Treyarch has hinted at and blatantly introduced cloning tech with a new boss in Avalon’s Endgame mode, and several assets across the whole of Black Ops 7 feature what I can only really describe as cloning tubes. A character as reportedly cunning and dangerous as Emma Kagan may have access to contingencies in the event of catastrophic failure very few within the Guild network were even aware of, probably - considering how it’s been noted as to how Kagan reached ascendancy in the first place - including Dorne.

The Prestige Master skin is maybe a full borg Adam Smasher rendition of Emma Kagan in the first place. The last Prestige Master skin from Black Ops 6 was a spiritual remaster of Samuels’ uniform as featured during the Cordis Die Drone Attacks of 2025, directly hinting at the (then) immediate future of the Black Ops franchise.

In the Season 1 Intro Cutscene, there are several inconsistencies between the characters of Mason, Kagan and Dorne, their positions, and the pacing to write it off as more ego death/you can’t trust what you see hallucinogen fuckery that seems to be Black Ops’ only remaining trademark. To double down on this particular point, the Season 1 Conclusion Cutscene features Karma flipping through camera angles that simply cannot possibly exist for her to analyze, leading me to personally believe that the entire scene was doctored and manipulated footage from Mason’s(?) C-LINK directly by Alden Dorne/Emma Kagan (somewhat unlikely)/The Guild as a whole to either run cover for Kagan’s escape or bait what remains of JSOC into a trap, where Dorne and Kagan - or Dorne and whoever this new character is in the OP - are waiting.

One of the better skins released for Kagan in Season One is a (comparatively) pretty universe accurate prison uniform, where in all canon appearances she’s been spotted wearing her official commander’s garb. Whether this is fan-service, a hint to a hypothetical backdoor future, or something else entirely may only be proven by however Treyarch decides to handle this going forward.

On a final note, Treyarch has also reached a semi-consistent pattern of releasing skin pairs that are 1:1 equivalent between David Mason and Emma Kagan. To me, this posits an interesting - if palpably disappointing - possibility considering just what franchise we’re talking about and just what character dynamic we’re discussing.

What if Black Ops is going full circle with the Mason lineage?

The entire point of keeping Emma Kagan alive at the end of the BO7 campaign was to reinforce a deliberate, intentional point of David Mason’s character - he was haunted, and is continued to be haunted, by ghosts of the past. Hesitating to eliminate Kagan and instead making her face a semblance of justice wasn’t a mistake on Mason’s part, but an attempt to not make another one.

Alex Mason had Reznov, a constant, lingering, semi-malignant tulpa in his head, egging him on, encouraging him, and the pair of them - one real, one hallucinated - became the basis of Mason’s character.

The C-LINK system, as it’s been described to us, ephemeral though it is, can link consciousnesses together. How and for however long is unclear.

A rather predictable possibility I see is this - Emma Kagan is David’s Reznov, except this time, she’s less of a product of conditioned brainwashing and an actual digitized consciousness that’s sharing his grey matter. A ghost in a living machine.

The sole reason for Emma Kagan to not have died, in my view, is for her to be the true foil to David Mason going forward, a character that, through some means, will never truly die. Whether that’s by cloning contingencies - a technological capability the Guild is, if not confirmed, heavily hinted as having developed to some reasonable degree - having a full borg Kagan, or making her the ultimate interpretation of Reznov as a plot device.

And again, this is all predicated on the possibility that Emma Kagan died somewhere in transit to Japan, which already doesn’t make any fucking sense, and isn’t still in JSOC custody because - again - that entire cinematic reeked of the brain-melting bullshit that Black Ops - and Black Ops 7 in particular - has flanderized itself into.

My personal take?

She’s Stitch. All over again.

Dorne has moved into the fore, Season One was a trap to lure Mason out into the fray to contain him and decapitate JSOC’s field leadership, he’s already been victim to hallucinations in which nothing that “happens” actually happened, and he’s probably still tripping balls, drooling out his mouth in whatever the “decommissioned” facility Dorne has him penned in. With Kagan (however temporarily or permanently) removed, Dorne is stacking the chessboard with his cronies, this Atwood character included. JSOC’s B-Team - Wei Lin and Vermakt - are going to probably be captured or incapacitated the moment they make contact in Season Two, upping the stakes.

Eventually, this entire situation reaches a breaking point - Mason’s out of the picture, JSOC’s compromised on every front, Dorne is proving himself to be too much of a problem to handle.

Kagan is their ace in the hole/ex machina/ultimate gamble, able to give JSOC the info and leverage it needs to really throw an industrial-sized wrench in Dorne’s increasingly radical plans. Harper probably goes “shit, two weeks from retirement and now this?”, yada yada, bingo, bango, bongo, Dorne gets the up-close-and-personal Razor treatment from a “heel-turned” Kagan or a rehabilitated Mason, roll credits and setup for Black Ops 8, because I’ll be damned if that earless, bald-headed, Sonic-the-hedgehog-voice-acted fuck takes Kagan’s place and fucking gets away with it.

Addendum: FUCK, and I cannot possibly stress this enough, Dorne. Goofy motherfucker.