What happened with the White Masks?
As we all noticed, the storyline with the White Masks, which were introduced as the Big Bad Rainbow has to fight and the reason Rainbow got reactivated, is going nowhere. I don’t know if the devs don’t know what to do with it, or forgot it existed, or simply aren’t interested in exploring it more. So here I am, ready to analyse the clues we have of what happened with that plotline, and supplying it with my own theories. Let’s try to bridge the old plot with this new narrative shift!
(Caveira seems to not get along with people in general, and Bandit has hair!?)
Let’s start at the beginning: the White Masks were presented to us as this big threat that required Rainbow’s intervention, and most of the situations (aka, the tutorial and sort of pseudo-campaign), are solo missions of some of the ops against the White Masks. It all culminates in the last scenario, Article 5, with that huge attack on Bartlett University (link to the video). Things look pretty damn serious, and Six herself says “we must remain vigilant in the face of this emerging threat, as the ultimate goal of our enemy is still unknown.”
Fast forward some time, and now Harry is in charge of Rainbow, since the old Six left after accepting the position as US Secretary of State. Most curious that she would leave being in charge of an organization she reactivated, don’t you think? At the same time we learnt of this, we also got Harry’s board, with this interesting little note:
Hmm, interesting. So they have seized some White Mask accounts, and old Six stepped down from Rainbow. This makes me think that during that time in between Article 5 and these events now, Rainbow was pretty damn successful in combating the terror attacks. They must have conducted some really good operations, dealing blow after blow to the terrorists, and now the White Masks are lying low, or at least what remains of them.
However, Harry isn’t convinced that the threat is over: “it is always that which we don’t know we don’t know that poses the greatest danger.” Perhaps he’s just being paranoid, perhaps he has some slivers of intel indicating the threat isn’t gone, or perhaps he’s just worried about another terrorist organization taking over and following in the footsteps of the White Masks. However, if there hasn’t been much activity lately, some people might start questioning why the hell is Rainbow is still active since they’re not needed at the moment, right? So Harry uses the accounts they seized to fund this new project of his: The Program.
Now, I see The Program as Harry’s attempt of reminding the nations and powers that be of why Rainbow is a good idea: we were successful in our task, our operators are the best of the best, keeping this program alive benefits everyone and we’ll be ready to act whenever it’s needed! And my theory is that, perhaps, he’s also using this competition thing as either a show of force/threat to keep potential enemies from acting… or as bait to lure them out!
Although, that depends of whether the Olympic-like competition aspect is just a gameplay thing or would also happen in lore. Cause I mean, if you were a terrorist and knew the most elite counter-terrorism operators from all over the world were all in one place, making a spectacle (probably military personnel to evaluate them or Rainbow as a whole) wouldn’t it be tempting to make a bold statement and try to wipe off of the map as many as you could?
In conclusion: the devs may have seemingly forgotten the main antagonist force they introduced at the start, but the new developments could potential make for very interesting scenarios (be it in canon or in fanfic, cause let’s face it, we’ll have to take the creative reigns too see that happen, most probably).
Thanks for coming to my (rambling) TedTalk! 😄
