Angela Ziegler is a mad scientist with a god complex. She must be stopped.
Or: Get ready kids 'cause I'm here to way overanalyze some more of these characters in my neverending quest to figure out what the hell makes these maniacs tick.
Buckle up ‘cause I’m about to take you through an intro to my Evil Mercy headcanon. I actually have a lot to say about this, but it’s all based on current canon (and we all know how Blizzard loves their retcons) so for now I’m just gonna’ keep it to in-game interactions. I may revisit it later.
Mercy: What happened to you?
Reaper: You tell me, doc.
Let’s start with the obvious: Reaper himself implies that Mercy had something to do with what happened to him.
Mercy: I never intended this for you, Gabriel.
Reaper: You knew exactly what you were doing.
Mercy starts this conversation, and she does so by openly confirming that she did something to him. Thus, the implication now becomes that not only did Angela fuck Gabe up, but that she also lies about it (and that she’s been lying about it so often that she even plays dumb to him, despite the fact he was, you know, kinda there when it happened).
Mercy: Your mother always hoped you'd follow in her footsteps.
Pharah: She did? Funny, she never mentioned that to me.
and
Pharah: I always dreamed of the day we would fight together.
Ana: Wanting a better life for you is all I ever dreamed of.
Here (among other places), Ana directly contradicts what Mercy tells Pharah about her. This emphasizes for my point on the second Mercy/Reaper quote: Angela is intentionally deceitful and manipulative. In this example, she is willing to use the fact that Pharah never really knew Ana well enough to know what her mother wanted for her in order to convince Pharah to keep fighting (I honestly cannot come up with a reason for why she does this).
Mei: Doctor Ziegler, I don't think you've aged a day since I last saw you.
and
Mercy: Mei, you haven't aged a day. What's your secret?
And this is where we get to the crux of my theory: that Angela Ziegler went into medicine with the end goal of making herself immortal and that she accepted her position at Overwatch purely to further that goal. I also believed that, at some point before the explosion in Zurich, she managed to achieve it. Consider that Hanzo, with his lined face and greyed temples, is only one year older than Mercy.
And that’s why, every time I hear her say to Reinhardt, “you’re not getting any younger.” I hate her a little more.
