Brigitte (Overwatch)

Conception and development

Brigitte first appeared in Overwatch lore as Torbjörn's daughter and a friend of Reinhardt in the 2016 Dragon Slayer digital comic. She was created at the same time as Moira, the game's 26th hero. Initially called Pally, the character had an ability that sent a healing orb to teammates, but it had a long cooldown. As both characters were developed, Blizzard decided to make Pally more of a tank-hybrid and moved the healing orb to Moira, where it became part of her Biotic Orb abilities.

When Pally's skill set was further refined, it fit well with Brigitte's backstory, so the hero was integrated into the existing lore. The developers designed Brigitte as a support-tank hybrid to counter the dive strategy that was popular in the game's meta. In a dive, a mobile hero like Winston or Tracer would rush into the defending team's back lines while the main tanks were away, a sacrificial move meant to disrupt and take out the remaining defenders.

Brigitte on defense could stun and slow down the diving hero, giving her team time to react and regroup, which neutralized the dive. Before her official reveal, Jeff Kaplan said the character was very needed. Brigitte was announced as the 27th playable hero in late February 2018. Matilda Smedius voices her.

In a developer update video, Kaplan explained her abilities and her support-tank hybrid design. She was available on Blizzard's Public Test Realm for a few weeks before being fully released on March 20. PCGamesN noted that she could disrupt dive compositions featuring Winston and Tracer, linking this to Kaplan's comments about her shaking up the meta.

Appearances

Brigitte Lindholm, a 23-year-old adventurer and mechanical engineer from Gothenburg, Sweden, first appeared in the April 2016 Overwatch comic Dragon Slayer, where she is present as Reinhardt takes on local thugs. She later shows up in the December 2016 comic Reflections in a family panel with Reinhardt, and in the November 2017 animated short Honor and Glory, which focuses on Reinhardt. Her video game debut came in March 2018 when she joined Overwatch's playable roster, alongside a short animated origin story highlighting her bonds with Torbjörn and Reinhardt.

In 2026, she appeared in the mobile game Overwatch Rush. Brigitte's backstory is linked to her father Torbjörn and godfather Reinhardt. After Torbjörn was badly hurt on Operation: White Dome, Reinhardt saved him, and Torbjörn wrote to his pregnant wife that Reinhardt could name the child. Following Overwatch's dissolution, Reinhardt became a knight-errant, and Brigitte joined him as his squire.

She started by maintaining his armor but soon had to treat his wounds. Feeling her role was limited, she secretly built her own armor to fight by his side. She also designed Reinhardt's shield.

Critical reception

Brigitte's reveal led Stewart Chisam, a game developer on Hi-Rez Studios' Paladins, to post a tweet comparing her to Ash, a Paladins character. Chisam told Kotaku the tweet was a light-hearted joke and an homage to the Overwatch Clone comments Paladins received. Since her debut, Brigitte was positively received, with fan art appearing on social media shortly after her reveal. Cass Marshall of Polygon attributed some appeal to the contrast between her and Reinhardt: equally resolute, but less hardened by battle and more driven by wanting to prevent damage than inflict it.

While many depicted her as a knight, Marshall applauded artists who emphasized her as cute. Ana Valens of The Mary Sue praised her as one of the best characters introduced in Overwatch, commending Blizzard for portraying an incredibly strong, extremely competent woman with blacksmithing skills without leaning into butch tropes, instead showing her as between feminine butch and soft femme. Ryan Gilliam of Polygon saw Brigitte as a modern take on the paladin concept, a mix of brawn and peace, and praised how well she fit alongside Paladin-type characters from World of Warcraft, describing the duality she represented as beautiful and interesting.