Media Essays: Shadow the Hedgehog: A Creative Dead End?

Teddy: Oh boy isn’t this gonna be a touchy subject?

Freddy: Yeah, how dare anybody criticise the second most famous Sonic character!?

Teddy: To be fair there has been a number of critics coming out against him anyway so Wandering Fox isn’t alone in this.

Freddy: Nope. But still, Shadow is a very sensitive subject in SEGA and in the fandom, there’s always that big argument of what people can and can’t do with him, you wonder how much of it is true and what isn’t.

Teddy: Yes, but I doubt that’s the main topic of today, buddy.

Freddy: No of course not. What do you have on ya, boss?

Well, just an opinion, that is all. Many are probably gonna disagree with me and that’s fine, I can handle it. But hello everybody it is me, the Wandering Fox and as you can see by the title I’m here today talking about Shadow the Hedgehog, or at least my issues with the character as he stands in the franchise. Now I know Shadow has his fans and hey, I like him as well but not to the matter I love Tails. But every character has a point where you tend to stop and wonder “What else can be done with them?” Unlike legendary comic book characters who have multiple new stories for them being told, Shadow the Hedgehog hasn’t gotten as far as them in terms of creativity and I can’t help but wonder if the character has reached a dead end in terms of story. I best explain why I feel that Shadow has, despite being around for over two decades, has not gone as far as SEGA could’ve gone with him. I will give my honest answer of whether I think he has reached the end of the show or not but first let me go through it.

The Spark of Shadow

At the time of his creation in Sonic Adventure 2, Shadow became an instant hook for fans who loved his design, his mysterious past, his own sense of humour, his heroic sacrifice at the end of the game, it left many wondering what more there was to the new hedgehog. We know now that Shadow was supposed to have stayed dead at the end of that game, but due to great demand Shadow was revived for Sonic Heroes and hey, I’ll give SEGA credit, they at least continued to surround Shadow in mystery with them teasing whether he was the real Shadow or an Android created by Eggman. That kept the fans enticed to follow his story more and it wouldn’t be until we finally got the answers in Shadow’s own game, finally revealing not only was Shadow created in a joint adventure by Gerald Robotnik and the alien Black Doom, but Shadow survived Sonic Adventure 2 and we had the real Shadow. With his past finally revealed, and killing Black Doom, Shadow ends the game with “Goodbye forever. Shadow the Hedgehog” and throws his photo with Maria away, the song Never Turn Back played through the end credits.

Yeah. That was fun, Never Turn Back.

Now, SEGA did try to give Shadow something else to do, their biggest effort to try and move Shadow forward in his life with Sonic 06 featuring him as a GUN agent working with Rouge and Omega, all uncovering a dark time travel plot by Mephiles the Dark to destroy all of reality. The game made the effort to show that Shadow was still haunted by fears of being a tool for death, such as Mephiles trying to trick Shadow into thinking he had destroyed everything and was contained, and Omega’s role in the future of defeating Shadow was a great shock to Shadow who felt his faith dented, wondering if he could ever escape that fear of what he was made for, death or hope? It took Rouge comforting him and telling him she’d always be by his side no matter what that he got to think again and fight Mephiles to defeat him for good.

Yeah, Sonic 06 has a...history as we know. But I at least welcome the tries SEGA made to try and move the character of Shadow forward beyond Maria without leaving his other fears behind. The only issue with this is that the events of Sonic 06 was erased so it undid all that character work :/ this didn’t however stop Shadow’s popularity for he made big appearances in Archie Sonic and the anime Sonic X, both of which at least tried something with him. I don’t like Ian Flynn, as you all know, and his first go at Shadow was having him struggling to fight Sonic Recolour 1,0000, then turned him into a evil king in the future. But I’ll give him credit: he did give a decent Shadow Sonic Universe story which let us see Shadow’s relationship with others outside of Sonic and Team Dark, becoming a fair friend of Blaze’s, his sense of humour bumping up with Omega and learning to adapt to fight in the Special Zone without his powers. His softer side was well explored in that SU story with him and Hope and Blaze, which was at least guiding him in a good direction for his character. He was letting go of Maria and was focussing on doing good for the whole of Mobius.

But the same couldn’t be said for the games.

Running Towards The Ultimate Dumbass

Ultimately, focusing on the games for the moment, Shadow didn’t exactly have much else going on after that aside from appearing in Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood, Sonic Rivals 1 and 2, (I don’t count Sonic and the Black Knight as that was Sir Lancelot), DS Colours, a Riders game, and Sonic Generations, the majority of which he didn’t really have much of a story going on. But it was that Riders game where something started to change with Shadow. Something fans were starting to notice was going to become a bitter subject for a lot of them.

Shadow started to behave like a twit. He was acting far more aggressive than usual, callous with his new robotic team mate and was egotistical. Not saying he doesn’t have an ego, but it started to get too big. That is often excused as “He’s being competitive in his own way” but that doesn’t mean he has to start acting like a total twat. Then came Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric. If you thought Shadow was a aggressive bum hole in that Riders game, gosh he cranked it up in Sonic Boom!

Just. Why? What’s his issue? What has he got with Sonic’s friends? What on flipping Mobius was SEGA and Big Red Button doing with Shadow? I get this is a different version of him but WTF!? What’s his reason? C’mon! It’s the same as Anakin Skywalker hanging out with Ahsoka after he died instead of helping Luke and Leia find Palpatine! To think Hayden could’ve voiced Shadow.

But anyway back to Shadow, this started a bit of an uproar in fandom demanding to know why he was behaving like this. Ian Flynn, being the naughty kid he is to daddy SEGA, went out and said that SEGA has a mandate that Shadow acts like a jerk which almost everybody took at face value. But as we know Ian’s not the most honest of people, particularly his whole “SEGA characters can’t have families or relationships” mandate when Knuckles’ dad appeared in Sonic 2 and Tails got with Zooey in Sonic Boom. This of course only gotten far more touchy when Sonic Forces came out and the Shadow DLC featured Shadow defeating Infinite and in turn causing his descent into ultra villainy. It led to many complaining Shadow was being too aggressive and was a jerk. Well, I’m sorry but if he’s gonna go out and stop a mercenary he’s not gonna approach him with a bag of sweets and say “Infinite? Can you be a good boy and stop doing all that bad stuff please? I’ll give you a sweetie!” But this, combined with Tails, saw Sonic Forces take a battering from fans of how they felt SEGA lost their way with the characters.

Ian Flynn and Evan Stanley’s “efforts” at trying to “save” Shadow didn’t help as they had Sonic gaslight him in IDW for his past which became a disgusting repeating pattern with Sonic in that comic, and oddly enough Flynn kept trying to say that basically “SEGA’s being nasty to me, they don’t want me writing Shadow better!” But when Daniel Barnes came along and wrote a tie in comic for Team Sonic Racing he revealed he had no trouble from SEGA at all with Shadow. So Ian, mind being honest for once? It’s clearly YOUR problem.

Shadow’s most stupid moment was, for me, in Sonic Prime where he became The Ultimate Dumbass. He sees a vision of Sonic destroying the world so what does he do? Does he go to Sonic, tell him what he saw, tell him to hang back while he fought Eggman and got the Paradox Prism somewhere else? No, he just beats him up which only makes Sonic fight back, run away and tears through the Paradox Prism. Then Shadow comes back and acts like it’s all Sonic’s fault. NO! ITS YOUR FAULT YOU UTTER NINNY! So. What does Shadow do next to try and help Sonic? Does he raid the Chaos Council’s ship, kick their arses, throw them out and rescue those on board? No, he kicks flipping rocks at the ship! Wow, that’s so amazing Shadow, well done, you’re the ULTIMATE DUMBASS!

For why Shadow was written like this? The writers said “IT’S SEGA’S FAULT!” Yeah. Sure. I bet that was the only advice they took from Ian Flynn, if you screw up, just say SEGA made you do it. What, was your mediocre concept of a multiverse SEGA’s fault? Was the Chaos Council SEGA’s fault? Was your incredibly poor dialogue their fault? I bet SEGA are the reasons why you spent a few episodes of the last season repeating the same plot. Well, you screwed up Mega Man, you screwed up Sonic. You’re gonna screw up Crash Bandicoot. Take a look in the mirror.

So yes, by this point Shadow had become a big sore point with the fandom with Tails. Fans hated what was going on, there was and still is confusion as to who is really at fault, and there was a demand to make Shadow a “good character” again.

The Dead End

We finally get to where I think the character has reached a wall with no way of getting around it. SEGA could see that there was trouble with Shadow and they took incredible tiny steps in trying to win the fans back. To be honest? I think they have made some good choices here and there. In Murder of Sonic it’s revealed he works at soup kitchens in his spare time to help out the poor, it’s said he loves cats and wants to open an orphanage for them, and he loves coffee beans.

The issue this time is the fans reception to it. Like a lot of fandoms these days, the Sonic fandom are almost brain dead who either react angrily, crazily or overly brightly to something new. We’re Ian Flynn to make a turd sandwich, his cult would guzzle it up and say it’s great. Were SEGA to make any try at giving Shadow something more? Fans turn it into a joke, and Flynn and his cult haven’t helped as they’ve encouraged the belief. They turned Shadow’s love for coffee beans into “Oh yeah, he eats them! Isn’t that funny!?” SEGA clearly was aware of this and sent out a picture of Shadow with coffee beans and they explained why he likes them: he loves the smell of them, the power they have to affect somebody’s mood, the effort people make in growing them. That’s why he likes them. But no. Trust the Sonic fandom to turn it into a joke.

But then came The Year of Shadow. What was this great year? Why it was all about LOOKING BACK on Shadow’s history.

Remember that Never Turn Back song from earlier? Yeah, that song is redundant.

We had Shadow Generations and Sonic 3 come out which, while welcomed, did earn a lot of sighs as some fans felt that now Shadow was just being forced to live through the same thing: his friendship with Maria, Gerald’s love for him, Black Doom coming back, Mephiles made a return, we got Shadow sacrificing himself again but lives once again. Like yay, sweet. But that’s it. The big celebration of Shadow saw twice in one yea bringing Maria back and forcing Shadow to say goodbye to her again, Shadow learns to be free of Black Doom again, Shadow learns he has to be good AGAIN.

This is why I think he’s come to a creative dead end. SEGA to me have gotten a bit cautious in how to move forward with Shadow and are just recycling his origins and side characters to keep interest going. But that leaves Shadow a really frozen character. That’s all that he will be known as: the edgy hedgehog who has a tragic backstory. It’s annoying because the extra little bits they’ve given him, like the soup kitchen and his care for Amy, are really good and are little baby steps in trying to do more with him. But I feel Shadow has come to a wall that is starting to box him to a basic character that has no other way out. I know some will argue that the Sonic characters (the game characters) are mostly frozen but i disagree because they at least have more interesting quirks to them and have traits and liveliness to them that makes them endearing to follow like Silver being a mailman or Tails being a good cook. I mean Tails’ bullying in the past is hardly brought up save for a brief snippet here or there. The Chaotix had an entire spin off which gave more to Vector and Espio’s characters and the whole of Murder of Sonic featured a lot of them getting together having a good laugh while uncovering the mystery. With Shadow it’s frustratingly hard for SEGA to try and move him past his particular story of his origins and his fight with Black Doom.

But do I think Shadow is done creatively?

I don’t feel it is.

Freddy: Heh, still got hope?

Teddy: Well he does have ideas, don’t ya?

Well yes.

Beyond the Dead End

Well as we know, Shadow is coming back for the fourth movie though in what role we don’t know but hopefully something more than being an angry brute who punches first and asks later. He could be getting a movie of his own which does mean he will have to once again fight Black Doom, but hopefully they get to do something else with him during the film. But in regards to what else they’ll do with him, I can’t help but wonder if SEGA are trying to set something up with him and Sage? In Sonic Racing Crossworlds, Shadow has a very interesting few words for Sage.

Shadow wanting her to find her own path is really good, it’s something that I can see him doing to give her a better life where she isn’t tied to Eggman and live her own. Could we see Shadow taking on something more of a complex role as he sees that there is in some way for him to save Maria’s legacy with Sage? Or maybe Maria has nothing to do with it and it’s Shadow’s usual outlook on machines working for Eggman. He would rather they’d be free.

I think a Team Dark game which gives Shadow a new villain and a new friend with no ties to Maria could be an interesting avenue to explore, and a little sub game called “Shadow’s Cats” in which Shadow makes orphanages and runs it in his spare time would be a good idea that lets us explore his softer side. A new villain could be in the form of a rogue GUN agent who is using old GUN and Eggman tech to their own means. Maybe a new ally could be a boy or teen genius who Shadow ends up respecting. Maybe you could do more to spice up his relationship with Rouge and Omega, like how he bounces against Rouge’s more flirtatious nature and a competitive relationship with Omega. I mean you got GUN, a big organisation right there and you can make many different characters that Shadow can have some form of relationship with. Just don’t have Professor Tori be with him, she’d annoy him greatly. I know that Shadow isn’t a conversationalist but that can be written around with him making small talk and you can easily show his character through smaller things, be it he helps out somebody at the GUN base by moving things, asks something that has him really curious. You could have Commander Tower’s granddaughter be a recurring character since the commander did have Shadow meet her after she was born, perhaps have Shadow form a mentor like relationship with her.

Heck, talking about all this makes me think of Doctor Who, particularly the UNIT era with the Third Doctor. They could look at that time with the Doctor, all those characters and villains could be a big inspiration to SEGA on what to do with Shadow, I mean you got Commander Tower there as the Brigadier Lethbridge Stewart character, you can easily make a Benton, Yates, Jo and Liz character for Shadow to interact with, i.e. a pair of soldiers who have a good relationship with Rouge and Omega but are professional with Shadow, the younger character who we have Shadow as a mentor to, and a scientific genius whom Shadow has lots of respect for.

Heck, you could even do a fun team up between him and several Sonic characters and that has Tails in it as well, just to put to bed that stupid “Shadow hates Tails” meme and explore how both bounce and interact with each other. I mean I could see Tails somewhat impressing Shadow with his intellect and Tails will obviously draw on the similarities Shadow has with Sonic, noting that’s not an issue. You could explore his friendship with Amy, given she did convince him to save the world back then and he clearly likes her well enough to reward her on her birthday. Like if you want Shadow to change as a character with some extra effort that sure, give it a try but don’t run it by ear, have a plan in place that gets Shadow to a different place by the end. He doesn’t have to be the nicest guy all around, but he at least has shown enough change that greatly fits his character.

Of course Ian Flynn could be lurking about jotting all this on his notepad and passing it onto SEGA. Yeah well watch it Ian!

Teddy: But wouldn’t you want them to try it?

Freddy: I think he’d like it as long as they give him credit.

Well if you’ve got an idea and they take an interest, you go to the guy who began it, not somebody who’s copying it. But anyway, I like to think they have an idea of what to do with Shadow, but it remains as to how they do it, like do they get the right people on board and can they execute it well? Or how will the fans receive it? It takes a lot of thought and care in where you go with these characters, but Shadow must involve extra care. The biggest obstacles in Shadow’s way are the people handling him and those who respond to him. If they fumble the bag even once then they’ll be yelled at for “Screwing up the character” and fall back on nostalgia. If they do a good job and people respond happily, then good, keep it up but don’t screw it. I think people are ready to move Shadow on from Black Doom, Maria and those of his past in regards to the games. It’s time Shadow got something brand new to keep him going and get him out of that dead end. Come on SEGA, give us something with the hedgehog!

Teddy: Couldn’t agree more than that.

Freddy: Same here! Is that it?

Yes that’s it! Hope you liked it and leave your comments below for me, it will be interesting to see if you agree or don’t. Thank you.