Fan outcry for Jade in Mortal Kombat 1 may be louder than Mileena's demand during Mortal Kombat 11 says Ed Boon
Sindel and General Shao were recently revealed to be playable fighters on Mortal Kombat 1's roster. Additionally, Shujinko and Motaro were unveiled to be Kameos.
Just as expected, fans have been eagerly awaiting the announcements of their favorite Mortal Kombat characters as being part of the game's base roster. However, it seems that the outcry for one fighter in particular stands out above the rest according to series cocreator Ed Boon.
Ed Boon recently sat down for an interview with IGN to discuss Mortal Kombat 1's development. At one point during the interview, IGN decided to reference the fan outcry for Mileena that occurred while DLC was still being developed for Mortal Kombat 11.
"Are you relieved to have Mileena on the starting roster so that you don't have people bugging you constantly?" asked IGN.
"Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah," responded Boon. "But now... and we haven't released the whole roster, but I knew it was going to happen, Mileena will be replaced with somebody else."
"Right," inquired IGN. "Who's that new..." Before IGN could even finish their question, Boon responded.
"And that's Jade. It's Jade," said Boon. "Absolutely. And it's just as vocal, if not louder, and it's just part of making the game. That's what it is."
Funnily enough, the demand for Mileena for Mortal Kombat 11 became so extreme that Ed Boon at one point wrote on Twitter that fans "will never see Mileena in one of our games ever again. Ever." Luckily for fans, Boon actually wrote this comment on April Fools' day.
Although Boon was clearly just having fun with the fans, he still felt the need to state that he wasn't being serious at the time. Back in June 2020, Boon clarified that he was "just teasing the fanatics who demand she be added 100 times a day."
"Actually, I've never seriously said that I don't want to see Mileena come back to Mortal Kombat," said Ed Boon back then. Indeed, Mileena would eventually be announced for Mortal Kombat 11 along with Rain and John Rambo as the final DLC characters on October 8, 2020.
It's also interesting how Jade not being announced yet is causing so much of an outcry since she was notably absent from Mortal Kombat X as well. Much to the dismay of Jade fans, her moveset was effectively cannibalized by Kitana's Mournful variation.
However, not all hope is lost for Jade fans just yet when it comes to her potentially making it in Mortal Kombat 1. Jade has yet to be outright disconfirmed by this point. Assuming that Shang Tsung is part of the 24 slots on the character select screen that we've seen, then that means that there are still three characters that have yet to be announced.
As it stands right now, Reiko and Nitara seem to be frontrunners for the base roster due to certain rumors. Of course, there isn't a clear frontrunner for that 24th slot at the moment. It's possible that Jade will be one of the last fighters announced for the base roster.
One thing that's certainly worth noting is that Jade is directly referenced during Liu Kang and Kitana's intro dialogue as heard in the Mortal Kombat 1 Beta. Ultimately though, we'll just have to wait a little bit longer to find out which characters have yet to be announced.
In the event that Jade isn't part of Mortal Kombat 1's roster initially, we can probably expect a lot of requests for her to be DLC, especially once Kombat Pack 1 is wrapped up.
