Gearbox just pulled the curtain on the last of Borderlands 4’s playable cast, and “Gravitar” Harlowe instantly pinged my Borderlands 2 brain. If you loved Maya’s Phaselock or the way Mass Effect biotics turned firefights into physics puzzles, Harlowe is that fantasy in gadget form. I wasn’t sold on the initial character lineup, but after seeing Harlowe in action, I’m itching to theorycraft builds that yank mobs together, freeze them in place, and detonate the room in one satisfying chain reaction.
Everything starts with Entanglement. Any target touched by Harlowe’s action skills gets tethered to the rest, sharing gun and skill damage. Translation: one well-timed rocket or Torgue sticky detonation doesn’t just delete a single badass-it ripples through the pack. It’s the kind of design that rewards crowd setup and precision timing rather than raw DPS spam. That alone scratches the same itch that kept me running Maya’s singularity grenades for years.
In the Cosmic Brilliance tree, Harlowe deploys the Flux Generator: a tossable field that entangles and chills enemies over time while granting overshield to allies. It’s both zone denial and team sustain, which screams “co-op staple.” True to her Maliwan roots, upgrades can strip elemental resistances and boost status effect chance, so you’re not just freezing targets-you’re priming them for burn, shock, or corrosive procs from the squad. The best touch? You can pick the device back up and rethrow it if your first placement whiffs. More toys should be this forgiving.
Creative Bursts houses the Chroma Accelerator, a slow-moving, remote-detonated bomb. Character designer Tommy Westerman calls it “her boss killer,” and the kit supports that claim. With the Q-Ball upgrade, detonation becomes a bouncing orb that pops with each ricochet, while Special Purpose Magnets lets the orb drag enemies along its path, juicing damage as it snowballs. That’s a combat sandbox I want to tinker with: launch the orb through a hallway, yank a mob into its lane with Entanglement, then watch chain explosions echo off the walls. It’s the closest the series has felt to Borderlands 2’s “PhysX playground” energy—controlled, readable, and spectacular.
In Seize the Day, Harlowe’s Zero-Point is the straight shot of Maya nostalgia. Tap it to lift a target into stasis, tap again to slam them in any direction—into a crowd, a hazard, or that orb you just set up. Down the tree, you’ll find augments that ricochet bullets from the held target to nearby enemies or bank all damage taken and cash it out as a cryo nova when you slam. There’s even an “Inertia” option that moves the stasis bubble to a new target if the current one dies, refreshing duration as it jumps. That’s Sub-Sequence energy, with the same “keep the plate spinning” thrill during big brawls.
Westerman also teased a design itch finally scratched: “Every time we make a player character, there’s always something we have to leave behind that sticks with me and I want to bring into future games. In Borderlands 3, I designed an Amara skill where she runs up, puts an enemy into Phasegrasp, and then kicks them into other enemies. We couldn’t really do that in Borderlands 3, but with Borderlands 4 we get to do that with Harlowe.” That’s the kind of kinetic, hands-on control the series has flirted with but rarely nailed.
Borderlands 3’s shooting felt fantastic but often devolved into spongey chaos at higher difficulty. Harlowe’s kit suggests a different rhythm: set the stage, manipulate the pack, punch a hole, and let Entanglement multiply your payoff. In co-op, a Harlowe pairing with a splash specialist (hello, Torgue stickies) or status-focused Maliwan rifles could be disgusting in the best way. Flux Generator’s overshield turns glass-cannon builds viable, and stripping resistances means less elemental roulette and more deliberate synergy.
Of course, crowd control lives and dies on rules. Will badasses and bosses have long immunity windows that gut Zero-Point’s utility? Does Entanglement meaningfully affect raid-tier targets, or is it adds-only? How punishing are cooldowns when you whiff a throw or mistime a slam? And on the technical side, are we really getting that beautiful debris-and-vortex spectacle without turning mid-tier rigs into slide shows? Borderlands has a history of awesome physics that half the player base toggles off for frames—if Gearbox wants Harlowe’s spectacle to sing, performance and readability need to be priority one.
Borderlands 4 lands Friday, September 12, and Harlowe is the character I want to main first. Not because she looks busted, but because her tools promise moment-to-moment decision making that rewards planning and audacity. If Gearbox keeps CC impactful without trivializing encounters—and if Entanglement scales in endgame without breaking balance—we might finally get the return of that glorious “one grenade, ten bodies” alchemy that made Borderlands 2 sing. If not, she risks becoming another support toy relegated to mobbing while other vault hunters melt bosses. I’m optimistic, but I’ve been burned by balance patches before.
Gravitar Harlowe is Borderlands 4’s most exciting reveal: a gadget-driven controller who links, freezes, drags, and detonates enemies for big-brain combos. If Gearbox nails CC rules and performance, she’ll redefine co-op flow; if not, expect her power to fade at the top end. Either way, September 12 just got a lot more interesting.
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