Dispatch’s Blonde Blazer Subverted My Expectations In The Best Way Possible

The following contains mild story spoilers for Dispatch.

AdHoc Studios and its debut original IP, Dispatch, seemingly appeared out of thin air, despite Dispatch’s development actually being quite a bit more elaborate. Its popularity and success are well-earned, however, with a superb cast reinforcing stellar writing and once again reinvigorating the superhero genre via a mature, often graphic lens.

Dispatch’s plot isn’t necessarily novel. Plus, considering how much superhero-related media I consume, it can be difficult not to see certain characters as mildly derivative, whether that’s a fair assessment or not—Robert Robertson the Third is distinct, for example, but as Mecha Man he can be fairly reminiscent of Iron Man. That said, Dispatch’s character roster features one prominent superhero whom I was pleased to be completely wrong about: Blonde Blazer.

Dispatch’s Blonde Blazer Challenged My Superhero Story Biases

Dispatch’s least interesting character on paper is anything but what I anticipated

Players first meet Dispatch’s Blonde Blazer when she rescues Robert from a beating that’s being administered to him by a group of masked robbers. It’s plain to see that Blazer has an ulterior motive besides simply arriving to save the day, and her immediate and pointed interest toward him instantly struck me as suspicious.

Now, I don’t consider myself a wholly skeptical person. And, already aware that Dispatch’s episodic nature revolved largely around players working as a superhero dispatcher at a cubicle, I figured she’d graciously lend that job opportunity to Robert at some point during their ‘fortuitous’ meeting.

Because Blazer was genuinely caring and helpful, my Spidey senses were triggered. A lesser game, or at least a more predictable one, may have hidden a darker ulterior motive behind why Blazer was so kindhearted, perhaps deliberately sending flirtatious signals and feigning niceties in order to gain his trust and abuse it later.

Dispatch’s Blonde Blazer Seems Too Good To Be True, But She Isn’t

Never have I been so glad to be wrong

Since Blazer suggested to Robert that the Superhero Dispatch Network (SDN) would help him rebuild his Mecha Man suit and the highly sought-after Astral Pulse, I believed that Blazer’s intent would boil down to the following: either Blazer wanted to steal the Astral Pulse for Shroud, an antagonist I had only briefly seen in the pilot episode and whose identity beneath the mask was impossible to determine, or that Blazer herself was Shroud.

That second theory was rather far-fetched, admittedly, and even more laughable in light of how the story unfolds. Blazer’s secret identity as the mild-mannered Mandy is perfectly appropriate for how humble and authentic she is as a character, too, down to the reveal merely highlighting trivial physical differences, such as her being a brunette without the amulet that imbues her with her Blonde Blazer abilities.

Still, I naively saw this as a subtly veiled red herring. Sure, Mandy had elected to reveal her superhero secret identity to Robert, but maybe that was done in order to persuade players that there was nothing more to reveal about her until my guard was lowered, and the true horror could be twisted between my ribs like a knife. In fact, for longer than I’d like to admit, I was sure that Mandy would have some relation to Dispatch’s main villain, Shroud, and possibly be his daughter.

Moreover, Invisigal’s role as a troubled ex-villain/anti-hero, walking a tightrope between both heroism and villainy, made her a character whom I felt endeared to. If Invisigal was going to be who Dispatch wanted me to root for as her personal mentor, I was convinced that Blazer couldn’t be as unblemished or ‘perfect’ as she was effortlessly presented to be.

Dispatch’s Blonde Blazer Had Me Rethinking My Romance Options

Sorry Invisigal, but you were my second choice

Invisigal’s characterization is far more intricate and complicated than Blonde Blazer’s, and I felt myself partially swayed by her layered charm as episodes went on. Of course, my Blazer paranoia struck quite early, and the realization of Invisigal’s redemption potential in Dispatch was the only nail in the coffin of my budding Blazer romance that I needed to justify its end.

From then on, I was taking whatever strides toward Invisigal that I could and wincing when Blazer—who was not at all at fault in assuming Robert had wanted to invest in some semblance of a romantic relationship—would make public advances toward me. You can imagine my surprise, then, when Blazer saved Robert from Shroud and the Red Ring’s clutches at The Sardine, and it became obvious that she was precisely as depicted with no disastrous catch.

My playthrough ended with Invisigal planting a kiss on Robert, declaring that I had secured that particular Dispatch ending. I’d also feel doubly bad for doubting Blazer’s inherent goodness when Mandy is characteristically supportive of Robert in the finale episode’s final scene, harboring no surface-level resentment and accepting his friendship while he had moved on to Invisigal without a word of it to her.

I can’t say if I truly prefer Blazer or Invisigal as the two Dispatch romance options, yet committing to a Blazer romance in my second playthrough was a no-brainer, not only for variation in replayability but also because I could finally see that romance to proper fruition without the preconceived narrative bias that the unprecedented character writing in Dispatch helped extinguish.

Systems

Released

October 22, 2025

ESRB

Mature 17+ / Blood, Crude Humor, Intense Violence, Nudity, Sexual Content, Strong Language, Use of Drugs and Alcohol

Developer(s)

AdHoc Studio

Publisher(s)

AdHoc Studio

Number of Players

Single-player