Sonic 3 will lean heavily into the tragic parallels of its leads
In the live-action movies, Sonic has a pretty sad backstory that surprisingly mirrors Shadow’s in the games. In the first film, we saw Sonic being chased away from his home and sent away by Longclaw, his owl caretaker, for his own safety. If Sonic the Hedgehog 3 follows Shadow’s origin story from the games closely, he has a pretty similar moment that turns him towards chaos and destruction. We can already see in the trailer that Sonic is reflecting on his past, including some chalk drawings of him and Longclaw together. James Marsden’s Tom Wachowski is seen talking to Sonic about how he never let that tragedy change him. Later in the trailer,Tom Butler’s Commander Walters makes the comparison between Sonic and Shadow more directly, though he points out that Sonic found friends and family, while Shadow has no one.
