Is new agent Neon just a copy of this League of Legends champion?

Riot Games has recently released two very similar characters side-by-side in their two biggest games, with Neon arriving in Valorant and Zeri arriving in League of Legends.

Both Zeri and Neon are hyper-quick lightning users who emit bursts of electricity from their fingers, have yellow hair, and are voiced by the same voice actress. Are these two characters actually the same person?

Are Neon and Zeri the same character?

The simple answer to this question is no, Neon and Zeri appear to be separate characters inside of their games’ worlds, but they are intentionally similar and were designed together.

Neon is a clearly a Valorant character. She is a superpowered Radiant that appeared above a volcano in the Philippines, and seems to be the key to the Valorant Protocol team reaching another version of earth.

Zeri is a Zaunite girl with magical superpowers and a gun that channels her emotions into concentrated blasts of lightning. Zeri battles the iron grip of the villainous Chembarons who rule over the Zaunite people, and while her electric powers occasionally sputtering out is inspired by one of the designers’ experiences of constantly losing power in the Philippines, she’s from Runeterra.

Both champions were developed by many members of the same team.

Neon is the VALORANT agent I've been helping out with! Worked on her design with @rycoux. I LOVE the character the team ended up with and hope y'all do too! She's FAST. https://t.co/RrhwIcx0on

— August (@RiotAugust) January 5, 2022

Fans from League of Legends will know Riot August from his work on Viego and many other champions, and he was one of the members who crossed over between both games to design the two similar characters.

Valorant and League of Legends crossing over was inevitable, and Riot has teased Valorant characters possibly coming to Teamfight Tactics. Neon isn’t a canonical crossover between the worlds, however, and the titles’ stories remain separate.

Neon and Zeri were intentionally designed to have thematic, aesthetic, and gameplay similarities even though Riot Games doesn’t seem to want to fully incorporate the titles with each other just yet.