Sometime during or prior to 2035, Volk's Reapers, acting on a tip from the Skirmishers, manage to locate the Commander. They pass the intel on to the Spokesman, who in turn contacts the remnants of XCOM, now led by John Bradford. Bradford immediately acts on the intel, triggering the liberation war. In 2035, XCOM mounted Operation Gatecrasher to rescue the Commander in a daring breakout, storming the heart of ADVENT territory to do so. After Dr. Richard "Dick" Tygan performs emergency surgery to remove the implant the aliens installed in them, the Commander is personally awakened and attended to by Bradford, who briefs them on the situation regarding the current state of Earth. The Commander was reinstated as leader of XCOM on March 1, 2035. They take charge of XCOM's remnants and lead Earth in the War of Liberation, with the goal of defeating ADVENT and ending alien occupation of Earth. While the Commander personally leads the war effort from the Avenger, guiding their troops into battle against ADVENT, forging a global Resistance piece by piece and taking the fight to the aliens wherever they can, they also undertake the task of dealing with the alien's esoteric Avatar Project, masterminding several operations dedicated to uncovering the exact machinations of the project. This leads XCOM to recover several crucial items regarding the Avatar Project, with the organization eventually discovering that the goal of the Avatar Project is to forge new bodies for the Elders - as their present ones are currently afflicted by a terminal, irreversible decay that will lead them to go extinct should nothing be done - to utilize, which would effectively make them unstoppable, as these bodies are designed to augment and contain their immense power with no ill-effects. Unfortunately, these new bodies - and the Elders themselves - are somewhere XCOM cannot reach, at least, not until the organization's top leaders determine that an Avatar of their own making would allow them to bypass the Elders' safeguards and storm their headquarters directly. Due to the Commander's previous experience with ADVENT's psionic network, they are the only one capable of manning the Avatar and allowing XCOM to hunt down and kill the alien leadership. After months of brutal warfare across the planet, killing, capturing, dismantling and destroying every obstacle that gets in their way, XCOM summons, confronts and slays an Elder, an act that frightens the remaining Elders, who now realize that they are vulnerable to attack. Fearful that XCOM will triumph, they order the ADVENT Administration to immediately begin harvesting all human life on Earth, an act that will naturally result in the extinction of the human race. With their hand forced, the Commander orders XCOM troops to storm the ADVENT Network Tower and hijack the broadcast baiting the humans based in the administration's city centers, revealing the truth of the alien occupation to humanity at large, sparking a global uprising. With the ADVENT Administration busy attempting to contain the violence from a reinvigorated humanity, the Commander personally mans the XCOM's Avatar, taking a strike team composed of their best troops through a recovered psionic gateway and into the headquarters of the Elders. Fighting their way through a literal army of ADVENT, aliens and whatever other monstrosities the Elders throw at them, the Commander and their forces confront and kill the Avatars, destroying the Elders along with them and effectively decapitating the ADVENT administration, ending the war and freeing humanity.