After an absolutely packed pre-season and debut season, Marvel Rivals Season 2: Hellfire Gala is just around the corner, bringing more new characters, maps, and, of course, a brand-new battle pass. While it's smaller than Season 1: Eternal Night Falls, there's still plenty to look forward to in the second major update.
Just ahead of the launch of Marvel Rivals Season 2, there have already been updates to add the pick-up bundle and costume coin system, which could provide a simple method of completing your supersuit wardrobe going forward.
Below, you'll find out everything there is to know about Marvel Rivals Season 2 right now, including the exciting new heroes heading to the Hellfire Gala, the retired, tweaked, and new team-ups, and much more.
Marvel Rivals Season 2 release date and time
Marvel Rivals Season 2 will launch on Friday, April 11, 2025, at 1 am PDT / 4 am EDT / 9 am BST / 10 am CEST, based on the in-game countdown to the end of Season 1 and the official reveal trailer.
While Season 2 is a bit smaller—fewer characters, maps and so on—than Season 1, it should also last around three months, with Season 2.5 (the mid-season update) arriving in late May.
The story of Season 2 centres around the Hellfire Gala, a yearly event where the Mutant island opens its gates to welcome all, hosted by Emma Frost. Just as the festivities begin, Ultron invades, threatening to wipe out Krakoa as it is stranded in 2099 by a temporal storm.
Marvel Rivals Season 2 characters
The Marvel Rivals Season 2 characters are Emma Frost and Ultron. Emma Frost arrives on the launch of the new season, while Ultron will come with the mid-season update.
NetEase has confirmed that from Season 3 onwards, each update will only last two months instead of three, cementing a new hero release coming every single month. I think that's flying a bit too close to the sun, rapidly approaching roster-bloat, but we'll see how it plays out.
Emma Frost
- Role: Vanguard (Tank)
- Difficulty: Three stars
Emma Frost is a Vanguard, using her mutant powers to reinforce her skin to mitigate damage and create space for the team using a small shield. She's also a strong psychic, which plays into her team-up ability with Magneto and Psylocke. While her basic attack is a beam-like spray, when she activates her diamond skin, she becomes a brawler, able to punch, kick, and even choke enemies. After how much fun I've been having as The Thing, it'll be hard to get me to swap, but I'm interested in seeing what Emma Frost brings to the small Vanguard roster.
- Telepathic Pulse (normal attack) - Fire a psionic beam to deal damage; the longer the beam hits, the higher the damage.
- Faceted Fury (alt attack) - In diamond form, deliver a crushing two-hit jab to enemies.
- Psionic Seduction (ultimate) - Psychically assault enemies ahead of you, stunning them and preventing them from using ultimate abilities. After targeting individuals enough for long enough, you will force them to move towards you.
- Diamond Form (ability) - Transform your attack style to be more melee-focused, while gaining damage reduction and becoming unstoppable.
- Carbon Crush (ability) - In diamond form, lunge towards an enemy and slam them on the ground behind you.
- Psychic Spear (ability) - Create a fragment of the enemy's consciousness on the ground ahead of you. Damaging and destroying this deals bonus damage to the target. Additionally, it can be pierced using Telepathic Pulse, letting you hit both the fragment and the original target.
- Mind's Aegis (ability) - Create a barrier at the designated location.
- Crystal Kick (ability) - In diamond form, unleash a kick that knocks enemies backwards. Deals extra damage if the target hits a wall.
- Mind Link (team-up) - Emma Frost empowers Psylocke and Magneto, letting them create a projection of themselves that mimics the player's movement and can use their abilities.
Ultron
- Role: Strategist (Support)
- Difficulty: Unknown
Ultron is a highly mobile Strategist, able to heal his allies using drones. As a frequent Strategist player, I hope Ultron will counter annoying dive heroes like Spider-Man, who never fail to ruin my day.
I'll admit I was incredibly surprised not to see Blade. Blade has featured heavily in the story of Season 1, when he was captured by Dracula as vampires take over New York. Adding even more fuel to the fire, the new Empire of Eternal Night: Central Park map includes the vampiric vampire hunter himself in chains. It's a pretty cool detail, though it's hard to rationalise why I'm not freeing this hero myself each time I walk past him. I'm assuming we'll see him soon, though. Perhaps he'll have freed himself by the time Season 3 rolls around.
Marvel Rivals Season 2 skins
There are 15 new skins at the launch of Season 2 across the Flower of Krakia battle pass, shop, and free events. Hellfire Gala skins for Wolverine and Black Panther are also coming later down the line, likely in the shop.
Here are all the Season 2 skins and how to get them:
Marvel Rivals Season 2 events
There are two main events at the launch of Season 2, both giving you an opportunity to earn a new skin each. Here's what you'll need to do.
Chaos Gown
- Reward: Chaos Gown Scarlet Witch skin
The Chaos Gown event is the typical "play matches, earn rewards" style event we've seen before. As the name suggests, you're able to get the Scarlet Witch Chaos Gown outfit (and matching nameplate) for free from this event. Play three matches to get the nameplate, and nine matches for the brand-new Wanda skin. It's as simple as that.
Cerebro Database
- Reward: Flora Maiden Mantis skin, chrono tokens, units, and profile customisation
The Cerebro Database event is much more substantial and complex than the Chaos Gown one, but you'll earn a sweet skin by the end of it.
This event features four challenge sections, represented by different characters: Emma Frost, Wolverine, Black Panther, and Namor. Complete all four and you'll earn the Flora Maiden skin for Mantis. However, to complete these challenges, you need to beat individual missions in each one to form a line. These lines can be vertical, horizontal, or diagonal.
Since you don't need to beat all the missions within each challenge, just enough to form a line, you're best off focusing on the easiest missions to complete.
Marvel Rivals Season 2 updates and key changes
Alongside the new characters, maps, and costumes that we've come to expect, Season 2 also throws us some curveballs. Below you'll find all the highlights of the update, including new features:
Weekly missions
Starting in Season 2, Marvel Rivals will now have weekly missions in addition to the daily missions and challenges we've had so far. Importantly, the total amount of chrono tokens you can earn is actually unchanged. You won't earn more tokens in Season 2 compared to Season 1. This new challenge type is purely a way to rebalance the distribution of this important currency to help more players complete the battle pass by the end of each season.
Competitive changes
Ranked mode is also seeing major changes in Season 2, most of which will be welcomed with open arms. Here's what's changing:
- Hero banning will now be available in Gold 3 and above. Previously, this was limited to Diamond 3 and above.
- Rank points earned and lost after each match will more closely reflect your individual performance. If you carry the team to victory, you'll earn more points. If you were struggling to make an impact, you'll lose more on defeat.
- The minimum level required to play competitive will now be level 15, up from level 10.
- Players in Eternity and above will only be able to queue duo or solo to limit large pre-made groups.
Alongside these rule changes, the competitive map rotation is also being tweaked. Yggsgard Royal Palace and Tokyo 2099 Shin-Shibuya are being removed from the ranked mode, while the new Krakoa Hellfire Gala map is entering the pool. Don't worry, maps rotate in and out of the playlist with each season. You'll see these retired maps again soon enough.
Marvel Rivals Season 2 team-ups
In one of the biggest shakeups to the meta yet, even including multiple new roster additions, Season 2 will be adding new team-ups while retiring and tweaking various existing ones.
New team-ups
Making use of new characters and changing alliances, these are brand-new team-up abilities:
- Mental Projection (Emma Frost + Magneto/Psylocke)
- Stars Aligned (Captain America + Winter Soldier)
- Arcane Order (Doctor Strange + Scarlet Witch)
Changed team-ups
These team-up abilities have been tweaked because of new ones to reduce overlap and stacking potential:
- Ammo Overload - No longer includes Winter Soldier
- Dimensional Shortcut - No longer includes Psylocke
- Chilling Charisma - No longer includes Namor
- Gamma Charge - Now includes Namor. No longer includes Doctor Strange
Retired team-ups
These team-up abilities have been disabled in Season 2, likely to avoid stacking or overlapping too many on specific heroes:
- Metallic Chaos (Magneto + Scarlet Witch)
- Voltaic Union (Thor + Captain America/Storm)
Mental Projection gives Psylocke and Magneto a team-up with the brand-new arrival, Emma Frost. With this, they can summon a clone of themselves to deal bonus damage for a short time. It's similar to Loki's clones in that the double will fire basic attacks at your target.
Stars Aligned finally gives Winter Soldier and Captain America a team-up, and it couldn't be cooler. Bucky can leap towards allies to reposition and unleash a shockwave that damages nearby enemies, letting him dive into the action even better. Meanwhile, Captain America can clash with an ally Winter Soldier to unleash a similar shockwave that debuffs nearby enemies.
Arcane Order lets Scarlet Witch tap into Doctor Strange's magic to turn Chthonian Burst into a rapid-fire, long-range projectile independent from her chaos energy meter. It's effectively a missile barrage, which looks perfect for bursting down tanks and squishies alike.
