Rainbow Six Siege has revealed the details of its newest operator ahead of its release. The reveal confirms that the operator is called Thunderbird, which was leaked prior to the official Rainbow Six Siege reveal.
Rainbow Six Siege's newest season is called Operation North Star and brings a redesigned Favela map alongside the new operator. It also will include a tweak to how barrel attachments work in the game as well as a variety of balance changes to other operators' abilities. While leaks did reveal the new operator's name and origins from North America's Nakoda Nations, the official reveal gives players an in-depth look at Thunderbird's kit options and new gadget.
Thunderbird is a defender operator with a three-speed rating and is Rainbow Six Siege's newest healer operator. Her gadget is the Kona Station, a small device that can be placed on the ground and shoots healing pellets at any operator that passes through its target zone. If multiple operators enter the area at the same time, the one with the lowest health in the group is given priority. Each pellet works similarly to Doc's healing pistol in that it will over-heal players with additional health temporarily if their health is high enough, but it does have a short cooldown between shots. Overall, it seems like a very powerful new gadget for Rainbow Six Siege.
Another big feature of the Kona Station is that it can be used by downed players to revive themselves using one of its charges by crawling over and interacting with it. However, the Kona Station can also be used by attacking operators who enter the Kona Station's area while it is off cooldown. This makes it very important for Thunderbird to keep tabs on their Kona Stations and pick them up if they are giving up ground to attackers when possible. Operation North Star does come after many fans in the game's community have called for a boycott of Rainbow Six Siege.
Regardless, Thunderbird has a lot of potential to shake up Rainbow Six Siege's meta. Despite a developer saying a couple of months ago that Rainbow Six Siege's meta may be attacker sided for a while, Thunderbird's gadget is very powerful even if uncareful play could see it benefitting the attacker side as well. It will be interesting to see how Thunderbird and the rest of Operation North Star's changes impact Rainbow Six Siege when the operation launches later this year.
Rainbow Six Siege is available now on PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
