Summary

• The Knuckles show is a direct spin-off from the Sonic the Hedgehog movies.
• Co-creator Toby Ascher assures that the show will be directly related to previous events in the Sonic franchise.
• Sonic's mistakes will haunt Knuckles, as he caused the development of G.U.N. by losing his quills and rings, leading to experiments that can combat them both.

The Knuckles show's co-creator, Toby Ascher, argues that the show builds off everything in the Sonic movies. The first movie in the franchise, 2020's Sonic the Hedgehog, follows the famous blue hedgehog as he is sent to Earth and forced to fight against Dr. Robotnik. It starred Ben Schwartz (Sonic), James Marsden (Tom), and Jim Carrey (Dr. Robotnik), and was followed by Sonic the Hedgehog 2, which grossed an impressive $405 million. While Sonic the Hedgehog 3 has not yet been released, Knuckles is set to premiere on April 26.

The Knuckles cast is led by Idris Elba as the titular echidna, meaning that the show will abandon Sonic the Hedgehog's lead character for a time. While it does take a different direction, as the brutal Knuckles is its titular hero, Ascher readily explained to Screen Rant that the show is still driven by its connections to the Sonic movies. Sonic's actions directly influence Knuckles' experiences with G.U.N., as the quills and scattered rings have had a major effect on the world and Guardian Units of Nations' personnel. Check out his full quote below:

One of the things that we really thought was great, and we continue to talk about a lot, is how the next entity in the franchise is affected from the last entity. For example, Sonic 1 happened, and there was this huge action sequence at the end of Sonic 1 in San Francisco, and half of San Francisco was destroyed. So, we really wanted to tell the story in Sonic 2 of the emergence of G.U.N., which is an organization that pretty much has been created because of the fact that Sonic ripped apart San Francisco, and there has to be a reaction in a grounded world to that.

So, what came about in Knuckles, which is really interesting, is a further emergence of G.U.N. We sort of established in the first movie that Sonic was running around this planet, leaving quills everywhere, and now, Sonic and Knuckles have had this massive global fight in Sonic 2, and there's echidna quills and Sonic quills all over the place, they've dropped rings all over the place. So, we loved introducing this idea that G.U.N., post-Sonic 2, is going around, and they're grabbing these things, because these quills are really powerful. And these rings do things that are totally otherworldly, and that they're starting to experiment on them.

So, that was one of the cool things that we really loved about the Knuckles show is we got to build this tech within the mythology of what we built in Sonic 1 and Sonic 2. Essentially, we created these mech fists that are quill-powered, that allows Kid Cudi to basically punch as hard as Knuckles. We have the ring gun, which allows the agents to shoot rings, and sort of capture people at their will. All of that was really interesting to us, because it helped us build out the mythology of what's happening after the movie.

I think as we go forward in this franchise, it's usually the first question we ask as we're developing the movies is if this event happened in the previous movie, what would be the consequences of that? How would the world change? And it's a really fun way to develop stories on our end, because it kind of creates something that is this really, in a lot of ways, grounded, ever-expanding world.

And as someone who grew up as a fan of a lot of different franchises, and different pieces of IP, my favorite ones were always the ones where they kind of did that, which was the comic book Marvel Universe. An incident happens, and then the reaction to the incident is the next story. So, the fact that we get to do that kind of giant world building in the Sonic franchise is awesome.

The Sonic Universe Has Been Building To Knuckles

Sonic Movies Have Completely Changed Knuckles' World

As Paramount+'s Sonic spin-off show, Knuckles is directly related to everything that came before it. Just as Sonic the Hedgehog 2 revealed the aftereffects of the destruction of San Francisco, the show will be encountering the effects of the 2022 sequel. The movie reveals that Sonic and his fellow aliens have been leaving quills and rings all over the world, with their actions leading to the development of G.U.N. The organization's main goal is to battle aliens and to protect the Earth, largely by using the technology that the aliens leave behind.

After Sonic 2, G.U.N. will be more powerful than ever. While they had a shaky alliance with the titular hedgehog at the end of the first movie, they no longer need his help. With technology developed from Knuckles and Sonic, they will have the strength to punch with a strength and intensity that can match even the echidna's power, as teased in the trailer for the spinoff. The show will be so heavily tied to the rest of the universe that Sonic and Tails are included, and both will likely respond to G.U.N.'s growing strength.

Ascher was inspired by the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which uses every movie and show to build towards a connecting team-up event. The solo movies Iron Man and Thor eventually led to the massive and world-shattering events of Avengers: Infinity War, which continued to introduce new elements of its universe in the fight against Thanos. It is likely that Ascher is employing the same strategy and building to a greater whole. After Sonic the Hedgehog 2's depiction left it temporarily listless, the Knuckles show will reveal the strength of G.U.N. and its allies.

The Knuckles show will premiere on Paramount+ on April 26.