuisance of themselves.
  Moira: Is that an emotion I detect, Lacroix?
• Enemy Within: Inverted. She's an outright villainous character who still possesses the innocent, good-natured Amélie somewhere deep down through all the brainwashing.
• Enigmatic Minion: Despite having been Reforged into a Minion and enduring Emotion Suppression by Talon, eventually she started to become more aware of her condition and situation, to the point she grieves her husband's death. By Overwatch 2 she's far more emotional, but her interaction with Moira shows she's been trying to conceal it from Talon, implying she's no longer the loyal brainwashed weapon they want her to be.
  'Moira: You've been distant, Lacroix.
  Widowmaker: By your design.
  Moira: Pondering anything unusual? Dangerous?
  Widowmaker: No. Never.
• Establishing Character Moment: One that comes toward the end of the cinematic trailer: her response to hearing a child call out a warning is to wordlessly ready her rifle and activate her visor.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Even after being forced to murder Gérard, it's shown that she still loves him and mourns him, possibly a result of Amélie still being in her somewhere on some level. Compared to how she gets off on killing everyone else, this is the closest she's come to showing any humanity post-brainwashing. Her visiting her husband's grave on Christmas says everything.
• Every Bullet is a Tracer: When she fires a scoped shot, a white or red^note depends on whether the Widowmaker in question is on your team or not trail gives away where the shot came from. It's a Necessary Drawback, considering that otherwise, teams wouldn't know where to run to be safe or where to attack to stop her.
• Everyone Looks Sexier if French: She's the representative of France, and is one of the most overtly sexualized characters, to fit into the stereotype of French being sexpots. She even fits into the standards of French beauty, with her being a former ballet dancer, who moves gracefully and has a tall and slender figure. She even speaks many of her lines in Gratuitous French and does so with a breathless, sexy tone, likely to invoke Everything Sounds Sexier in French.
• Every Proper Lady Should Curtsy: Her "Curtain Call" emote has her do a mock curtsy as a taunt, as a nod to her past as an aristocratic woman.
• Evil All Along: From the perspective of Overwatch agents like Ana, the reveal of Widowmaker as Amélie Lacroix has given this impression. Because the actual reason for how she became Widowmaker isn't known outside of Talon, they're left to assume Gérard married a traitor or a Honey Trap who was always evil and killed him once she revealed her true colors.
• Evil Counterpart: To Ana. Widowmaker is a sniper whose ability set focuses entirely on killing and gets off from the people she kills, but her scantily-clad appearance would be impractical in real-life combat. Ana is a Support sniper who heals allies with each shot, dresses up primarily for stealth, and is a weary Shell-Shocked Veteran whose victims weigh heavily on her conscience.
• Evil Gloating: She is one of Talon's most effective agents, and she seems to be aware of this given her mannerisms, which convey a condescending disdain and tendency to belittle those around her. This can backfire on her, such as in Alive' when she decided to mock Tracer instead of just killing her when she had the chance.
• Evil Laugh: In Alive, when a distraught Tracer pleads with her to explain why she assassinated Tekhartha Mondatta, her reply is to laugh in Tracer's face. Her unique laugh emote "Delighted" also has her give a rather condescending chuckle.
• Evil Makeover: Went through one after her forced defection to Talon. She used to look like an unassuming brunette with brown eyes that displayed happiness as opposed to malice, and she had a genuine smile and smooth white skin devoid of spider tattoos. Now she has blue-purple skin, blue hair, yellow eyes, a Psychotic Smirk, and very sinister tattoos on her forearm and back. Compare what Amélie used to look like to what she looks like now, and she basically looks like a completely different person.
• Evil Sounds Deep: Her voice is more sensual, colder, and deeper than the other female characters, which is a sign that she's one of the bad guys.
• Exposed to the Elements: Subverted. Her blue skin color was specifically granted to her so that she doesn't feel the effects of the weather, which she'll brag about on the Volskaya Industries map.
• Expository Hairstyle Change: In her old life as Amélie she was a brunette. After she joined Talon she dyed her hair into the blue-purple shade she has in-game, as her Talon skin displays her hair in that color even before the experiments altered her physiology and turned her skin into a similar shade.
• Face–Monster Turn: Once a civilian wife of an Overwatch agent, Talon brainwashed her into killing her husband and turning against Overwatch, becoming their top assassin as Widowmaker. Fittingly, it was accompanied by an Evil Makeover to the blue-purple, tattooed, yellow-eyed heartless murderer that stands in stark contrast to her former self.
• Fate Worse than Death: Amélie Lacroix was tortured, programmed to murder her husband, brainwashed, had her personality obliterated, and her body's physiology altered so it experienced no emotion apart from the joy of killing. The renamed Widowmaker is essentially a completely different person inhabiting her body and mind, and serves as nothing but a tool of murder for Talon. Even if Overwatch ever does manage to revive Amélie, she would have to deal with the guilt of murdering her husband, helping to break up the original Overwatch, and murdering countless others. It's also been implied that deep down, the old Amélie is still there on some level, and is at least partially aware of what she has done.
• Femme Fatale: Played With. She's a Cold Sniper who specializes in stealth and doesn't actively use seduction for her assassinations, but she still has the faux-flirtatious demeanor one associate with the femme fatale archetype, with many of her one-livers being sexual or romantic in nature, such as her "I think we should see other people" and "It's not you, it's me" when she eliminates a target.
• Fighting from the Inside: If a pre-game line is to go by, Mercy certainly thinks so, and that Amélie could be saved.
• Finger Gun: Her "Shot Dead" emote has her doing this with one hand while keeping her actual gun in a Weapon Across the Shoulder pose.
• Fluffy Fashion Feathers: Her "Odette" and "Odile" skins have a lot of decorative feathers.
• Forced into Evil: Her whole backstory. As someone who was married to an Overwatch agent, one spearheading operations against Talon no less, and is implied to have known the other members of Overwatch given Ana's complete shock when unmasking her, one can imagine that joining up with Talon and becoming their top assassin was probably the last thing she ever would've wanted.
• Form-Fitting Wardrobe: Her suit shows off every curve of her body.
• French Jerk: Though formerly she was a normal, sweet woman, after Talon got their hands on her, she's pretty much this trope.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: Went from being a sweet, harmless ballet dancer who happened to be married to a high-ranking Overwatch agent to being one of the most remorseless, deadly, and feared assassins in the Overwatch universe.

G-Z

• Gameplay and Story Segregation: In Alive, she's shown to be able to dangle upside-down from her grappling hook to take a shot, and is called a sniper that strikes like lightning by Ana in "Legacy", capable of deploying her grappling hook quickly. For balance reasons, Widowmaker's grappling hook has an eight-second cooldown. Also, due to the fact that attempting to aim at enemies upside-down would likely be incredibly disorienting, the grappling hook doesn't allow her to hang from any ledge.
• Glass Cannon: She can fell several enemies in succession with her Widow's Kiss, but with only 175 HP (second lowest in the game), she can't take much damage.
• A Glass of Chianti: Her "Toast" victory pose has her holding a glass of wine in a classy, regal manner.
• Goggles Do Something Unusual:
  • Her goggles, used with her ultimate, let her read heat signatures through walls and set up the perfect shot.
  • The Alive trailer shows more functions, mainly the extra "eyes" adding the ability to monitor the surroundings while she concentrates on the target. When she's lining up her shot, there are six "dots" around the main view, and one starts flashing, then the HUD expands to reveal each of the dots being the feed from one of the auxiliary "eyes" on her mask, giving her warning of Tracer's approach.
  • In an unintentional example, they also made her butt grow bigger◊ due to a modelling bug, but that got patched.
• Goth: Her "Odette" and "Odile" skins involve tight laced corsets with either white or black makeup.
• Grappling-Hook Pistol: Shoots one for her Grappling Hook ability, pulling her towards terrain, including higher ground. Since you can also detach from it while moving, it can be used to fling yourself up high to land a headshot on an enemy while mid-air (there's even an achievement for doing it).
• Grave-Marking Scene: "Reflections" has a shot of her visiting her deceased husband Gérard's grave on Christmas. Perhaps one of the only humane things she has done since her brainwashing.
• Happily Married: Was this with her husband... until the Talon organization got its hands on her.
• Heartbroken Badass: Prior to being press-ganged into Talon, she was happily married to Gérard Lacroix until Talon brainwashed her into becoming a sleeper agent to assassinate him. Once she killed him in his sleep, Widowmaker became the perfect, genetically modified assassin she is today. There are plenty of indications in-game about Widowmaker still mourning him and hating herself for what she did, as shown by how she visits his grave every Christmas and how she had been drowning her memories with wine in Château Guillard, as evidenced by the number of empty bottles littering the area.
• The Heavy: Widowmaker is the villainess most directly involved with every problem happening in the world of Overwatch. Her assassination of Gérard, her own husband, allowed Talon to rise unopposed. Her confrontation with Ana Amari contributed to the downfall of the Overwatch organization. Her assassination of Mondatta in King's Row has only worsened human-omnic relations and fanned the flames of a second Omnic Crisis. And she and Reaper are involved with trying to recover the legendary Doomfist, something that has Overwatch and many other nations concerned now that the Doomfist is in the hands of its namesake once again.
• Hero Killer: Her kidnapping and transformation into Widowmaker was the beginning of the end for Overwatch. First, she killed her husband Gérard, who was Overwatch's The Spymaster and Talon's biggest obstacle, then she "killed" Ana (along with an entire Overwatch squad) and forced her into hiding, and later, she killed Mondatta and ruined any chance for Omnic peace.
• Hidden Depths: She used to be a ballet dancer before Talon transformed her into the cold assassin she is now. Her "Ballet" dance emote suggests she might even still practice it on her own time.
• High-Heel Power: All her outfits have high heels, to further illustrate both her Femme Fatale nature and previous "high class" status. She also seems to enjoy stomping on her opponents with them.
• High on Homicide: She luxuriates in her assassination and treats killing like an indulgence, one for which she’s always eager more, claiming killing is the only thing that makes her feel alive. This is implied to be the result of her brainwashing by Talon.
• Hoist by Her Own Petard: Does this twice to Tracer during Alive. First, she shoots her Pulse Bomb while it's in mid-flight, knocking her off of the roof they were fighting on. She then tricks her enemy into teleporting out of her line of fire, leaving her actual assassination target wide open.
• Home Stage: The Deathmatch map Château Guillard is a literal example of this, being a big, castle-like family manor situated on a small isle, which appears to be Widowmaker's current base of operations. Widowmaker even has a few lines while on the map acknowledging that it's her private property.
  (killing an enemy) "Please leave."
• Improbable Aiming Skills: A Justified Trope due to her heart rate being vastly slowed down, making her aim much steadier than that of the average sniper.
  • During the Alive cinematic, she fires a shot at Tracer — who blinks away to avoid being hit in the heart — and that same shot hits her target, Mondatta, right in the head. And she pulls this shot while falling.
  • Prior to being interrupted by Tracer, she was also about to shoot Mondatta through a very narrow window while dangling upside-down by her leg. It's eerily reminiscent of a spider when she does it.
  • She defeated Ana Amari in a Sniper Duel by firing a bullet through the scope of Ana's rifle right in her eye.
• Innocent Bystander: In her past life, Amélie was just a harmless civilian who never took part in combat, only married to Overwatch agent Gérard. Talon took advantage of this, seeing an opportunity to strike their enemy where they least expected, and everything went downhill from there.
• Interplay of Sex and Violence: Downplayed, her true love will always be Gérard. Widowmaker wears skintight clothing, speaks in a seductive tone, and mockingly says "Adieu cherie" to Tracer in Alive. In the game proper, she often uses faux-romantic lines like "I think we should see other people" or "It's not you, it's me" when she eliminates a target. Her "Under the Mistletoe" Highlight Intro has her fake a kiss toward the camera before striking them to the ground and stepping on them.
• Ironic Echo: Her final lines to Tracer in the Alive, "Adieu cherie", translates to "Goodbye love", mocking Tracer's way of addressing everyone.
• Jerkass: Like Reaper, she can be very smug and condescending when she wants to be.
• Just a Kid: She dismisses D.Va as just a kid that doesn't belong in the battlefield. Not that she has reservations about hurting a kid, as if they get in the way of her mission, she'll hurt them, all right; she just doesn't like getting partnered with one.
• Kicking Ass in All Her Finery: In Masquerade, she has no problem killing Vialli's men in hand-to-hand combat while wearing a fancy dress.
• Kick the Dog:
  • Horrible as it was, killing Mondatta was just her assignment. Gloating about it directly to a distraught Tracer’s face, however, was all her.
  • She doesn't get the opportunity to act on it, but her behavior in the cinematic trailer would indicate she was fully prepared to turn her weapon on a child without any hesitation.
  • In-game, she might allow herself a chance to gloat about her past victories depending on the map and who her teammates are, such as reminiscing about killing Mondatta on King's Row (while Tracer and Zenyatta can be standing/floating right next to her, no less) or taunting Ana about her ruined life directly to her face.
• Kick Them While They Are Down: She's particularly fond of mocking those she's triumphed over in the past, indicating that she likes to bask in her accomplishments and feel in control, especially at the expense of those she has hurt. This is especially obvious in her interactions with Tracer and Ana, since she is the direct cause for a substantial amount of grief in both their lives and she doesn't hesitate to mock or gloat about it right to their faces.
• Lack of Empathy: The result of Talon suppressing and reconditioning her personality. As such, she rarely feels emotion except when she's killing people. Though she mourns her husband, she also laughed in Tracer's face when the latter was clearly distraught from failing to protect Mondatta, and if she eliminates Pharah in-game, she may quip "Like mother, like daughter." So even while she grieves for the loss of her own loved one, she also finds depriving others of theirs amusing.
• Leitmotif: Plays during her infiltration in Alive, and when her face is revealed in the motion comic version of "Legacy". It also serves as the intro music for Chateau Guillard, her home. This makes her one of the few characters in the original Overwatch to have a dedicated theme.
• Leg Focus: As expected from a former ballet dancer, she has very long and shapely legs that are often emphasized by her poses and animations, and gets some Male Gaze shots, such as her Supermodel Strut during her "Death Stare" highlight. This is even is poked fun at with Widowmaker's R.I.P. victory pose where her legs are what comes out of the ground, posed in a stereotypical alluring fashion.
• Light Feminine and Dark Feminine: Her dark attire and darker personality mark her as the aloof and reserved Dark to Tracer's warm and amiable Light.
• Living Weapon: She was Reforged into a Minion by Talon and had several intrusive experiments done to her explicitly to make her an effective killer while numbing her to all emotions that could distract her from doing her job, which seems to have worked quite well, as she seems to be one of their most effective agents while also having no involvement or say in Talon's leadership.
• Locked Out of the Loop: Initially, Widowmaker seemed to be the only major Talon operative who did not know that Gabriel Reyes was Reaper. It would certianly make sense since she's basically just a Living Weapon who didn't take part in leadership nor did she willingly join to begin with. After the events of Masquerade, however, she is officially considered part of Doomfist's inner circle within Talon, having assisted him in his internal coup d'etat of the organization in order to consolidate its resources towards their cause of evolution through war instead of simply for profit. By Overwatch 2, she is now fully aware that "Reaper = Reyes", and even converses with him cordially like an old acquaintance, even discussing the wife he left behind, Martina.
• Long Hair Is Feminine: An evil variation. She's the most feminine on the roster, and has a ponytail that reaches down to her legs. She's never been seen without the ponytail however, and even during days as a faceless mook she apparently drilled a hole in her helmet just to fit it.
• Long-Range Fighter: Widowmaker does huge damage while her rifle is scoped, but is average in every other regard. Her most effective counters are flankers with high damage and/or health, like Genji, Reaper, Winston, or D.Va.
• Manchurian Agent: As Amélie, she was a civilian who was Happily Married to an Overwatch member that led operations against Talon. Since her husband foiled Talon's attempts to eliminate him, they decided to target her instead, kidnapping her and having her brainwashed into becoming a sleeper agent. She was eventually rescued by Overwatch, and they assumed she was in normal condition, but she ended up assassinating her husband in her sleep a few weeks after when her reprogramming kicked in. She then returned to Talon, where she was further brainwashed, trained, and modified into becoming their tool.
• Meaningful Name: Widowmaker earned her name after finishing her first mission as a Talon Manchurian Agent, which was killing her own husband. Lovely people, those Talon folks.
• Medusa: Her skin for the Battle for Olympus event is based on the mythological Medusa, including a white tunic, scaly skin, and a snake headpiece.
• Mind Rape: She was an accomplished ballet dancer until Talon kidnapped her and mentally tortured her into becoming a skilled, ruthless, and cruel assassin.
• Mini Dress Of Power: Her "Odette" and "Odile" skins, and her "Black Lily" Lunar New Year skin. Also counts as Pimped-Out Dress.
• More Deadly Than the Male: Widowmaker is one of the most dangerous and feared assassins in the world of Overwatch, far deadlier than most male snipers. She's also shown to be far more effective than her male counterpart Reaper, who has succeeded in all but one of her tasks (and the one she failed in so far, the museum robbery, happened to be a task where she was working together with Reaper), whereas Reaper has failed at everything he's shown to do so far. She also had another failure in Volskaya Industries, which is also when Reaper was tagging along, but it's not due to any of them being incompetent, it's because Sombra was sabotaging them for her own ends. It goes nicely with her namesake, the majority of spider species are known for the trope, with the female eventually consuming the male to reproduce, with the widowmaker species being the poster species for it.
• Morph Weapon: Her weapon needs less than a second to transform from assault rifle to sniper rifle or vice versa.
• Ms. Fanservice: She's one of the most overtly sexualized characters in the game. She is an attractive woman with exotic blue-purple skin and a slender figure, is quite tall and has equally long legs, wears a skin-tight Spy Catsuit with a Navel-Deep Neckline and an exposed backside alongside stockings and high heels into battle, many of her animations or intros feature a heavy amount of Male Gaze, her walking animation has her doing a Supermodel Strut and she speaks her lines with a deeper voice and often in French to invoke Everything Sounds Sexier in French. And naturally, some of her costumes show off even more skin or play into different fanservice tropes.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Implied. While she's more than willing to commit murder on everyone else, the one person whose death haunts her is her very first victim, her husband Gérard. This surfaces through all the brainwashing by calling his name when revived, being displeased when someone insults him, and the "Reflections" comic featuring her visiting his grave. Perhaps because Amélie still exists on some level, this is the result. If she is lucid to everything Widowmaker is doing, then one could imagine Amélie feeling like this for the last six years of her life.
• Navel-Deep Neckline:
  • Her default outfit is a backless bodysuit with a neckline that goes down to her stomach.
  • Averted with her "Noire" and "Nova" skins, which cover her cleavage and everything else.
• Nice Girl: What she was prior to being turned into Widowmaker. As Amélie, she was a sweet innocent woman who was Happily Married to Gérard Lacroix. Once Talon abducted her, however, everything changed for the worse.
• Noodle Incident: If she's used in King's Row, she'll talk about the time where she killed someone in the area and felt alive. Her Alive trailer showed the details.
• Not So Stoic: Talon deliberately brainwashed Widowmaker to be a cold emotionless killing machine for them, and for the most part, she is, but there are several instances where she emotes, implying she might be slowly deprogramming.
  • Right before and after she kills someone, she shows a much wider array of emotions, such as smirking and and she herself notes in her monologue that the act of killing is what makes her feel alive.
  • In the Alive, she shows a lot of animosity towards Tracer and even taunts her before finishing her off, which is why Tracer manages to escape her. When Tracer asks why she would murder Mondatta, Widowmaker seems amused by Tracer's suffering and even does a mocking Evil Laugh to her face.
  • She's shown to still have strong feelings about her late husband, despite having been brainwashed into murdering him. Ana managed to get under her skin by criticizing his love for her, and in the comic "Reflections", she is seen visiting his grave.
  • Widowmaker also notably loses her cool and becomes outright irritated during the Infiltration short when the alarms at Volskaya Industries go off and she misses her shot on Katya Volskaya as a result.
• Obviously Evil: Corpse-blue skin, yellow eyes, spider tattoos, and a sinister Psychotic Smirk that adorns her face. While not quite as over-the-top about it as her counterpart Reaper, it's still pretty obvious that she's not supposed to be one of the good guys.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Talon supposedly made her into an Emotionless Girl so she could be their perfect assassin. But whenever her arrogant and sadistic qualities subside, some of her humanity is often allowed to emerge, usually to grieve for her husband Gérard.
  • She snaps at Ana when the latter calls him a fool for marrying her (bear in mind that Ana isn't privy to the whole story), mournfully calls out to him if she's revived from the brink of death, and, most notably, solemnly visits his grave in Reflections. These moments illustrate that she's managed to retain some measure of her identity in spite of her conditioning.
  • For an example unrelated to her backstory, she mildly, but noticeably, loses her composure in Infiltration once the mission starts going off-track after she misses her shot. It's one of the few times that her calm demeanor cracks and she appears genuinely alarmed.
  • Some of her emotes have her practice ballet, which she used to perform as a civilian. It's here that we see she has retained some of her former identity and isn't as unfeeling as she appears, at least as far as her own grief is concerned.
  • This is made much more prominent in Overwatch 2, where she displays much more of the emotions that she was once believed to have lost upon her transformation. It could almost be said that the Amélie and Widowmaker personas have become one.
• Oh, Crap!: It’s subtle, but her eyes visibly widen and her normally calm demeanor becomes less composed when an enraged Winston drops in front of her in the cinematic trailer.
• Older Hero vs. Younger Villain:
  • Inverted with her Arch-Enemy Tracer; Widowmaker is 7 years Tracer's Senior, making her the older villainess to Tracer's younger heroine.
  • Played straight with her other Arch-Enemy Ana. The latter is nearly twice her age. But this actually has a plot significance to their enmity, as Ana's age means she was a colleague and friend to Gérard, and actually knew Widowmaker back when she was Amélie.
• Pet the Dog:
  • Visiting Gérard's grave. Granted, it's more of an expression of personal grief than an active display of good, but it serves the purpose of showing she still has some measure of humanity left in her by making it clear that she still loves him and regrets killing him.
  • In-game, you can invoke this trope by having her thank her teammates. The tone in her voice does suggest she's genuinely grateful, unlike Reaper.
• Proud Beauty: She's implied to be still quite vain, given how many of her animations have her flaunting her appearance (though that's likely for the benefit of the player). In Masquerade, once she's done Kicking Ass in All Her Finery, she opens a hand mirror to check if she messed up something during the fight.
• Punched Across the Room: Had this happen to her in the cinematic trailer. By a kid, no less!
• Ranged Emergency Weapon: Widowmaker is intended to be played by using her Widow's Kiss first and foremost as a Sniper Rifle, zooming in on enemies from a safe distance. Should that option be no longer desirable (such as if an enemy manages to close that distance and you have no escapes), her hip-fire turns it into an automatic rifle to lay down some close-ranged damage. Its damage isn't great and it's very inaccurate, but it's better than nothing!
• Real Name as an Alias: A document at Château Guillard shows she now uses Danielle Guillard as her civilian name, with Guillard just being her family surname, which she had before she married.
• Recurring Element: A ranged combat-oriented female character who was formerly sympathetic before being abducted by the enemy and forcibly turned to their side to cause trouble for the heroes. Given how things ultimately panned out for Kerrigan and Sylvanas, it’s anyone’s guess where she’ll go from here.
• Red and Black and Evil All Over: Her "Noire" skin gives her in a red and black color scheme.
• Reforged into a Minion: Her entire backstory explains how Talon turned her from an innocent woman into their loyal tool. Going from the civilian wife of an Overwatch agent to being brainwashed into a Manchurian Agent and later essentially transformed into a Living Weapon, complete with a new name.
• Reports of My Death Were Greatly Exaggerated: When Gérard was murdered by Talon, it was assumed she was killed as well. Naturally, it came as a surprise to learn that not only was she alive, but was the one responsible for his death and is now a Talon operative, with many such as Ana coming to the wrong conclusion that she must have been Evil All Along.
• Sadist: She loves killing people, claiming it makes her feel alive.
• Samus Is a Girl: In the comic short "Legacy" (featuring Ana), during her early days as a Talon operative, Widowmaker was believed to be an extremely mobile and deadly male sniper.
• Say My Name: One of her responses if revived by a friendly Mercy is to call out for her deceased husband, whom she murdered against her will.
• Scope Snipe: She defeated Ana Amari by landing a shot through Ana's rifle scope right in her eye. The incident is what led to Ana's retirement.
• Seductive Spider: She's a beautiful spider-themed Femme Fatale. Of note, her Sexy Backless Outfit actually exposes a spider tattoo on her back and her very first murder was killing her own husband in bed.
• See the Invisible: Infra-Sight can detect a Sombra using Thermoptic Camo.
• Sex Is Violence: She parallels herself to a spider in that "at the moment of the kill, they are never more alive".
• Sexy Backless Outfit: Her default outfit has an enclosed opening on the back which shows off her huge widow tattoo. Further emphasized with her Year of the Rooster-exclusive "Hairpin" spray, where she wears a Qipao.
• Shame If Something Happened: Says it word for word to Sombra in their pre-battle banter.
• She Cleans Up Nicely:
  • This spray shows that, as a normal person before her forced transformation, she looks almost completely different than what she is now. Especially since she doesn't have her tattoos. Still very attractive, but not in a depraved way like she currently is.
  • The Uprising event added a pre-transformation skin for Widowmaker. However, it's somewhere in the middle of this and her Evil Makeover, as while her skin is normal and she doesn't have her tattoos, her hair is still blue and her eyes are yellow, indicating that she's not on the good team anymore.
• Schmuck Bait: The Christmas event added a Play of the Game scene for her where she holds up a sprig of mistletoe, then sucker punches the camera.
• Secondary Color Nemesis: She is associated with purple as an immediate contrast to Tracer's yellow.
• Simple, yet Awesome: Aside from Venom Mine, every ability Widowmaker has revolves around sniping. All a player has to do is hook to a good vantage point, pop up her scope, and shoot. That being said, Widowmaker is one of the most terrifying characters in the hands of an expert.
• Smug Snake: Arrogant, sly, condescending, and carries herself like she thinks she’s better than everyone else in the room. Her behavior at the end of the Alive short breathes this trope.
• Sniper Duel: There are certain in-game scenarios where the best way to deal with an enemy Widowmaker is another Widowmaker. Case in point, if she sees an enemy sniper, instead of telling the team to watch out, she'll say this:
  Widowmaker: Sniper! Leave this to me.
  • In the story itself, she got locked into one years ago with Ana. Widowmaker won, resulting in Ana losing her eye and having to fake her death.
• Sniper Rifle: Her Widow's Kiss rifle doubles as a fully-automatic assault rifle in close range.
• Spikes of Villainy: As if the black and red color scheme of her Noire skin wasn't enough to hint she's evil, it's also got spikes on one of the sleeves.
• Stripperiffic: Her default combat outfit is a skin-tight bodysuit that shows off most of her front and back.
• Statuesque Stunner: One of the sexiest female characters, and also one of the tallest at 5'9".
• Status Infliction Attack: Her Venom Mine applies a Damage Over Time effect to those hit by its gas, and makes them visible behind walls.
• Supermodel Strut: As a former ballerina and current Femme Fatale, moving with a sashay seems to come naturally to her as her slow-walking animation does this by default, with her swaying her hips from side to side. But this is more noticeable during her "Death Stare" highlight which involves a close-up shot of her confidently strutting toward the viewer as the camera pans up her body, all while she sways her hips, legs, and shoulders. Her "Graceful Stroll" emote has her doing an exaggerated version of this, with her doing long steps while swaying with her arms and torso.
• Sympathetic Murderer: She may now be a cruel, cold-hearted assassin who takes pleasure in the act of killing, but her backstory of being an innocent woman who was kidnapped and Brainwashed into killing her own husband offers her a degree of sympathy for her current situation.
• "Take That!" Kiss: Her "Widow's Kiss" emote her mockingly blowing a kiss and then doing a coy Finger Wag, clearly intended as a taunt.
• Tattoo as Character Type: Has "cauchemar" and "araignée du soir" (French for "nightmare" and "evening spider", respectively) tattooed in black, scary-looking letters on her right forearm.
• Tattooed Crook: Is a cold-blooded assassin with a giant spider tattoo on her back, two French spider-themed tattoos on her forearm, and (as her Cote D'azur skin shows) a Talon tattoo on her left thigh. It's confirmed in a spray that she didn't have those tattoos back when she was the completely innocent Amélie.
• Tragic Villain: As much as she revels in the pain and grief she's inflicted as the world's most notorious assassin, the road she took to get there was not one she took willingly. Even in a cast full of people who have been shaped by hardship and misfortune, her backstory involves a level of deeply personal tragedy that is particularly gut-wrenching: guilty of nothing other than being married to their most persistent nemesis, she was torn away from her life by Talon and twisted through unspeakable means into a monster designed specifically to remove their enemies, starting with her own husband. It's little wonder she behaves the way she does; she literally has nothing left to lose, and her circumstances have effectively denied her any recourse to be anything else. Although she's undeniably left a trail of ruined lives behind her, it's important to remember that trail begins with herself.
• Tranquil Fury: When Ana tells her in-game that Gérard was a fool to love her, Widowmaker is evidently not pleased. She still maintains her normal soft-spoken tone when she retorts, however.
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight: In "Masquerade", Widowmaker casually appears at an underground casino with Doomfist to deal some business, and nobody seems to take notice of her corpse-blue skin. Then again, this is a world with intelligent robot lifeforms and cybernetic enhancements, and as pointed out by Blizzard themselves, it'd probably be a bad idea to ask.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Believe it or not, considering who she is, yes. The shot she fired that would get Ana presumed dead and indirectly led to the total collapse of Overwatch? Although she certainly would have gone ahead anyway if she had known, she didn't mean to do that. From her perspective, it was a combat scenario, and she was just eliminating a hostile target that would just as soon do the same to her, and she likely wasn't even aware of just who she was targeting or what the consequences would entail.
• Villain Episode: Although Tracer plays a huge role in the Alive animated short, it's largely told from Widowmaker's perspective as she attempts to assassinate Mondatta, who just wants peace between humans and Omnics.
• Villainous Underdog:
  • She manages to pull of her mission in Alive despite being by herself in unfamiliar territory against Mondatta's bodyguards and Tracer, who has the ability to teleport and can rewind time to undo her own mistakes, while all Widowmaker has is her gun and a few gadgets. Downplayed, because Tracer was the only tangible opposition she had to directly contend with, and by situating herself at an elevated position in the shadows, she was still operating in her element.
  • In the sniping duel with Ana, Widowmaker at that point was a relative newcomer to Talon, while Ana was one of the veteran Overwatch founders and one of the best markswomen in the world. Also downplayed, because Ana was approaching sixty at the time while Widowmaker was in her late twenties, physically and psychologically augmented to be an ideal assassin, and took advantage of Ana's hesitation on the realization of her true identity.
• Villains Out Shopping: Or swimming and sunbathing, in this case, judging by her "Côte d'Azur" skin.
• Wasted Beauty: Amalie Lacroix was once a renowned French ballerina, revered the world over for her grace and beauty. However, after Talon kidnapped and brainwashed her to be a cold, remorseless assassin (with unsettling blue skin at that), Widowmaker became an absolute nightmare that thrives on death, with her beauty only serving to help get close to her prey.
• Weak, but Skilled: In comparison to the rest of the cast. The bulk of her damage and overall usefulness to the team is dependent on her sniper rifle and how good of a shot the player is. Her Venom Mine is the only offensive ability in her move set, which for all intents is a trap that deals little damage and is best used for alerting her to an enemy approaching or cutting off their approach. Her Grappling Hook can get her to places other heroes can't reach, but it has a very long cooldown and she herself doesn't have the inherent/as frequent mobility of heroes like Tracer or Genji. Her Infra-Sight is devastating when used at its full potential through coordinating with her team, but has no killing power whatsoever by itself.
• Weapon Across the Shoulder: Her default pose has her holding her sniper-rifle across her shoulder.
• We Can Rule Together: She tries to tempt Hanzo to her side by stating that Talon could restore his family's empire. Hanzo's only reaction is "But at what cost?" Due to his sometimes-contradictory statements to Genji, and about his home, it's unknown how he truly feels about the offer.
• What Does He See in Her?: Some characters who knew her and Gérard from before voice their disapproval of their relationship to the new her. This is played for tragedy since they're unaware she was kidnapped and Reforged into a Minion, and assume she willingly turned traitor or was a Honey Trap all along who never loved Gérard.
  • Used to a heartbreaking degree with Ana, since it's implied Ana and Amélie used to be friends and Ana assumes Amélie willingly turned traitor and love made Gérard stupid for not seeing it. Widowmaker's response to this is... rather strong.
  Ana: Gérard was a fool to love someone like you.
  Widowmaker: You don't know anything about him.
  • In Overwatch 2, her interaction with Soldier 76 implies he thought there was something wrong with Amélie even before Talon got their hands on her, and he advised Gérard against marrying her.
  Widowmaker: Gérard spoke of you often.
  Soldier 76: Did he say I warned him about you?
  Widowmaker: Yes. He thought it was funny.
• When She Smiles:
  • Her wedding spray, which shows her as the normal, pre-brainwashed Amélie on her wedding day, also features a genuine smile that only makes her story more tragic.
  • The animation of her waving when saying "Hello" has her give what appears to be a genuinely friendly smile. And once she's done, it's right back to scowling.
  • She also smiles in her "Mistletoe" highlight intro for 3 seconds... until she knocks down the poor cameraman and scowls again.
• Wearing a Flag on Your Head: The "Tricolore" Summer Games skin changes her attire to having the color of the French flag.
• Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: Played for irony, as she claims that before she become Widowmaker, she used to be afraid of spiders.
• Wine Is Classy: She seems to enjoy wine given Château Guillard is filled with it, as a reference to her previous life as a classy aristocrat. Her "Toast" victory pose even has her holding a glass of wine in a regal fashion. Although it's implied by the sheer quantity of wine glasses scattered around that she's now using the wine as a means of Drowning Her Sorrows, rather than anything classy.
• Woman Of Wealth And Taste: The little that is known of her personal life implies she has a taste for luxury, possibly as a nod to her aristocratic roots. This is best seen in the Château Guillard map, a fancy estate that used to belong to her family and that she recently bought back.
• Would Hurt a Child: For someone who gets off on killing, she has just enough restraint not to attack a child unless provoked. That is, until the child gets in her way, then she has no qualms about turning her rifle towards him. Good thing that Winston intervened before she could do just that.
• Xanatos Gambit: Manages to execute such a sniper shot in the animated short Alive. During an intense battle, she lines up a firing solution at Tracer with the target for assassination behind her. If Tracer didn't teleport dodge in time, Widowmaker would kill the heroine and be rid of a potent enemy. If Tracer did teleport dodge, Widowmaker would kill Mondatta and succeed in her mission. Tracer dodged. Widowmaker won.
• Yellow Eyes of Sneakiness: Has yellow eyes, which is fitting, considering she's largely about stealth kills. Symbolically, they appear to represent her being under effects of Talon's brainwashing, as she originally had brown eyes before her transformation. Furthering this, her "Talon" skin, which is set after Talon converted her but before her skin turned blue, also has her with yellow eyes.

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