Wait, so he died?

That was the plan. Shadow was intended to be a one-and-done antihero with a heart of gold and a full circle redemption story. If that had been the extent of his story, it would have been a pretty powerful note to end on. However, because fans latched onto him, Sega decided to bring him back in 2003’s Sonic Heroes, but it wasn’t entirely clear if we were playing as the same character, or an imitation. It’s here that Shadow’s story became much, much more convoluted as Sonic started to go back to the well on this guy again and again.

In Sonic Heroes, Shadow appears as a member of Team Dark. This group is founded by Rouge, who stumbles upon Shadow in a containment pod in one of Eggman’s secret bases. The hedgehog seems to have lost his memories and is under the watchful guard of one of the doctor’s robots named E-123 Omega, and the three team up to find the scientist and demand answers. Sonic Heroes raises more questions about Shadow than it answers, as the group stumbles upon lifelike Shadow androids. Rouge finds an entire lab full of these robots in stasis, and confides in Omega that she believes the Shadow they’ve been fighting alongside to be a robot like the others. Omega points out that if Eggman has cloned Shadow, the original must exist somewhere. However, it wasn’t until Shadow’s 2005 game that the Sonic series would make a definitive statement on the matter.