@tacticalgrandma replies to this post (eh I’m on mobile just follow the link for context)

With deep cover theories in general I find I can never adequately answer the question of what the hell he’s been doing for the last six years since overwatch fell, revenge is a bit too vague? I could see inflitrating talon being a thing he might do personally pre-fall (he could convince them he’s fed up with overwatch or that he needs…whatever Moira is supposed to be doing – incidentally I think if overwatch fires his one way of handling whatever genetic stuff is going on that might be “they left me to become this thing”. or talon don’t know who he actually is? This is possible but I’m not sure it really works, sombra and Moira do at least know him.) But needs something more to it to work as a thing he’s still doing.

But if he did that I don’t think it was particularly successful. I doubt things like widowmaker, ana’s death, mccree leaving, and the Swiss base explosion were examples of things going according to plan. In fact the only thing he’s managed to keep is talons reasonable confidence he’s working for them….which is interesting, partly cause it sort of implys they didn’t try and blow him up. The only thing an initial undercover thing seems to have done is provide him with an in to talon post-fall. Everything else seems to have gone badly wrong despite whatever ways they tried to fight talon (whether that involves someone going undercover or not)

Yeah, also I think you’re right he’s not overly concerned about killing people – he’s probably got people he’d rather not kill (I could see him balking at killing Jack without Ana’s presence, he also doesn’t seem overly concerned with actually killing Winston in recall and the museum short – if he can avoid it at least or this is plot armour who knows) and people he does actually want to kill (possibly also jack) but he’s got no issues killing people like the grunts at volskaya etc.

This is long sorry, I do think a lot of these ‘this doesn’t quite make sense’ things with Gabriel are somewhat a result of overwatch having clearly changed tact with where they are going with his character, which complicates things