Season 16 of Apex Legends is only a few days away, and it promises to be one of the biggest seasons the developers at Respawn have ever cooked up for their players. There isn’t a new character coming up, with the devs taking an off-season in order to ship a huge number of changes to existing characters, game modes, the user interface, and more.
Players won’t have to wait long for a new legend, however. Rumors have swirled for a while now about the likely new legend set to join the fight in season 17. But recent leaks have also indicated that a current legend might be getting a full rework—or be “replaced” completely, in a way.
Apex Insider Thordan Smash revealed some of those leaks on his YouTube channel, and the character in question is being called “Revenant Reborn” in some internal builds of the game, according to Thordan and his source.
It’s unclear if this is supposed to be a rework for Revenant or a new character altogether, but it’s important to note that “Revenant Reborn” reportedly replaces Revenant in those builds, and is not given its own character slot. The new Revenant comes complete with a wicked ultimate as well: instead of creating a Death Totem, Revenant Reborn throws a projectile. Whoever he hits with it gets transported to the Void with Revenant—and apparently, the two players then duke it out in a one-vs-one battle.
If true, this would be the first time a Void-based ability wouldn’t be associated with invulnerability. The whole point of Wraith’s ability kit and Ash’s ultimate ability are to put players temporarily in the Void where they cannot take damage while moving from one place to another. This Void ultimate seems completely different, and fits into Revenant’s “synthetic nightmare” description quite well.
Revenant has seemed ripe for a full rework for a while now. He’s a character whose kit is very annoying to fight against, with a long Silence tactical that disables enemy abilities and an ultimate that forces teams to effectively kill a Revenant team twice. These annoying qualities also make the character more difficult to get into a good spot balance-wise, as any changes either seem too weak to make him useful, or boost his value too much and make him completely overpowered. The new rumored ultimate instead places all emphasis on a one-vs-one battle of skill without needing to worry about teammates or enemy teams, which should make Revenant feel a bit less annoying while also maintaining the fear factor that the character possesses.
It’s not entirely clear when any reborn Revenant might come to Apex, although Thordan’s source indicated that it would most likely come to the game in season 19 or 20. If the rumors are true that season 16 will be a particularly short one, that would make the end of 2023 or the beginning of 2024 the most likely time for this version of Revenant to appear, if he comes to the game at all.
It might not be the Forge reboot that fans were hoping for, but it’s certainly an interesting concept that could be heading for Apex soon.
