Blizzard explains why Sojourn is being held off for Overwatch 2

Sojourn will be the first black female hero in Overwatch as a franchise, but she's not being added in until Overwatch 2 rolls around. In an interview with Kotaku, Overwatch director Jeff Kaplan explains just how long Sojourn has been in the works, and why she's being held off for the seque.

“We concepted Sojourn before the original Overwatch game even launched. She immediately became a very important character to us, and as we were developing the idea for Overwatch 2, she sort of started to move to the center of the story. She’s coming to the surface now. You saw her in [the recent PVE event] Storm Rising. She was the commander sending the troops into Havana on that mission. We’ve always had the storyline for her, and we’ve been working on Overwatch 2 for many years now.

I personally feel like the right thing to do by the character is still deliver on that story and not just rush her out because the community is upset with us. I tend to find that there’s always a community upset with us over something. I’ve mentioned this before, but the real value of Overwatch inclusivity is the idea that we’re open-minded, that we want everybody to feel welcome into the universe, and the result of that is diversity. I would hate for the diversity to ever feel pandering, like we just had this spreadsheet with a bunch of checkboxes. Because it’s a ridiculous notion to think we’re ever going to be able to represent all the people on the planet.”