Review: Season 3, Episode 11

And so ends Season 3’s obligatory pre-finale comedy episode. This was certainly an interesting one. The last two seasons’ equivalent episodes were carried by a constant flow of jokes taking place in ridiculous situations, but this one focused much more on the latter half of that. Not to say there weren’t any good jokes, just that the comedy was supposed to come primarily from the wackiness of Big going on a space odyssey and somehow never getting any closer to his relatively simple goal. The biggest source of inspiration here was Big’s role in Sonic and the Secret Rings, which we’ll talk about later. But, much like S1 E16 “Hate That Hedgehog,” the base idea for this episode also took inspiration from stand-out comedic episodes of other shows from the past. In this case, that would be the episode “Mondo Coco” from an old Cartoon Network show, Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends (and, perhaps to some extent, the episode “World-Wide Wobbuffet” from Yuni Oha’s Pokémon Cosmic Quest, which began from similar inspiration). Much like this episode, that one features a particularly silly character being swept up on a long journey featuring progressively more ridiculous situations.

Of course, like previous comedy episodes, I also wanted to make sure that this one was here for a reason. Of course, the space theme made it obvious that this episode had to go in this season and nowhere else, but that’s sort of the opposite direction of logic from what I need. Of course, given that Big went missing a full season ago, and that he mysteriously appeared in the Frontiers special, this episode was automatically necessary and “story-important,” but that still didn’t really resolve my problem. I want the reader to walk away from the episode feeling glad that they didn’t skip it. So, as I was mapping out all the different parts of the journey, knowing that Big would have to end up in Cyber Space somehow, I decided to put the destroyed homeworld of the Ancients as one leg of that journey, and use Seraph’s expertise to lead into that. Just like with last episode, (S3 E10 War of the Lost World) having direct relevance to the lore of Frontiers is what made this one work.

But how was I to establish that relevance? What could Seraph help us learn about the Ancients that Big and Froggy could spur her to say? Well, what association do they have already? Big, not much. But Froggy. Froggy swallowed Chaos, and had a reaction to that which still hasn’t been explained—and Chaos is an Ancient. I took that and rolled with it. Although it was not definitively confirmed in the end, the implication is that Froggy is not an Earth frog at all, but perhaps instead an Ancient frog, or descended therefrom.

And then there’s the whole Paradox thing. Planning for this episode, I was not expecting it to end with Froggy acquiring the powers of an elder god, but somehow, that’s the way it went. The train of thought started simply because, in the long line of crazy ways for Big to get from one place to the next, my ideas ran dry on the Lost Hex. I mean, obviously I had the option to actually send him home the “planned” way of reaching the portal before Espio closed it, or simply finding the unclosed one, but that would make for a pretty anticlimactic end to the recurring dramatic irony that drove the episode. There are also Wisps on the Lost Hex he could’ve made friends with as was the plan on Planet Wisp, or he could’ve simply found the portal back to Planet Wisp, but going back to Plan E after Plan F failed would have been, again, anticlimactic. I think, if I didn’t have the Paradox route to go down, I probably could’ve salvaged something out of an idea like “all the failed plans come together to work in the end.” So maybe he finds the portal back to Planet Wisp, and discovers there that Seraph, Barry, and Dodon Pa have all been gathering Wisps to his cause. Obviously that wouldn’t make sense as-is, but something to that effect. But, ah, I’m rambling again.

So anyways, I wanted an ending that doubled down on what was supposed to make the episode funny in the first place, and to me, that meant finding the most ridiculously unlikely way home that can possibly be imagined. I was already considering how this episode would be highlighting Big’s incredible luck at making it out of so many situations alive when he really doesn’t have the skills to. That kind of thinking tends to get the concepts of branching timelines and alternate realities on the brain, which is probably what got me thinking about the preparations I’m making for the currently-delayed Sonic Prime special. And I decided from there how interesting it would be if Big’s luck was more than just an accident—then I decided to take it all the way. I thought that the ultimate culmination of this episode would be the suggestion that it is literally impossible for Big to get home. But he’s so lucky that he defies the balance of the multiverse in order to continue his journey, effectively rewriting reality to his will. Reminder that we’re still talking about Big the Cat.

So anyways, I decided that luring in the character formerly known as Yin-Yang Shadow would be the climax of the episode, but the details remained hazy as I began writing. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that sending Big home might not even be the best option. We already knew from Sonic Movie Special 2: Next Level Nexus that Yin-Yang Shadow and his mystery companion have been trying to build a team of “Prime Candidates,” and I had my ideas in mind for what that team would be. But I hadn’t considered the fact that the delay of the Prime Special would make one of my intended characters, who was available in this season but won’t be for the next, unusable. That character needed a replacement, and, while Big certainly isn’t an obvious choice to fill that role, I had just gotten through coming up with all the reasons that Big should be able to attract the attention of these multiversal protectors. And if he’s unique enough to get their attention, why wouldn’t he be unique enough to join the team?

The changes I needed to make from there were minor. I’d already decided on the idea of Froggy helping Big find this Paradox crystal to set the events in motion. And now, if Froggy simply does as Froggy does, and eats the dangerous magic gem, we would not only have a little extra excitement for the climax, but we would also end up with an unquestionably valid power for the team of Big and Froggy to have that they can use in their coming multiversal quest.

Of course, there’s also Yin-Yang Shadow himself to talk about. Or, should I say, Paradox the Hedgehog. And I suppose I should discuss Sonic Prime in general here. Last time we saw this character was in the Sonic Movie 2 Special, in April of last year. That was more than half a year before the airdate of Sonic Prime, but at the time I don’t believe the date was announced yet, and I wanted to be prepared early on in case the show was premiered without much warning. I teased the coming Sonic Prime Special in a mostly subtle way, by using shattering effects for his multiverse powers and making that one brief hint at the end of looking for a “Prime Candidate.” At that time, I figured that what I was leading into was a Special Episode that would have been written some time last year. I hadn’t yet decided if it would be my standard best-guess-at-the-details release-day celebration, or a more relaxed but fully informed follow-up to the show, or a two-parter that tries to accomplish both. As the date got closer and we still knew so little about the details of the show, I decided, given that Netflix (for some reason) likes to drop whole seasons at once instead of progressively airing episodes like a normal show, I would have the opportunity to binge the whole show in one weekend, then crack down on the Special quickly while the general audience is still watching the show.

Then the show aired. Or at least, one-third of the show aired. We already knew from the announcement that this show was written as a single 24-episode season, and then Netflix goes and releases a whole whopping 8 of them, with the audacity to call it “Season 1”. And now we know for sure that they’re calling the next incomplete batch, “Season 2”. It’s a scummy marketing tactic, taking one complete story and pretending like it’s 3 so you can “release” it 3 times. But, my distaste with Netflix aside, the result is that I don’t have enough of a show to make an episode out of. So, with regret, I chose to delay the Sonic Prime Special until, apparently, “Season 3” comes out, and we actually understand what the show is supposed to be about. That’s why I was rather pleased at the chance of bringing these hints back up in this episode, and expanding on them a bit. I wanted to remind readers that this is still coming, and confirm that it hasn’t been cancelled, while also making it look like I was actually just planning really far ahead. (I wasn’t.) Now, because of these multiple lead-ins, this is shaping up to be one of the most important over-arching stories of the series, which was definitely not part of the original plan.

Yin-Yang Shadow’s new name was a curious situation. This character has consistently been at the whim of last-minute ideas, and now is no exception. Basically, I got tired of that weird “Yin-Yang Shadow” name. It’s cumbersome to write, confusing for the readers, and especially awkward seeing as the in-universe characters would never refer to him as such (besides Movie Sonic, who never actually learned that his name was Shadow). But, after I already, over a year ago, decided to tie him closely in with the concepts of Sonic Prime, and given that his character is, in the most literal sense, a walking contradiction, giving him the new name of Paradox just felt obvious. It’s funny, because when I decided to make him important to Prime, we knew nothing about the “Paradox Prism” or any such use of the word.

Of course, there’s lots of other fun references and ideas to talk about in this episode. Barry and the space train, for example. For those who haven’t played yet, this was all one big reference to “The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog,” the free PC game the social media team put out for April Fools this year (and which Blacklight played and left some voiced commentary on). Barry is the name given to the character in the reveal trailer, and like with Hero, I decided that was the best route to take for choosing a canon name. I went through some debate over whether this weird piece of Sonic history should be considered canon, but in the end, I decided that the ridiculous factor was exactly what this episode needed. The concept of a “space train” probably felt pretty far out from left field, but to be fair, among the branching options for how the story ends, some of the options for what Barry can say they did after the story includes, in one breath, going to space and getting promoted to conductor. The implication was that these were exaggerations, but it’s not like any other parts of the story were really any less weird. To a very small extent, the concept was also vaguely inspired by the DC character “Space Cabbie.” It is what it sounds like. A decision also had to be made about Barry’s gender. They’re referred to exclusively by they/them in the original story, yet they’re clearly designed as a male animoid. Also appears to be more clearly attracted to females than males, not that that necessarily means anything (as Blacklight was quick to point out). It’s a question of whether the character was actually meant to be non-binary, or if the developers just wanted to save some money by not writing differing dialogue options for a user-selected gender. The developers have declined to respond to such questions, or so I’ve heard. So I’m inclined to assume the latter, but, in the end, I figured a bit of enbie representation wouldn’t hurt.

There’s also the debut appearance of Dodon Pa and the canonization of Team Sonic Racing. The game has already been loosely referenced, and of course, the Donpa Kingdom was mentioned explicitly in Frontiers (and equivalently in the Frontiers special), but there was still technically the option of low-tier “it didn’t happen quite the way you remember it” canon, which has now been removed in favor of pretty much complete acceptance. I’m always hesitant to embrace the weirder aspects of Sonic canon—the plot of that game really didn’t make any sense at all, there were some pretty significant out-of-character issues, and, excepting the existence of the Donpa Kingdom, it didn’t really contribute anything valuable to the canon. But that’s a very big exception, and, this being the alien season, the Donpa Kingdom was one aspect of the greater Sonic universe that I figured I shouldn’t ignore. While I was at it, I figured I should capitalize on the chance to showcase some of the uniquely weird aspects of the Donpa Kingdom that TSR talked about but never showed. I mean, an intergalactic motor company run by the ruling monarch of a planet of mythical creatures? That idea is nothing if not unique, but TSR just didn’t feel like elaborating on that. Technically, we don’t know that the Donpa Kingdom is inhabited by mythical creatures, but I think it’s a reasonable extrapolation. Dodon Pa himself explicitly is one. It could be that it’s an entire planet of Tanuki, but that raises an awful lot of questions. If what we know on Earth as a mythical creature is actually an alien from this other planet, what does that mean about our other myths? It would suggest that they all come from a similar source. Plus, if Earth, Planet Wisp, and Kaos are all multi-species planets, it stands to reason that the Donpa Kingdom is as well. And anyways, I think it’s more interesting that way.

Dodon Pa himself was actually a surprising challenge to write. His character in TSR is…a bit confusing. He spends 90% of the game with every word out of his mouth sounding intentionally over-the-top suspicious, but then we learn the full truth about him, and suddenly he doesn’t appear to have a malicious bone in his body—his goal is universal peace and clean, renewable energy. It’s really incongruous, and it was unclear if he was okay sharing all of his secrets with Eggman in the end because he thought Eggman incapable of causing any real harm, or because he simply didn’t care. Given his lack of concern over anyone’s safety, I’m inclined to think the latter. I decided it would be most practical to focus in on this aspect of his character, which meant downplaying his “universal peace” side a little bit. I’m sure this is still his stated goal, but I’m framing that more as a marketing slogan for his business. He’s a businessman first, a world leader second, and a “philanthropist” third, only because it makes him look good in those first two aspects. So, he’s happy to help Big get home. But only if Big does something for him in return. And when Big suggests an alternate option, Dodon Pa simply won’t have it, because that would ruin his business opportunity. That also means that he is perfectly okay with his products being used for illegal activities, as long as it isn’t made to be his problem, which is pretty much what happened with Eggman.

And lastly, we have the originators of this episode’s plot, the Pisceans. Funny story…I wrote this episode thinking that I made them up. I was quite convinced that I was building an alien species out of the vacuum, so I was free to design their appearance, architecture, and culture in whatever ridiculous ways I wanted. I’m not sure exactly how it is that I forgot, but somehow, the fact that this was originally meant to be an existing species in Sonic just completely vanished from my mind somewhere along the way. Here’s what I forgot.

These characters, Hokey and Pokey, are NPCs from the Crater Lake hub world of Sonic Boom Rise of Lyric. Even if you’re one of the few who played the game, I get the strange impression that you probably forgot about them too. Now, to be clear, I still have absolutely no memory of making any sort of decision to take inspiration from these characters. But Hokey (left) pretty much exactly matches the generic design I envisioned for all Pisceans, perhaps just a bit too short and hunched over. And, you know, the humanoid faces. So, what I assume happened is this. It was roughly February of 2021. Ahead of my upcoming episode, S2 E13 Non-Zero Chance, I was doing a quick re-watch of the full story content of Rise of Lyric. Roughly 6 months earlier, I had just completed my first full playthrough of Sonic and the Secret Rings, the very last 3D Sonic game missing from my list at the time. One of my biggest takeaways from that game was, unexpectedly, Big’s role, which was a total shock to me when I first learned about it. The fact that he had all these cameos akin to those of SA2, but with an actual background story put to it, was crazy to me as a Sonic fan. In his second to last journal entry from the game, he talks about being able to find Pisces in the Milky Way, and wanting to “meet him.” I had that simmering in the back of the brain as something I could use for a space/alien themed episode for Season 3. That same source of inspiration created the general backbone for this episode—Big is whisked to away to a strange place because someone mistakes him for a blue hedgehog, goes on a ridiculous and perilous journey where he keeps showing up in the background of important things, and somehow manages to survive through all the escalating danger. So that’s all relatively recent on the brain, and then I get to watching Rise of Lyric, and I see these two strange robot-alien-jellyfish characters who are completely out of place among the rest of the game’s NPC cast, and something makes me think, “That’s it. Those are my Pisceans.” Given that I was pseudo-canonizing RoL anyways, and that I was planning on addressing as many of its mysteries as possible, I suppose this one just felt like a no-brainer to explore in the Alien Season, and the Big episode felt like the easy place to put these aquatic aliens. It was such a quick and easy thought process that I made no effort plot it out, or take notes, or anything that would help the moment stick in my memory. So, two years later, any memory of the moment of inspiration was gone, and all I had left  was a vague image of a species design.

So anyways, even though I wasn’t thinking about it when writing it, I will state plainly for the canon here that, yes, Hokey and Pokey are Pisceans, or at least are some related species using Piscean exoskeletons. Why they look different and how they ended up on Earth are another question entirely. Perhaps some other time.

Now it’s on to the trivia, I suppose.

• This episode’s title, “Big’s Big Space Adventure 3,” is an unusual one. It’s meant to have the eye-catching “Adventure 3” title as a sort of prank to get readers excited for something that this definitely isn’t. More literally, the implication is that Big’s yet-untold trip to the ARK in the background of Sonic Adventure 2 would have been the literal “Big’s Big Space Adventure 2,” and this is a follow-up to those events. Just don’t ask me what the “Space Adventure 1” would have been.
  • This title also resembles a Sonic Social Media–endorsed fangame titled “Big’s Big Fishing Adventure 3” ( playable at bigthec.at ). This fangame was originally conceived as an attempt to tell the aforementioned story of Big’s appearances on the ARK, although I guess the story went through some changes from there. I’m not sure where the 3 comes from in their case. I will not deny that some inspiration was taken here.
• The following locations from previous Sonic and SEGA games, as well as other media, appeared or were mentioned in this episode:
  • The Constellation Pisces (mentioned in Secret Rings)
  • The Algolian System (Phantasy Star)
  • The Mirage Express (Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog)
  • Homeworld of the Ancients (Sonic Frontiers flashback)
  • Kronos Island (Cyber Space replica, Frontiers)
  • Western Fishing Spot (replica, Frontiers)
    • This one was a little awkward. In Frontiers, the Fishing Spots turned out to be in Cyber Space, but I didn’t know that at the time of writing part 1 of the Frontiers Special, so I plopped Big next to a pond on Kronos Island and pretended like that was normal. I figure, for whatever reason, this Cyber Space replica of the Starfall Islands has its Fishing Spots merged in with their respective islands. Doesn’t matter now, they’re all destroyed anyways.
  • Donpa Motors (mentioned in Team Sonic Racing)
  • Donpa Kingdom (Planet) (mentioned, Team Sonic Racing)
  • Planet Wisp (Colors)
    • Mother’s Canyon (TSR)
    • Hex Valley (mentioned in S3 E10)
  • The Lost Hex (Lost World)
    • Windy Hill Zone
    • Sky Road Zone
    • Silent Forest Zone (cameo)
    • Lava Mountain Zone (cameo)
    • Frozen Factory Zone (cameo)
    • Bridge Zone (cameo, originally from Sonic 1 8-bit)
    • The Legend of Zelda Zone (cameo)
      • The Kingdom of Hyrule (originally from The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom)
        • This was a spur-of-the-moment reference, but given that I already canonized The Legend of Zelda Zone in the last episode, I figured this wasn’t too much of a stretch. And I couldn’t go without referencing the hot new game right now.
    • Desert Ruins Zone
      • Dessert Ruins Zone (note the inserted ‘s’)
    • Sea Bottom Segue
      • Another odd one. This technically isn’t its own zone, and it also doesn’t have a name. It’s a visual theme that appears in a single act of two different zones, sort of like Dessert Ruins, but without its own punny name. “Sea Bottom Segue” is the title of the music that plays during these levels. “Segue” is a musical term, but it also shares a general concept with the more literal word of a seamless transition from one place or idea to another. Literally, this is an undersea tunnel connecting one place to another, so the name makes sense. We also have “Honeycomb Highway” to look at as another example of a music track that clearly applies a name to a level theme that doesn’t otherwise get an in-game name.
  • Between this episode and the last one, the only level theme from Lost World not to make some kind of appearance is the casino level in Frozen Factory Act 3 (music title of “Double Down” probably doesn’t work for a name here), as well as the “Hidden World.”
• This episode shows that Big was contributing in the background plots of several previous episodes, including:
  • S2 E18: Metallic Madness Part 2, when he went missing in the first place.
  • S3 E3: Impending Doom, where he met Seraph and got her interested in the people of Earth before she ever arrived there.
  • S3 E6: Arms Race Part 1, where Shadow arriving on Orthan and confronting Black Rex created the distraction that unknowingly allowed Big to escape.
  • S3 E8: The Final Frontiers Part 1, the only episode on this list where Big actually appeared, only to be left behind.
  • S3 E10: War of the Lost World, where Espio sealing the portals of the Lost Hex unknowingly prevented Big from returning home.
• Big is able to judge the metric weight of the mutant demon shark on sight alone, referencing the weight tallying score system used in Big’s Sonic Adventure levels.
  • He’s able to lift this obscenely large fish out of the water without much trouble—reasonable, given his ability to do the same with a full-sized car in his Adventure story.
• Among the planets mentioned but not seen in this episode are “Cascade” and “Green Gate.” These are both planets from the Metarex Saga of Sonic X. Their descriptions as tourist destinations would suggest that Metarex do not (yet) exist in this universe to ravage them.
  • Apart from the occasional “gotta go fast” that’s only been used because of relevance to the Sonic movie, this is the first direct reference that has been made to Sonic X in The Chaos Project. In hindsight, it’s very odd that Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog and Sonic Boom both got full episodes based around them before X was even referenced. I suppose that’s because the former two both sit comfortably in alternate non-canon universes, so introducing their ideas into the canon makes it clear that this is all meant to be a reinterpretation. But Sonic X is in a weird not-quite-canon limbo that makes any kind of reference dangerous—I don’t want to imply that the events of Sonic X have taken place, because in CP canon, they haven’t.
• More SEGA references in space to round off the season.
  • Seraph’s ship, unnamed before now, is called the SG-1000, SEGA’s 8-bit predecessor to the Master System.
  • The Algolian system from Phantasy Star shows up yet again.
  • The ship Dodon Pa tries to sell to Big is the TeraDrive, which, exactly as Dodon Pa describes, was a Japan-only Mega Drive with a built-in home computer.
• The Orthani language has been brought to you by ChatGPT. The AI model was used to workshop the structure, grammar, and syntax of the language, and then all the lines in this episode were translated using a consistent dictionary. I’ll put up the dictionary in the bonus content area at some point.
• Barry claims to have found Froggy in the trashcan. This is a reference to a sub-plot in The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog involving Barry’s ongoing quest to search trashcans for clues.
• Upon realizing that they need to think, Barry pulls out a “Dream Gear”. This is the device on which the running minigame is played in Murder of Sonic. However, the game theoretically suggests that there is no actual Dream Gear, just a metaphorical representation of Barry’s thoughts. But they also don’t say that there isn’t a real Dream Gear. I find the image of Barry actually pulling out a gaming handheld in the middle of an interrogation while everyone is watching to be hilarious, so I ran with it.
• The method of Big’s arrival in Cyber Space resembles that of Knuckles in the prologue animation Sonic Frotniers: Divergence.
  • The portal that Big takes is a purple one, implying it to be a Fishing Spot portal, despite it leading to Kronos Island. That oddity was already mentioned above.
  • It is new information that there were Cyber Space portals on the Ancients’ Homeworld. The End suggests that Cyber Space was only created for the purpose of trapping it, but there is some cause for doubting that information. If nothing else, perhaps this was just a lone prototype that Big “accidentally” turned on.
• The Scavengers that assault the Mother’s Canyon race appear to be the same group from the Sonic Movie 2 and its Pre-Quill comic. In the comic, they appear to speak Ancient Babylonian (as does Longclaw’s clan in the movie, but who knows if that’s related), so I decided to acknowledge that by suggesting that they are “carrying on the legacy of the Babylon Rogues.” This doesn’t imply anything one way or another about what role the Babylonians had left in the galaxy after Babylon Garden crashed on Earth, but it does provide the new suggestion that the Rogues specifically were already known to be intergalactic thieves even before that crash. The alternative was to make them actual Babylonians, but given that they appear to be more humanoid than animoid in the movie, I thought that would be too much of a stretch.
• The way Big is rescued by the Wisps parallels Sonic’s own rescue at the end of Colors.
  • Similarly, the way the Wisps play as he tries to recruit their help closely mirrors some shots from the title screen opening movie of Colors.
• The way that the Jade Ghost Wisp induces a partial transformation, allowing Big to phase through the ground without taking on the Ghost form entirely, also happened to Sonic in the Sonic Colors: Rise of the Wisps animation made for Ultimate.

And that is all for now! The Season Finale is in the works, so stay tuned!

-And until then, remember to live and learn every day!

Review: Season 3, Episode 10

This episode was a tough one. Obviously, it took a while, owing as much to life circumstances as to the episode’s content. Theoretically, it was one of those episodes that should have “written itself.” I knew going into it that I’d have two plots going at once, and far too many characters to handle than should ever make me worried about not being able to fill the space. But I was worried anyways, because…well, it’s a Lost World episode. Maybe I should start from there.

It was a goal going into The Chaos Project that every corner of Sonic history would get its due acknowledgement, and Lost World was no exception. As a game, I do like Lost World a bit better than Colors. But in terms of its place in the world of Sonic, Colors, despite its criminal level of detachment from the rest of Sonic history, is workable—Lost World isn’t. Colors acknowledges that it follows up on Eggman’s history of wrongdoings against the planet. It adds more alien species and their homeworlds to the Sonic universe that we already know is inhabited elsewhere. But then there’s Lost World. What is a Lost Hex? What is a Zeti? What are we even doing here? Lost World doesn’t know, and doesn’t care. I’ve mentioned it a bit on this website in the past, but it frustrates me to no end. We know that the Lost Hex is a “mysterious floating continent” due to game manuals and other external information, but…that’s pretty much it. Interviews with Iizuka claim that it is an unexplored part of Sonic’s world, but that’s even more dodgy. What makes it mysterious? Why is it unexplored? Did anyone even know it was there before? If not, how? How did Eggman find it? These are all very straightforward questions. Not only did Lost World not feeling sharing the answers, it couldn’t even answer the most surface-level questions you can possibly ask. For example: What is the main antagonist’s name? Zavok. Zavok’s name. Is never spoken. Not once. In the entire game. How Sonic even knew the name come Forces is a question of its own, but I think that’s the least of the problems Forces has to contend with. But Lost World. I’ve never known any piece of media to fail so spectacularly at delivering information. The word “Zeti” is only ever spoken in Zavok’s muffled, drowned-out in-level monologues, such as about how he is “the one Zeti you cannot defeat” as if you’re supposed to have any idea what in the world that word means. It’s almost as if the writers and designers knew they were putting out a bad product, so they intentionally obscured the details to make the failure even more forgettable. It had the opposite effect for me.

Theoretically, unanswered questions should make for fertile ground for a fanfic writer like myself. That’s how Forces ended up getting such a big spotlight relative to other modern games. But there’s a difference between “unanswered questions” and “I don’t even know how many questions I need to ask,” and Lost World is the latter.

Back in the early days of planning when I didn’t know how I would fill all these Seasons’ worth of episodes, a “Lost World episode” was decided as a must, though I had no idea what that would entail. Sure, I could go about answering questions about the origins of the Lost Hex and the Zeti, but the questions were so open-ended that I could make up literally whatever I wanted—or I could just spend the same amount of effort creating new settings and characters that would be far more interesting. It was a daunting prospect. I earmarked the episode, however, as a potential door for talking about Wisps, which I knew weren’t likely to come up much elsewhere in the series. I was quite bothered by the notion that Wisps were back even though they explicitly left, seemingly never to return, at the end of Colors. My first thought was that, perhaps, the Lost Hex was actually a floating continent of Planet Wisp, not of Earth, so the Wisps being there was just a given. That would at least explain why no one commented on it, as well as why it is mysterious and unexplored and contains strange unknown creatures. Not really sure how Eggman would absorb Earth’s life energy from all the way over on Planet Wisp, but I never claimed this was a fully-formed idea. Of course, then Forces came around and shattered that plan by having Wisps be just as present and normalized on Earth as they were on the Lost Hex. But I thought I could still work with it, and that’s where ideas resembling the final product started to take shape. If, perhaps, the Lost Hex were under the influence of some sort of time-space shenanigans, not unlike the Little Planet, then perhaps it could be, literally, the best of both worlds. It could be a “regular” floating continent of Earth, but also a natural place for Wisps to inhabit. It could occupy multiple locations simultaneously, or travel back and forth, or perhaps not exist in either location, but instead in some sort of external space that is equally connected to both. Not only would that explain the “mysterious and unexplored” issues, adhere more closely to Iizuka’s claims and intentions, and clear up the issues with the last theory, but it would also act as a vessel for Wisps to return to Earth as of Forces. Even though that was a key inspiration for this theory, I didn’t even end up using that part. Of course, there are lots of questions left, but it would be a long time before I started considering those.

So, I had my ideas about the Lost Hex, but not so much about the Zeti. I, like most people by my understanding, was under the impression that they were probably dead, so it didn’t matter much. In the final Zone, you take them out one by one, and instead of fleeing like they did earlier in the game, they go up in a puff of smoke like destroyed robots do in that game. Or, in Zavok’s case, sink into boiling lava. Then Zavok came back for Forces, which raised some eyebrows, but then he turned out to be a fake, which brought things back to square one, but with some added room for doubt. Then Team Sonic Racing came around to destroy that doubt along with what little semblance of character consistency Zavok still had left. But even then, there was one curious piece of information there, labeling Zavok as the former leader of the Deadly Six. That means that either a) everyone else is still dead, or b) some interesting things have happened behind the scenes. More interesting than anything these guys did in Lost World, that’s for sure. This is the kind of unanswered question that I like. We know that something of narrative value is there, and we have some reasonable potential choices for what that may be. I’m not sure exactly what it was that steered me away from option (a), but I suppose IDW probably had at least a little bit to do with it. For the record, no, I still don’t consider IDW to be canon to The Chaos Project or to the games in general. But I respect that it does its best to remain consistent with the games, and I try to show that respect by leaving room for most of its ideas to exist within the world. And by the judgement of IDW, it is perfectly reasonable and normalized that the Deadly Six are still alive and well. In all honesty, it’s pretty fair to say, “If Zavok survived, why wouldn’t the rest of them?” And I think, in general, the fanbase started to forget the idea that they might be dead as Lost World left the popular discourse in general. I think I just decided to go with the flow on that one.

So next was to figure out the politics of the Deadly Six, given that they were alive. For Zavok to be the “former” leader, either the team had to disband or someone had to knock him down a peg and take control. Once again, IDW shows that the team is still perfectly well together, and I thought it might be a little odd to suggest otherwise when they showed no indication of coming apart when last we saw them. Or at least, I thought it would be an odd story to have told offscreen. But knowing how strict Zik was as a former leader, and how much of a shame Zavok’s defeat would bring upon him, Zik coming out retirement just to correct Zavok’s mistakes seemed like something that required no further explanation. But it did require more thought. What is the importance of this team to begin with? What do they do when they’re not trying to get rid of Sonic? More to ruminate on as I decided to slot this episode into the at-the-time far distant placement of late Season 3.

I had ideas, but still not really an episode. I don’t remember exactly what it was that brought about inspiration, but one day, just a year or two ago, it struck. Once again, it might have had something to do with IDW, just in the sense that it put Lost World back on the brain. But what I realized was this. Zeti are creatures that can control robots. That’s a really weirdly specific power. And it makes sense as something that might arise, naturally or artificially, among a civilization that lives and breathes among technology. But that’s not what’s happening here. The Lost Hex is almost entirely naturalistic in its composition. Apart from what may or may not be built by Eggman, there’s hardly a machine in sight. Why would a group who cares so much about power choose to live in a place where that power is squandered and useless? Unless they didn’t choose. Just look at the shape of the Lost Hex. The hexes themselves. Geometrically perfect figures. That’s not something you expect to show up in nature—unless it was constructed with a purpose. I realized that the Lost Hex was almost certainly manmade. But why would the Deadly Six make a place where they can’t use their own powers? Unless they weren’t the ones who made it.

Long story short, I decided that the Lost Hex was a prison. Someone knew how dangerous the Deadly Six were, and intentionally created and trapped them on this place where they can’t do what makes them so dangerous. That spiraled into lots of who-what-when-where-why questions, and the theory morphed a bit as I fixated on a related question. If this thing is manmade, why does it look like it’s only half done? And what happens if it’s completed? That’s where the actual plot of this episode finally started to develop. I came up with the idea that would become Zyzzyx, their “jailor,” an incredibly powerful being who stole away whole chunks of planets (including Planet Wisp) to create this Lost Hex. But for whatever reason, he’s not around anymore, so his job is left unfinished, and the Zeti are left trapped for eternity. I decided before long that a prison didn’t feel quite right. It seems too big, too complex, and too luxurious to be intended that way. This freed up some more interesting answers to the “what happens if it’s completed” question. A weapon seemed like the natural way to go. And it could still be a prison in spirit—if it were done, the Zeti could conquer the universe, but because it wasn’t finished, they’ve ended up trapped here instead. Those thoughts are what eventually evolved into the idea of Zyzzyx taking his own life to hide the secrets of the Hex. He didn’t mean for it to be a prison, but he knew there was a risk of the Zeti using it wrongly, so he turned it into their prison both to protect them and to protect the universe from them.

That leaves the Threatening Three. Once I was set in this idea of exploring a more complicated history for the Zeti, I decided, as I often do, that the Deadly Six could make excellent use of a foil. If I wanted to make real believable characters out of any of them, I felt that we needed to see how they would respond to a situation more nuanced than “let’s destroy the outsiders,” which was the only personality trait they all had apart from their individual one-note villain stereotypes.

Of course, I haven’t forgotten that Zavok did make a mention of “other Zeti” in Lost World (more fuzzy in-level dialogue being the only sources of actual lore in this game), so I knew they had to exist, and it would’ve been strange not to address that. And really, I thought it might be fun to make some Zeti of my own, adhering to the general character rules established by the Deadly Six while also making them at least slightly interesting in their own right, unlike their counterparts. I decided pretty quickly on “evil emperor,” “stoic samurai,” and “wicked witch” as my one-note villain stereotypes, three being enough to make them feel like a team without dividing the attention between them too much. I figured having them be the remains of an opposing army that warred against the Deadly Six would be a good explanation for why so few Zeti seem to be left, and why they were in hiding during the events of Lost World. But it really wasn’t until I got to writing the episode that I finally decided who in this war would be the “good guys” and who would be the “bad guys.” I was torn between making the Threatening Three even more over-the-top evil than the Deadly Six in appearance, making it constantly weird for [insert protagonist pair here] to acknowledge that they’re the good guys, or simply using them to develop the Deadly Six by portraying them as the lesser of two evils. The unfortunate result of this indecision was that I…kind of ended up redeeming everyone, which was absolutely not the plan going into this. Espio’s line about evil dying at the hand of evil was meant to be a lot more reasonable. But I’m getting ahead myself, because Espio’s not even supposed to be here yet.

So, after all this planning, this agonizing, this headache that was shaping up to have a lot more potential than I expected—I was ready to cancel this episode entirely. As of my current plans, this is most likely going to be one of the last “filler” episodes for the whole rest of the series. The definition of filler definitely gets a little hazy when you consider the fact that this episode played a pretty important role in three and a half long-running character arcs, but if you want to define it as any episode that isn’t vital to the main plot(s) of the season (or the exceptions made for Specials or the mandatory pre-finale comedy episode) then this might be it. I was excited about streamlining the story a bit, and I knew this episode would turn out to be exactly as big of a problem as it did, so I wanted to let it go with the rest. This season has been pretty focused so far, and I wasn’t at all excited to write an entire episode that couldn’t be made relevant to the rest of the season, which is what led to the idea of bringing The End into the Zeti backstory. Even then, there are three things that stopped me from cancelling. One, I already advertised that Hero and Bruno would get a spotlight this season (I figured it was a given, this being the alien season and one of my main characters having an alien companion), and I like to avoid false advertising if I can. Two, I knew it would be now or never for making any attempt at fixing up the pain of Lost World’s story, and my pride stood in the way of letting that one game go. I lump addressing the Wisp issue in with that, because if I went nearly the entire series without explaining the lack of Wisps, that would’ve been bad. And three, Espio. Espio’s been going through a lot of stuff in the background of a lot of episodes, and with the end of filler content, this was basically my last chance to resolve and explain some of those happenings in a natural way. Plus, a reader requested an Espio episode, and I couldn’t let my fans down. So let’s talk about Espio now.

“What if Espio trained with Master Zik” is a weird piece of Sonic fan speculation that I certainly can’t claim to have come up with myself. I never really understood where that idea came from. I suppose there’s a connection between them in that they’re the only two real users of martial arts in the Sonic cast, but they aren’t even arts of the same philosophy or cultural origin. But nonetheless, the idea was on my mind as I spent these last few years pondering the future of Espio’s character following where he was left to me at the end of Out of the Shadows. From what few appearances Espio has had since then, I’ve already implied that he’s been doing some sort of secret training that has been improving his abilities, but it wasn’t yet concrete just what that training was. I knew that I wanted it to be something a little bit suspicious—it was meant to seem odd that he was learning some potentially dark and definitely arcane techniques without anyone knowing how, so I figured he had some sort of secret teacher and/or training location. Eventually, I decided that Zik just…worked. The sheer convenience of the timescale used for the Shinobi clan lining up with Zik’s age was too good to ignore, and some cultural and historical research led me to the concepts of Wuxing and Bagua, connections that could be made between Zik’s Chinese roots and Espio’s Japanese. These concepts were mixed and matched a bit to create the qi system described in this episode, something that I believe I described as “chakra” in a previous episode review. Similar and compatible ideas, compatible enough that it made sense for Zik to train Espio in one and have it be understood in terms of the other. So…that was that.

Unfortunately, this was the point where I started realizing how incongruous this episode was turning out to be. “Espio is secretly training with Zik, and a jealous Zavok starts a power struggle” would, under normal circumstances, constitute its own episode idea, while “The Deadly Six and the Threatening Three are at war over the fate of the Lost Hex, with our heroes caught in the middle” would be another. But honestly, I had no interest in doing two separate Lost World episodes. I barely had interest enough in doing one. The only reason I decided to go through with this was because I wanted to tell both stories, and it was now or never for that. Hypothetically, therefore, there exists some alternate universe where I decided to break this into a two-parter to accommodate the extra content. Certainly, there was enough left on the cutting room floor to fill that extra space. By the time the big battle started, I had already decided to start rushing through everything to wrap up on time. The lesser four of the Deadly Six really should have had a lot more time to fight onscreen, actually making use of their full abilities and saying more than a line or two each. The Mechasaur and Cat Mech were both similarly underutilized. Espio really should have had proper one-on-one fights with both Zunin and Zapp. There was an idea for Espio to get some help from the Deadly Six in order to make it to the top of the Mechasaur during that sequence, but that was an easy skip. And of course, probably the most glaring content glossed over is that the entire plot was just begging for a fight, however brief, of Amy and Hero versus Espio. I was hoping it might be a bit refreshing, having a situation like this where the heroes don’t start fighting like idiots for once, but skipping that definitely left me felling like a little something was missing.

There was certainly room to pad out the first part as well. Amy and Hero could’ve done a bit of spelunking, uncovering a few of the mysteries of Zyzzyx and the Hex instead of being immediately captured and then having it all dumped on them at once. And of course, we could’ve actually followed Bruno’s side adventures with the Wisps. But yeah, one episode of this was plenty for me.

I think that just about covers the story of this episode’s creation. So, on to the trivia!

• This episode’s title, “War of the Lost World,” is a reference to the popular H.G. Wells novel, “War of the Worlds,” combined with the title of Sonic Lost World. It refers quite plainly to the war between the Deadly Six and Threatening Three.
  • The original planned title, which was actually in use for about half of the episode’s writing, was “Paradise Lost World.” This was a similar reference to “Paradise Lost,” a biblical tale about Adam and Eve’s banishment from the Garden of Eden. In this comparison, Zik would be the serpent presenting Espio with the forbidden fruit (quite literally), granting him knowledge that will irrevocably plant evil in his heart. I thought this was a much more clever title, but unfortunately, the war aspect of the story was much more important than Espio’s moral dilemmas.
• The following locations, or pieces thereof, from previous Sonic games appeared or were mentioned in this episode:
  • Bridge Zone (Sonic 1 8-bit)
  • Planet Wisp (mentioned)
  • Sweet Mountain (mentioned)
  • Aquarium Park (mentioned)
  • The Lost Hex (Lost World), including:
    • Tropical Coast
    • Sky Road (mentioned)
    • Silent Forest
    • Windy Hill (cameo appearance implied)
    • Desert Ruins (mentioned, cameo appearance implied)
    • Frozen Factory (cameo appearance implied)
    • Lava Mountain (cameo appearance implied)
    • Yoshi’s Island Zone (cameo appearance implied)
    • The Legend of Zelda Zone (cameo appearance implied)
      • These DLC zones were a last-minute addition, but given the spatial shenanigans going on with the Lost Hex, it didn’t seem too far outside the realm of possibility to canonize them. This could imply that the world of Yoshi’s Island and the world of The Legend of Zelda are both planets somewhere in the same galaxy as Earth. Or, more likely, some of the worlds that make up the pieces of the Lost Hex come from other universes as well.
• In discussing how they first met, Hero corrects Amy’s assumption about that being during the events of Sonic Forces. Instead, he refers back six months earlier to offscreen events taking place around the prequel comic, “Moment of Truth,” canonizing this particular comic for the first time, and confirming that the cat(?) seen in that comic was actually just an alternate avatar for Hero.
  • Theoretically, I have already written about this particular meeting. I have a few chapters of a Sonic Forces prequel/interquel story sitting unpublished at the moment, which this episode referred to in detail. I considered publishing what I have just for the context of this scene, but I’d rather wait until I either know I can finish the story or become certain that I can’t, because I don’t plan on finishing it any time soon.
  • The timeline placement of this particular comic is actually up for debate, so this is the first time it’s been given a clear position. The comic features what appears to be the Resistance battling Eggman without Sonic, which would imply that it is somewhere in the middle of the 6 month timeskip. This is the obvious and generally accepted timeline placement. But on close inspection, it really isn’t the best option. Eggman attacks the city from the outside as if he doesn’t already have near-total control, which he should theoretically have after the attack that led to Sonic’s capture. Sure, it’s possible that he lost the city, attacked it but failed to get it back, then attacked it again and actually did get it back all within the span of that timeskip, but that’s a pretty needless assumption. Occam’s Razer and all that. Also, Eggman implies at the end of the comic that he’ll be coming back in his next attack with some secret advantage—pretty obviously implying Infinite, who everyone should already know about if this were meant to be after Sonic’s defeat. On the other hand, we already know of a failed attack Eggman made against the city before Sonic’s defeat, which would lead into him using Infinite next time. It happened in Episode Shadow, though it wasn’t much talked about. I believe it makes the most sense for this comic to take place around that time. But what about the Avatar, Hero, himself? How can he have the character development breakthrough in this comic before his character development even begins in the game? Well, you have that question regardless of your placement preference, unless you think you can squeeze the comic between Space Port and the cutscene that immediately precedes it, which sounds like a stretch to me. This is, of course, all explained in my unpublished story, but I see the most reasonable story as being that he, after finally building up enough confidence to fight in this comic, had that all torn right back down again when Sonic was defeated—another good reason to place the comic before that event instead of after.
  • There are some notable parallels between some of things Hero opens up about in the conversation that follows, and the story of a certain other Sonic character. I leave you to find them.
• Bruno mentions being a “Baby Wisp,” something only seen before in the mobile game Sonic Runners.
• Bruno also mentions that Wisp lifespans aren’t quite as long as those of Earthlings. This may become important later.
• Lastly, Bruno mentions that Yacker once described Sonic directly to him as being “hot as the sun,” confirming Bruno to be an actual character from Sonic Colors DS—a nameless Red Wisp among a small crowd that listens to Yacker’s stories at the end of a final cutscene unique to that version of the game.
• Amy’s mention of Knuckles getting jealous about playing in the water refers to an in-level piece of dialogue from Aqua Road in Sonic Forces.
• Amy introduces us to the primary setting of this episode in the same way Tails once did—”It’s the Lost Hex.” Unlike Tails, however, Amy goes on to actually explain what that means, even breaking the fourth wall a bit by complaining about Tails’ failure to do so in the original game, despite her not being there for that conversation.
  • She mentions an “old historian” who originally discovered the Hex. That may become important later.
• All of the 8 qi types are represented among the 9 Zeti in this episode. Zomom is earth, Zik is wood, Zeleena and Zeena are both water (ice in the case of the latter), Zor is wind (more on that in a moment), Zapp is thunder, Zavok is fire, Zunin is metal, and Zazz is heaven.
  • Zor is the odd one out here, as his abilities would be best described as “shadow” or “darkness,” but given that such a qi type does not exist in Bagua or Wuxing, his ability to fly and association with a giant bird leaves wind as the next best thing. Perhaps he uses seals to access the forbidden darkness qi in the same way that Espio does for his Shadow Sealing technique. Apparently, that’s even somewhat canon according to his character bio.
• Bruno refers to the Cacophonic Conch as a “magic conch shell.” This is a reference to an episode of Spongebob Squarepants, the place where most people probably learned to mispronounce the word “conch.”
• Zeleena’s villain stereotype is synthesized from the popular vision of a “wicked witch” perhaps most recognizable from The Wizard of Oz. Her name may or may not be inspired by a first name given to said Wicked Witch in the live action Disney show, Once Upon a Time. Her rhyming patterns, even quoted directly in “double, double, toil and trouble” are derived from the witches in Shakespeare’s Macbeth.
• Zunin’s inspiration, and name, are derived from the Ronin classification of Samurai (despite serving a master and not being a wanderer), mixed with a bit of medieval knight, Darth Vader from Star Wars, and the Death Knight from Fire Emblem.
  • Zunin is the only Zeti whose name begins with “Zu.” Along with Zyzzyx, this makes every possible Z-vowel pair represented.
• Zapp is largely inspired by Emperor Palpatine from Star Wars, mixed with a few other more generic “evil old emperor” stereotypes, as well as a bit of Snoke, also from Star Wars.
• Primarily due to Zapp’s presence, Star Wars is quoted constantly throughout the episode. I won’t list every last one of them here, but for an early/late celebration of May the 4th this year, here are some fan favorites:
  • “Did you ever hear the tragedy of [Zyzzyx/Darth Plagueis the Wise]?”
  • “Execute [the Deadly Six/Order 66].”
  • “Unlimited power!”
• South Island, as a general location, is canonized for the first time in this episode. I’ve always been reluctant to do so, given that the geography of Green Hill has been a little bit confusing, benign a part of a much larger continent in Forces, for example. Because it was only used in reference to Bridge Zone in this episode, it is possible to interpret this as applying only to the setting of 8-Bit Sonic 1.
• Upon absorbing the power drawn from planets by the Lost Hex, Zapp’s and Espio’s eyes both take on the same glaring green effect seen on the eye of Eggman’s final boss mech from Lost World. (Apparently it’s called “Eggrobo”? But that wasn’t known until the Sonic Encyclo-Speed-ia came out, like, last year? Chalk another one up for Lost World’s inability to deliver even the simplest information. And it wasn’t bad enough that the final boss of Forces was just “Death Egg Robot”?)
• The final climax of intensity between Zapp and Zik parallels two different scenes from Star Wars simultaneously. The Emperor is represented by both Zapp and Zik, while Espio parallels Anakin in Revenge of the Sith, and Zavok parallels Vader in Return of the Jedi.

And that is all! Pretty sure this was one of the longest reviews yet. And also quite possibly one of that largest numbers of new tags created for a single post, perhaps just behind reviews of new Sonic games, though it wouldn’t surprise me if we’re beating out those as well. I guess that’s the cost of Lost World being so isolated both from general Sonic lore, and from The Chaos Project up until now. Next time, we’re going to start wrapping up the season! This may have been the last “filler” episode, but we’ve still got one piece of mandatory stress relief before the usual grim finale. Hope to see you then!

-And until next time, remember to live and learn every day!