Sonic Prime, Episode 3.06: The Devil is in the Tails

Sonic Prime, Episode 3.06: The Devil is in the Tails

Original Release Date: January 11th, 2024

As "Sonic Prime" heads into its final act, the story remains more-or-less in the same place. Sonic's friends and enemies-turned-temporary-allies continue to fight off Nine's army of Grim robots. The ShatterVerse continues to teeter on the edge of total annihilation. Nine remains single-minded in his goal of capturing Sonic and draining the last bit of Paradox Prism energy from him, even as his own resilience and supply of magical power begins to run out. Sonic continues to hold out hope he can reason with Nine. The episode ends in basically the same spot it begins, with Sonic and Nine dueling for the fate of the multi-verse. 

Nine's character arc had a lot of potential. The idea of an alternate universe version of Tails that isn't Sonic's friend but his enemy is loaded with possibilities. Nine progressing from teaming up with the hedgehog to standing against him, due to irreconcilable goals, could've been – and rarely was – compelling. Sadly, "Prime" has reduced Nine more and more to a shallow bad guy. All he cares about is protecting the Grim and making it his perfect world. His character development has essentially stagnated all throughout season three of "Prime." And as the show speed towards its end point, it's becoming increasingly clear that the writers really don't have anything else planned for Nine. A potentially promising character has been reduced to an ultimately quite boring adversary. 

This speaks to a flaw that's become abundantly apparent as the last third of "Prime" has gone on. There's really not much story left at this point, is there? The War of the Grim and the final battle for the ShatterVerse has gone on for the last three episodes. In that time, we've seen the good guys fall and get back up again, as they fight off and wreck endless waves of Grin robots. And this episode just keeps doing that! You know a show has gone astray when the villain's forces regroup and march forward again and your response isn't "Oh no!" But "Oh for fuck's sake, not this again!" "The Devil is in the Tails" tries to add some novelty to its increasingly repetitive action scenes. Sonic discovers he has a unique ability in the Grim, his shoes able to generate little platforms that can act as shields as well. Commander Knocks and Shadow both get big damn hero moments, leaping from the sky to provide powerful blows against the enemy. Yet it's all really just the same thing happening again and again, with minor variations. 

In fact, this entire episode is very repetitive. Nine says the word "energy" so often that I could mistake him for a new age pseudo-scientist on "Ancient Aliens." The fox absorbs more power from the Prism and blasts it into his robot minions, until the forces are exhausted and he has to do it again. Sonic tries to reach out to his former friend to no avail, before finally realizing he's beyond hope. The dome around Nine's Citadel shrinks but never seems to close in. Once again, I'll draw a comparison to a video game. This feels like playing the last level of a game, getting close to completing it, only to get killed and start back over at the checkpoint. And anybody who has done that knows this is usually the point where a video game goes from being fun to being monotonous and frustrating. You keep playing more because you just want to get this over with, not because you're enjoying the experience anymore. Not a great feeling for a TV show to invoke! 

In-between these repetitive sequences, the show attempts to wrap up character arcs. In the middle of the fight, Jack SepticEye's O.C. points out to Dread that they can swoop in and grab the Paradox Prism while everyone is fighting. Since his obsession with that rock is Dread's only real personality trait, he goes along with it. That's until he sees Black Rose struggling on the battle field and decides to help her instead. It seems Dread has learned the value of friendship, instead of being driven by his greed and lust for power alone. He even gives Rose his hat. In a show that actually spent some time showing Dread growing closer to his crew while fighting beside them, this would've been a powerful and earned moment. In "Prime," it just feels like the show deciding Dread should learn this lesson and going ahead with it, without really setting up any growth or change for him. You know, it's like the writers realized they couldn't devoted these last two episodes just with fight scenes, so they decided to throw this in to fill time. The conclusion to a character's arc feeling more like something the show throws in to pad out the run time, and less like an organic pay-off to everything we've seen with this guy up to now, is not a good thing. 

This episode does something similar with Rusty Rose, to slightly better results. She has a stand-off with the Grim robot version of Amy Rose, revealing before the struggle that she has a pink Flicky inside her like all of Eggman's other badniks. Rusty fighting off her fully robotic copy represents her self-actualizing as a fully independent being, not a machine that only takes orders. (Like the entity she fights off.) Unlike Dread, Rusty actually has shown gradual growth over the series. She's clearly a character that "Prime's" team was more invested in and that showed. Having her fight off a Grim Amy feels sort of random. The Grim Amy Roses are just drones, with no purpose or personality of their own. If Rusty had some sort of on-going rivalry with Grim Amy Alpha, this fight would've had more meaning. It does feel like the show randomly deciding to give this fight more importance than all the other times Rusty trashed a robotic copy of herself. But, because we care more about her, this moment is still the highlight of the episode.

It's clear that "Prime" is trying to generate moments that will make fans cheer here. Knocks punching Nine or Shadow decimating Grim Sonic Alpha are treated like pay-offs we've been waiting ages for, even though these characters barely have any sort of pre-existing animosity. Another such moment doesn't lack oomph but instead backfires fully. When the enormous Big the Cat tank-hover thing gets back up, it's eventually reveal that the machine is being piloted by... Drum roll, please! ...Mangey and Sails. Yes, the two other versions of Tails survived and have been bidding their time the last two episodes. I'm not shocked that this kids' show undid the apparent death of two characters. I've been waiting for that reveal, honestly. It still feels like "Prime" lacking any scruples, the same way pretty much any death cheat does. Considering I wasn't all that attached to those two, their death meant little to me and their survival means much the same. I'm sure there are Tails superfans out there who love these two, just because they are Tails. That were upset by their apparent demise and cheered at their survival. I guess that's "Prime's" target audience. 

With one more episode to go, this show continues to underwhelm me. This last set of "Prime" episodes have especially been a bummer, because it's clear now that things aren't going to get any better. There's simply no time for any potential the earlier episodes set up to be paid off now. Even worse, the last few installments have felt like a brief amount of narrative being stretched out to fill more episodes. Only that scene with Rusty keeps me from rating "The Devil is in the Tails" even lower and even that sequence could've been a lot better. [5/10]