Yesterday, Marvel Rivals unveiled two new heroes coming to the shooter in season 2: the telepathic mutant Emma Frost and the unshackled AI Ultron. We haven’t seen much of Ultron yet, as he’ll be added later in the season. Emma Frost will join the roster when season 2 begins on April 11. Fans are excited to have another woman in the Vanguard pool, given that the role has been heavily male-dominated thus far. However, the community is also having conversations about how the mutant’s inclusion shows a weakness in the diversity of Marvel’s character designs and the heroes from which developer NetEase is pulling.
Emma Frost marks the third instance of Marvel Rivals putting a blonde, white woman in a blue-and-white suit and sending her onto the battlefield. Invisible Woman and Dagger are the other two, and before Emma joined the game, there were already plenty of jokes about not being able to tell the pair apart at a distance. Now, a new challenger for the blonde, white lady crown has entered the chat, and the problem is only going to get worse. Emma does have some notable differences in her design that make her more distinguishable in a scrap, such as her exposed thighs and fuck ass bob, but fans are still annoyed that NetEase and Marvel are relying on heroes that look so similar in the heat of the moment when the comics have plenty of diverse characters to choose from.
If there were more distance between Emma, Invisible Woman, and Dagger being added to the roster, fans might be less concerned, but the game has been out for four months, and there’s been a bizarrely similar-looking blonde, white woman in a blue-and-white suit added each season thus far. There have already been some teases of more characters who fall into this archetype joining the game, like Dazzler, so it could become even more farcical. Captain Marvel is also one of the rumored leaked heroes, but she, at the very least, might be wearing blue and red.
We’ll see if Emma is as indiscernible as the other two when she comes to the game on April 11.