Y'all keep saying that Reaper is wearing a Phantom reference but get this:
“The story takes place at the castellated abbey of the “happy and dauntless and sagacious” Prince Prospero. Prospero and 1,000 other nobles have taken refuge in this walled abbey to escape the Red Death, a terrible plague with gruesome symptoms that has swept over the land. Victims are overcome by “sharp pains”, “sudden dizziness”, and hematidrosis, and die within half an hour. Prospero and his court are indifferent to the sufferings of the population at large; they intend to await the end of the plague in luxury and safety behind the walls of their secure refuge, having welded the doors shut.“
This is part of a summary of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Masque of the Red Death,” which is what Erik in Phantom of the Opera is referencing.
In the story, the Prince hosts a masquerade ball for his friends to revel and enjoy in when suddenly, a mysterious, red-robed, masked figure joins them. They demand to know who he is. The figure flees through the rooms of the abbey, until he is cornered.
“The Prince pursues him with a drawn dagger and corners the guest in the seventh room. When the figure turns to face him, the Prince lets out a sharp cry and falls dead. The enraged and terrified revelers surge into the black room and forcibly remove the mask and robe, only to find to their horror that there is nothing underneath. Only then do they realize the figure is the Red Death itself, and all of the guests contract and succumb to the disease. The final line of the story sums up, “And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all”.“
At the end of the “Masquerade” comic, Reaper is the only one seating himself at the table, still wearing his mask. Even Doomfist has removed his.
With the newest Doomfist lore and Talon information, we’ve learned that some members of Talon are trying to orchestrate a war, while others are more invested in using the organization to make profits from crime. The leaders sit in secluded rooms and wall themselves off from the genuine pain and suffering taking place in the world.
Both the original “Red Death” and the version worn by Erik in the Phantom of the Opera are about “embodiments of death” infiltrating a “rich, indulgent, masquerade ball” in order to break them of their hubris.
There is only one character still wearing a mask at the end of the “Masquerade” comic.
And as he likes to often say:
