Marvel Rivals Studios Unveil How Often New Characters Will Arrive

Undoubtedly, Marvel Rivals has been a huge hit since it launched in late 2024. We’re in 2025 now, and it’s not waning in popularity in the slightest. In fact, it’s arguably growing in popularity further, as it’s keeping consistent player numbers on key platforms and continues to bring new ones into the fold. It’s also made a staggering amount of money, highlighting that this game is a hit despite the free-to-play model that it’s in. However, as with all “team shooters” of this kind, the team at NetEase has to do constant updates to keep players interested. Thankfully, it seems like they’re well aware of that, and they plan to release characters constantly to help keep the roster “fresh.”

The game’s director, Guangyun Chen, spoke to Metro about the title and talked about how the recently released Season One, “Eternal Night Fall,” would go with its content and how content would be released in the future:

“Every season we’ll be rolling out fresh seasonal stories, new maps, and new heroes. We’ll actually be breaking down each season into two halves. The length of one season is three months. And for each half of the season, we will introduce a new hero. We just eventually want to continue to enhance the experience, and, you know, keep everyone excited in our community.”

So, for “Eternal Night Fall,” the new heroes are the Fantastic Four. Already, Susan Storm and Mister Fantastic have joined the roster, which means that in the back half, we’ll get The Thing and Johnny Storm. After them, it’ll be a new set of heroes to join in the fun. As for how the team picks what heroes to bring next…

“Our choice of heroes will be guided by the overall gameplay experience or theme that we want to create for each season. So it’ll revolve around the season and right now, at post-launch, we have eight Vanguards and seven Strategists at launch. The team believes that it gives the players a solid variety for tactical match-ups or team composition. Having more Duelists at the moment will definitely enhance the Duelist experience, letting players dive a little bit deeper into that aspect.”

The good news on that front is that Marvel Rivals taps into every aspect of the comic giant’s universe, so there is no shortage of characters to choose from to fit certain roles. There have already been leaks that characters like Blade, Ultron, Professor X and more are coming to the game, so players have plenty to look forward to.