Since Blizzard dropped a gaudy tweet celebrating Junkrat as a lovable maniac, the Overwatch community erupted in celebration. The responses were positively chaotic, just the way the explosive Aussie would want them to be! The tweet from the official Overwatch account read, “Junkrat may be maniac, but he’s our maniac 🥰”, and players were asked to flood the comments with rat emojis if they loved (or hated) the character.
And boy, did they deliver! The responses have developed into full-scale celebrations for Junkrat, with hundreds of rat emojis being thrown about, and some community members issuing quite specific demands. Well, really, it’s just one demand tortured into numerous forms: “When are you releasing Joshrat’s mythic skin already?”
One player named @draculadyke just shouted, “THATS MY BOY!!!! JUNKRAT MYTHIC WHEN!!!!,” which pretty much says it all. And she was not alone; her cries were followed by @HolyShitItsMoth asking, “junkrat mythic next season??” and @samtholomew begging, “Give him a couple buffs and a mythic please.” It is almost as if the whole player base had conspired for this.
But oh, what was I saying? Oh yes, the mythic skin obsession. Players have been waiting for Junk to be shown love like other heroes have been in recent seasons; @BoogieBenny lamented, “Please give junk more love!! My main needs better skins!” and @AballayL2001 added, “Come on overwatch, hear your community, we want new junkrat skins.” The demand is real, and the players are not holding back.
The love for Junkrat runs deep; however, demanding cosmetics is not enough. @feral_quest states, “He’s the reason I started playing in 2017. Lots of love to my favorite rat man.” Whereas @Plepsfoko says, “His VA is probably my favorite performance in all of overwatch and that’s sayin somethin cause everybody does a great job.” That is high praise considering Overwatch has always been known for great voice acting.
An interesting split exists within the community, though: while most are here celebrating Junkrat’s chaotic energy, @SamiBapWeaver had a different take: “no thanks P.S. remove his passive. sincerely: every Juno main in the game.” So not everyone is hopping onto the Junkrat train. And @MattehBoom warned, “Don’t you dare put that skin in the game. We know you know exactly what one. We don’t need that kind of evil in the world!” Which is rather vague-which skin are they talking about???
Larger international Overwatch communities entered into the fray. A French-speaking user, @sansvisage__, commented, “Quand ça va être le prochain skin mythique tu vas voir flou” which roughly translates to “When the next mythic skin comes you’re going to see blurry” – not entirely sure what that means, but the enthusiasm is unmistakable!
There were extra creative ideas tossed in: @Speedm12x2 suggested, “Fr will Jamison Fawkes, get a Journalist/reporter🎤 skin, an Mei a Weather girl☀️🌦️🌩️☔️🌈️skin? bc ‘Weather report lots of sun,'” which actually sounds like a lot of fun. And @Asriel_1998 insisted on “RELEASE A WUYANG X NIGHTWING SKIN!!!” followed by fan art.
But the community interaction was wild in itself: there is that whole thread where @LizardRangoon dropped some…questionable Junkrat fan content with @Stanley_xxykk responding, “What am i even looking at rn… omg..this is hideous,” and @starborne0661 chiming in with, “The fact that a fan was comfortable and confident enough to submit this is absolutely diabolical.” Some fan creations really should not go where this one went.
It’s quite intriguing that this one little tweet spawned such a well-orchestrated response from Junkrat mains and casual fans alike. @roscotep stated, “He is forever my favourite in all of overwatch,” countered by @MrTinyman5507 in all caps, “I LOVE JUNKRAT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!🐀🐀🐀🐀🐀🐀🐀🐀🐀🐀🐀🐀🐀🐀🐀🐀🐀” – now that is inundating rat emojis.
Even the smaller interactions had the community’s cocked head; @Eliotsquared supported another user by saying, “junk deserves a new skin I’m manifesting for u🙂↕️,” which is sincere community support. And recently, @GPanther9 globally assigned Junkrat the title “so fanboy (fanboy chum chum) coded 🐀,” a reference that I haven’t heard for ages, honestly.
The timing feels really important since Overwatch 2 seasons are being launched regularly, and mythic skins are the largest rewards per season-players would love to see Junkrat finally have his day in the sun. @brokenterrace even added “Please let this be a mythic skin tease and not another skin tease,” with a suspicious eyes emoji, insinuating that they might think this is a push from PlayStation to stir the waters for a Junkrat mythic in the near future.
Where does that then maybe leave us? Definitively loud and clear in its speech-the Overwatch community adores their explosive Aussie hero and is ready to see him go mythic. Whether it was just Blizzard showing love for Junkrat or at least teasing some real content remains to be seen, but one thing is for sure; Junkrat mains are loud and proud, and they are going to hit those rat emoji buttons till they get what they want-so much chaos remains, really, and for all intents and purposes, we wouldn’t want it any other way.
