Last updated: 17 August 2026

Marvel Rivals Season 9 New Heroes Jubilee, The Hood & Everything That's Changing

Season 9: The Mystery of Thebes goes live July 10, 2026 at 9 AM UTC, and it is the biggest system-level update Marvel Rivals has had since launch. A new Strategist joins the roster immediately, Black Widow's entire kit is rebuilt, the Team-Up system is overhauled for every hero at once, and a new shield type changes how aggressive dive comps trade damage. Here's exactly what's new and what it means for the way you play.

01Jubilee — the New Strategist

Jubilee is the headline addition at Season 9's launch: a mutant Strategist who fights with bursts of explosive light energy rather than direct healing beams. She launches alongside the season on July 10, with The Hood following later as the mid-season addition (see below) rather than at launch.

Her kit revolves around a passive called Sparkle Marks: her detonation ability and her ultimate both apply a Sparkle Mark to anyone they hit, and her primary fire — a rapid stream of energy plasmoids — detonates those marks on contact. Detonating a mark on an ally grants a healing boost and bonus health; detonating one on an enemy deals a burst of extra damage. Landing a mark first and following up with primary fire is the core rhythm of playing her, rather than just holding down a heal beam.

• Primary Fire (Energy Plasmoids): A rapid-fire stream that heals allies and damages enemies on hit. After triggering a Sparkle Mark, the next stretch of primary fire is enhanced — higher rate, more damage and healing, and it pierces through multiple targets instead of stopping at the first.
• AoE detonation ability: An area burst that damages enemies and heals allies in its radius while applying Sparkle Marks — the main way to set up a primary-fire follow-up on a cluster of targets.
• Mobility cooldown: A short self-buff that speeds up her movement, jump height, and healing output with unlimited ammo for a few seconds, on a recharging meter rather than a fixed cooldown.
• Ultimate — Firework Finale: Launches an orbiting ring of firework clusters around Jubilee that knocks enemies up and back while healing and buffing allies caught inside — a strong disengage tool for a Strategist who otherwise has to stay close to the fight to land marks.

Her Team-Up with Blade, Vampiric Kin, deploys the Vampiric Field ability that grants nearby allies life steal — and if Blade himself is on the team, the field additionally grants continuous healing rather than just life steal on hit. Under Season 9's dual-loadout system she has a second Team-Up too, Hellfire Sparks with The Hood, though it can't do anything until he actually joins the roster in the 9.5 mid-season update.

02The Hood — Season 9.5's New Vanguard

The Hood (Parker Robbins) is the season's second new hero and, as promised, didn't launch on July 10 with Jubilee — he arrived with the Season 9.5 mid-season update on August 7, 2026, becoming the 53rd hero in the roster. Rockstar-style mid-season hero drops are now Marvel Rivals' standard cadence: one hero at season launch, one more partway through.

NetEase's official reveal (following the Dev Vision Vol. 20 broadcast) confirmed The Hood as a hitscan off-tank Vanguard, and his kit turned out meaningfully different from the pre-launch leaks: earlier datamined reports had described a sword and clone-based abilities, but the shipped kit has neither. Instead, his passive, Ruinous Pact, builds Demonic Energy as he deals damage with his twin pistols — his attack speed increases at 50% energy, and at 100% he switches to demonic rifles for fast burst damage. His other tools are a barrier ability that blocks incoming damage and crowd control, lifesteal built into his kit, and short-duration flight for repositioning. His ultimate, Demon of the End, drops him into a Full Demon State where he becomes a stationary turret firing high-impact piercing rounds while radiating dark energy that grants bonus health to nearby allies.

His Team-Up with Jubilee, Hellfire Sparks, is active now that both heroes are in the roster together, and he also has a Team-Up with Scarlet Witch and one with Moon Knight, plus passive synergy bonuses that boost Magik, Cloak & Dagger, and Jubilee's existing kits.

03Black Widow's Rework

Black Widow gets the most significant single-hero rework of the season, shifting her away from a pure long-range sniper toward a hero who's threatening at every range:

• Base kit: Her old always-available ADS sniper scope is removed from standard play. In exchange, her primary fire rate is increased and tuned to feel more like a mid-range semi-automatic weapon than a pure one-shot sniper.
• Charged plasma blast moves off her ultimate: the electrified charged shot that used to be locked behind her ultimate is now a standard ability on a normal cooldown — it deals damage and applies a slow, so it's available far more often than before.
• New ultimate: activating it drops her into ADS sniper mode for a set window (around 20 seconds) during which she can fire several powerful piercing shots — with an enlarged hitbox and boosted non-critical damage that doesn't fall off at range. The old "perfect headshot or nothing" pressure of her ultimate is gone in favor of a more forgiving, sustained sniping window.
• New airborne attack: while airborne, she can dive toward a target and slam down with her Widow's Bite gauntlet for AoE damage — a genuine close-range option she didn't have before.
• Mobility: her sprint and Widow's Bite super jump keep the stamina-free mobility from her old kit.

The net effect: Black Widow is less of a one-shot pick-off specialist who lives or dies by scoped headshots, and more of a flexible DPS who can contribute at close and mid-range even when she can't line up a perfect scoped shot.

04Team-Ups Are Completely Overhauled

Every existing Team-Up combo — the ones covered in our Team-Ups Explained guide — is affected by Season 9's biggest structural change: every hero now gets two independent Team-Up Ability loadouts instead of one fixed combo. Some of these are entirely new abilities; others replace a hero's existing base ability outright while the Team-Up is active.

NetEase is calling it the largest balance update yet, and it touches roughly 80% of the playable roster in some form. If you had a go-to Team-Up combo from Season 8.5, expect its specific effect — and possibly which heroes it pairs — to have changed. Check the in-game Team-Up panel on the hero-select screen after the patch rather than relying on pre-Season 9 combo lists.

05New Mechanic: Regenerative Shields

Season 9 introduces a new health type called Regenerative Shields, layered on top of the existing bonus-health and barrier systems several heroes already use. The rule is simple: if a hero holding Regenerative Shields avoids taking any damage for 5 seconds, the shield begins regenerating and fully restores over the following 5 seconds.

In practice, this rewards heroes who can disengage and reset rather than heroes who just tank damage head-on — it's a direct counter to sustained chip damage, but does nothing to help you in a fight you can't break away from. Expect Regenerative Shields to show up primarily on mobile or dive-oriented kits that received it as part of their Season 9 balance pass.

06Ultimate Charge Is Slower Across the Board

Alongside the Team-Up overhaul, Season 9 globally reduces how fast ultimates charge from dealing damage or healing:

• Vanguards and Duelists: damage-to-ultimate-energy conversion drops from 70% to 55%.
• Strategists: healing-to-energy conversion drops from 75% to 60%, and damage-to-energy conversion drops from 75% to 55%.

Ultimates will come up noticeably less often than in Season 8.5 — expect fights to hinge less on back-to-back ultimate trades and more on sustained cooldown management.

07New Map and Content This Season

A new Convoy map, Thebes, set in Apocalypse's version of ancient Egypt, arrives in the second half of July 2026 (around July 23–24) — not at the season's July 10 launch, but as a follow-up drop within the same season. The season's overarching story and battle pass both lean into an Egyptian/Apocalypse mythology theme, tying into the Horsemen of Apocalypse cosmetic sets and in-game events running through the season — Jubilee herself is framed as Apocalypse's Horseman of Famine.

For context: this is a much bigger structural update than Season 8.5, which (as covered in our Season 8.5 tier list) added only Cyclops as a new Duelist and one new Team-Up (Blast Slash, pairing him with Wolverine) without touching the global ultimate-charge economy. Expect the meta to shift substantially once Season 9's patch lands — a fresh tier list is the right next read once you've got a few matches in on the new patch.