From Opera to Sova: An interview with Valorant’s AverageJonas

Jonas ‘AverageJonas’ Navarsete has become an overnight Twitch sensation. Dexerto sat down with the Norwegian to chat about his rise to Valorant radiance. 

The name AverageJonas brings a smile to a lot of Valorant fans’ faces. The Norwegian has become somewhat of a Valorant legend, garnering 188k Twitch followers in just seven months.

Renowned for his sick Sova plays and musical sing songs on-stream, he’s done everything from playing for the Nordics squad during Spike Nations of Twitch, to casting Valorant First Strike Europe. He’s achieved all of this as well as raising an astounding $8,000 for Save the Children.

Safe to say he’s a busy guy, but Dexerto sat down with Jonas to chat about his insane rise, musical talents and the future of Valorant’s newest icon.

Future Earth: A star is born

Jonas’ streaming origins are as insane as his Sova plays. When 2020 began it looked as though the Norwegian was on his way to operatic stardom, but as travel restrictions made musicians’ lives ever more difficult, life led him to Future Earth instead.

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His success comes from maining Sova: “I had made tons of lineup guides on Reddit and I made a Discord server where I had basically every Agent and every map listed with lineup guides.”

“It’s these lineups that were the first spot where I gained a lot of initial traction from people basically finding my guides on Reddit and then joining my Discord. And, since all the guides are listed in Twitch clips that also sends them directly to my Twitch channel — that was kind of my strategy to gain more followers on Twitch as well.”

His affinity for Sova isn’t just words, Jonas walks the walk and pushes the hunter to his maximum potential. His skills even got him noticed by 100 Thieves’ Spencer ‘Hiko’ Martin, with Jonas being the one who “taught Hiko his Sova lineups” — the ones he went on to win First Strike: North America with.

First Strike Europe

First Strike Europe was a never before seen event, and in a slightly frantic turn of events, Jonas scored a slot on the broadcast.

“They called me pretty much around 24 hours before I needed to be there,” admitted Jonas. “We kind of need you in Berlin tomorrow morning and we want you to host and cast First Strike.” A blur of airports and hotel trips later and Jonas was officially casting Valorant.

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Jonas’ First Strike appearance is a monument to his success. Recalling that “when I started streaming this year my goal was kind of to stream for 100 concurrent viewers and have about 10,000 followers,” it’s safe to say that he blew those figures out of the water by earning 10x that amount.

A Valorant Virtuoso

Jonas also proceeded to wow First Strike viewers with a hilarious, but equally beautiful, cover of ‘Amazing Grace.’ Well, ‘Amazing Darts’ actually. While having “serenaded Sova” is one checkmark on his Valorant musical bucket list, there’s more he’d love to do in the Valorant music sphere.

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He notes that “having an opera background, I would love to do something with classical voice, but I also did sing in a rock band for many years and have done a lot of different genres… if I was ever to participate myself, I think I would be very open. My motto in life (and any work environment) is that if it sounds like fun… I’m down for it.”

The future of AverageJonas

“Having a place where I can combine my passion for music and gaming, I think that’s kind of my goal,” and he’s achieved that tenfold. The new year though, will see him “take it to the next level.”

With a mysterious surprise lurking on 2021’s horizon and a promise to “find other cool ways of making content that people won’t be expecting,” 2021 looks as bright for AverageJonas as a Skye’s flashes in game — ‘blinding.’