The Door Isn’t Completely Closed on This Iconic Borderlands…

With Borderlands 4’s post-launch plans coming into focus alongside the launch of its first premium DLC later this month, fans of the series are once again looking forward and wondering what comes next. And in order to look ahead, it’s also important to look back — at the lore of earlier Borderlands games and story threads that never fully wrapped up, where some long-forgotten characters could still make a return in the future.

One character who could potentially resurface in future Borderlands adventures is Angel, a pivotal NPC from the series’ early years. Known to players as the mysterious “Guardian Angel,” she played a central role in both Borderlands and Borderlands 2, acting as a guiding — and at times deceptive — presence for the Vault Hunters. In a recent appearance on TheBestWarGames’s Character Select with Naomi Kyle, Brittany Johnson — the motion capture actor behind Angel — revealed that she has previously asked about revisiting the character future and received a response that suggested the door may still be open.

Johnson, who began working on the franchise while still in college, says she once asked Gearbox co-founder Randy Pitchford directly about Angel’s future.

"They're constantly evolving the characters and bringing in different storylines... I think now I would like to see them go back and touch on some of the older stories and bring back some of the other characters," she told TheBestWarGames. “You know what, I actually asked Randy this one day, and he made a really funny comment that, you know, if the player can come back, Angel can come back too."

While the comment wasn’t a confirmation of plans, Johnson acknowledges that Borderlands has never been especially rigid about permanence. She notes that Angel’s narrative arc has already been explored extensively across multiple games — she'd need to be a big character in a new story to explore the character more.

“I don’t really feel like there’s much else you can do with Angel in that sense, unless she does come back,” she said.

Angel was first introduced in the original Borderlands as the disembodied “Guardian Angel,” guiding the Vault Hunters through missions via the ECHOnet and positioning herself as a helpful ally from afar. That role took on far greater narrative weight in Borderlands 2, where her true nature, connection to Handsome Jack, and the consequences of her actions became central to the game’s story — culminating in her death after the Vault Key is destroyed. While Angel does not appear directly in later entries, she continues to loom over the franchise’s lore, with references and callbacks appearing in Tales from the Borderlands and Borderlands 3, reinforcing her lasting impact on the universe even after her story seemingly concluded.

For Johnson, that legacy is exactly why any potential return would need to be handled carefully. While she’s open to the idea of Angel appearing again, she doesn’t believe the character would fit naturally into a mainline sequel without a strong narrative reason to justify it.

Instead, Johnson points to Borderlands’ history of character-driven expansions as the ideal format for revisiting Angel, allowing the story to explore new ideas without disrupting the core arc of the series.

“To be honest, I’m all about the DLC game,” Johnson said. “If Angel comes back, it needs to be in really badass DLC, kind of like Tiny Tina’s.”

As Borderlands 4 rolls out its first wave of post-launch content and looks further into the future, Angel remains firmly in the past — for now. But as Johnson’s comments make clear, her story may not be as closed as it once appeared.