Marvel Rivals Season 9 adds Jubilee and The Hood, overhauls Black Widow and the Team-Up system

Marvel Rivals Season 9 – The Mystery of Thebes – kicks off this Friday, July 10, bringing two new heroes, a new map, and the biggest mechanical overhaul the game has seen since launch. NetEase revealed everything in a livestream, capped by a cinematic trailer showing Apocalypse getting run through with a sword by an unseen attacker – a mystery the community is already picking apart.

Jubilee joins as a Strategist, using pyrotechnic plasma blasts that both heal allies and damage enemies. She can hover briefly to dodge incoming fire, drop healing bubbles for teammates, and her Ultimate knocks back a crowd of enemies at once. In the game's lore she's serving Apocalypse as the Horseman of Famine, hoping he'll free her son Shogo from a permanent dragon form. The Hood is also confirmed for the season but is expected to arrive in early August rather than at launch. A new convoy map set in Thebes drops on July 23.

The bigger story for existing players is what's happening to Black Widow and the Team-Up system. Black Widow has been the game's weakest character for most of its life – developers acknowledged she was never a meta pick and that some players actively complained when teammates selected her. The rework cuts her damage but dramatically increases fire rate, shifting her from a pure sniper to a semi-automatic mid-range fighter. Her old Ultimate is now a standard toolbar ability, stamina costs for sprinting and super-jumping are gone, and she gets a new gauntlet-slam dash. Her new Ultimate temporarily transforms her rifle back into a high-damage sniper with a larger hitbox, pierce capability, and six shots over 20 seconds. The Team-Up overhaul is even broader: every hero now carries two independent Team-Up loadouts that can be swapped between matches, rounds, or respawns. Each Team-Up has a base effect that works even without the partner present, and an enhanced effect that activates when the partner is actually on your team. Lead combat designer Zhiyong described the old system as "uninspired," saying the team had been adding and removing Team-Ups just to fill patch notes.

The season's narrative hook – who stabbed Apocalypse – is already generating speculation, with Polygon noting the community thinks it has the answer figured out, pointing toward Gorr the God Butcher based on early leaks. NetEase hasn't confirmed anything, which means the mystery is likely the throughline for the full season arc.