Riot Games delved deeper into Valorant lore with the latest cinematic, where they explained that the same agents on both teams are canon and how it came to be.
Setting up distinct characters and a storyline in a PvP shooter can be a tricky endeavour but games have found their ways around it in the past. For example, Rainbow Six Siege has different pools for attackers and defenders so players can't pick the same character on both teams but Valorant doesn't have such a restriction.
Those looking into the game's lore probably found it odd that these doppelganger situations happen but Duality, the latest cinematic, explains how this is possible in the game's setting.
If you want to see the cinematic without getting it spoiled, now is the time to do so as the rest of the article will discuss parts of it.
We initially see Killjoy running away from an unknown assailant while Viper and Phoenix come as her backup. The latter then gives chase and finds that the hostile is actually himself, as seen on the image above. As it turns out, Radiants are travelling between parallel dimensions in order to steal Radianite and that's what's going on when we play a match.
The trailer also confirms that the defending team are the good guys since they are trying to prevent the opponents from stealing the precious resource by extracting it with the spike.
One thing that many probably glossed over in the trailer is that this multiverse answer also answers Jett's question about people being suspicious of her. They believe she is the reason for Venice's current state but as it turns out, the Jett that was responsible for the destruction was the one from the parallel dimension.
Furthermore, it clears up the voice lines that characters have about their duplicates so when Viper wonders about her filters not working on the opposing Viper's poison, you now know why.
