#ilios lighthouse

The newspaper on the rest chair, by the sunglasses (texture file from the gamefiles, this is the highest resolution available :/ )

Top part is, I assume, the old newspaper. The one on the chair is the bottom half, with the greek text. The bottom half likely replaced the top one (not that I recall seeing a newspaper on Ilios before) with the Summer Games update. 1 month or so after Doomfist and the Masquerade comic came out.

The greek text says

“ Ο ΑγγελιοΦόρος Ήλιος

Πολλοί Φόνοι κατά Ιη διάρκεια επιθέοεων οτο Καρναβάλι  

-----------------

The Angel of the Sun

Many Fears During Carnival Attacks “

(bad translation, would need a native speaker to translate it properly)

The picture in the bottom right corner is from the Masquerade comic

Yep, perfect match.

So, the newspaper is covering the events we see happening during the Masquerade comic. We can assume this newspaper is from the day after those events, at max a few days later. 

Widowmaker, (taking pleasure in) reading about her murders in the news. She’s never felt as alive as when she killed Mondatta, so she claims. So this is apparently a thing that she does, she’s low key self obsessed. That ain’t healthy, my poor Amélie, nothing moves her anymore besides killing :(

In Masquerade, Doomfist assembled some sort of Talon High Council and the comic ends with him stating that they have a war to start.

The sunglasses and the newspaper prove that Widowmaker was in Ilios a few days after the Carnival murders, it seems to be the very first mission she is being assigned now that Doomfist has escaped from his cell and taken back control of Talon. Doomfist is setting in motion the events that’ll eventually lead to this “war” that he wants to start. Widowmaker seems to be Reaper’s right hand. Her credentials are not high enough for her to be in the Council but she’s still a very important asset. I think it’s safe to assume they didn’t send Widowmaker on a vacation.

When you go towards the Orca Ship’s cockpit while on Ilios, Athena says 

"Over the past week Talon activity has been detected in the area. It is my belief that they are attempting to steal the unearthed artifacts that are excavated in the temple above Ilios." 

Until the 2017 Summer Games and the addition of those glasses on Ilios Lighthouse, we had no way of knowing what exactly Athena meant by “Talon activity” but now we do. Talon sent Widowmaker to pose as a tourist (so, her Côte d’Azur skin is canon). No way they’d allow Widowmaker to go on a break right after Doomfist told everyone they had a war to start. No way she’d want to go on a break either anyway x)

She’s on Ilios for a mission. She could be posing as a tourist while she gathers information. You’d think she’s the WORST person to send on an infiltration mission with her blue skin making her easy to spot, but hey, this is 207X, there are robots walking around, blue skin ain’t so weird.

The thing with Widowmaker is that she’s good at one thing and (as far as we’ve seen) one thing only : assassination. Who is/are her target/s on Ilios? On Petra, we learn that the nameless organization of archeologists is in charge of the ONGOING excavations on Ilios Ruins. Ioannidis is a name that pops up on the one of the map’s screens, we can assume he’s the one in charge of the Ilios excavation, Ioannidis being a greek name (meaning son of Ioannis, Ioannis being the greek equivalent of “John”, the man is basically a greek Johnson...possible Indiana Jones reference? Son of John...Jones, close enough?).

It seems he’s reporting about his progress on the ruins of Ilios to this Hamid Faisal person who could be the “boss”.

The question is : how do the statues, the temple, the excavation site and the archeologists fit within Talon’s war scheme? Why sending a highly trained assassin to a digging site? Why is Talon after those ancient greek artifacts?

The obvious explanation is that they want to steal then sell those artifacts to a client. But how would that start a war? Does Talon even need money? There has to be something more to those statues and artifacts that we’re not seeing right now. How would killing a bunch of archeologists help start a war? This makes no sense. Yet.

Would Talon have an asset as important as Widowmaker waste her talents on an errand like stealing a few statues? Maybe this is not about the money, maybe it’s about sending a message. What is an archeological site like Ilios but a testimony to mankind’s greatness, ingenuity, culture and ultimately, a beautiful heritage from the past.

Who’d want to destroy that? The obvious candidate is Null Sector. We don’t know much, if anything, about their motivations, but if I was a robot bent on destroying humanity, I’d focus on the mass murder aspect of the entreprise, of course, but I wouldn’t forget to make sure the symbols they value the most are turned to ashes. Maybe Talon wants to start a war by killing some archeologists, destroying precious heritage and making it look like Omnic extremists did it.

That would start a war.

But why sending Widowmaker, the highly trained assassin? She’s gotta be there because there’s a high priority target to kill, someone no one but her can get, maybe someone important who’ll come take a look at the statues, someone from the United Nations? The ruins are an internationally protected heritage site after all, it would make sense for some VIP to show up eventually, once the artifacts are all unearthed, perfect time to strike then. Maybe Athena is wrong, maybe Talon is not after the artifacts but after whatever big shot will come out to Ilios to pose for photos with the statues as the entire world watches while Widowmaker aims for their head. I think Widowmaker will be linked to the future greek hero’s background story. Hell, I’m certain she will.

This clue is 1 year old. Nothing new happened regarding Ilios (other than the Petra archeo-faction, but it’s still really vague, we just got a namedrop and that’s it). I guess, like with most clues, we just have to wait.

That’s all I have for you on this topic right now !

If you’re open minded and if you enjoy wasting time hunting for the many obscure things the devs have put in the world of Overwatch, I have an all new discord server :D