Matt Mercer voices Nightcrawler in Marvel Rivals, where the X-Man can teleport across the map and warp other characters to his location. Nightcrawler and Dracula are scheduled to debut on Friday, November 13, a date Nerdist calls “ever-so-lucky.”
The free-to-play, 6v6 third-person shooter has spent a half-season without a new character, which Nerdist notes is unusual. Nerdist calls Nightcrawler a longtime fan favorite who has been relatively absent from Marvel media for a while. Alan Cumming will also return to the role in Avengers: Doomsday, while Critical Role’s Mercer takes on the game version.
Nerdist’s Take: Matt Mercer Will Bring a Youthful Energy to Nightcrawler That Fans Will Enjoy
For Nerdist’s writer, Nightcrawler looks promising as a support character: he’s shaping up to be an excellent fit for the Strategist role, but not a typical healbot. His teleportation lets him warp around the map and pull others to him, which the writer says gives the Strategist role some real strategy.
In the character trailer, Nightcrawler is friendly and very German, and Nerdist’s writer finds Mercer’s performance youthfully exuberant. His teleporting comes with the familiar “bamf,” a sound representing air rushing into the space he’s left behind, rather than the acronym “badass motherf*cker.”
Nightcrawler gets the spotlight in the Season 11 official trailer, though Vlad makes a brief appearance. With doomsday approaching in Marvel Rivals, Kurt Wagner tries to rescue everyone he can. First, he saves a child caught in the Incursion’s chaos. He pulls a cute, funny face at the little boy, then teleports a lollipop into his own hands to give him. Nerdist’s writer sees that small interaction as proof that this Kurt passes the “in-character” test.
Then the disaster escalates: the barriers separating universes break down, and an enormous ocean wave engulfs New York City. The following shot reveals the city in flames. A heavy blow knocks Nightcrawler through the air. Looking up afterward, he whispers, “Lord…save us…” as New York City and its futuristic counterpart, 2099 Nueva York City, crash together catastrophically.
The trailer imagery is credited to Game Trailers/YouTube.
Nightcrawler is one of the writer’s favorite Marvel characters, and they’re curious to see how he fits into the game’s world and meta.
