Knuckles, Episode 1.01: The Warrior

Knuckles, Episode 1.01: The Warrior

Original Release Date: April 26th, 2024

From his origins in the third “Sonic the Hedgehog” game, Knuckles the Echidna has always been defined as the last of his kind. This has presented difficulties when trying to create stories all about him. The classic games never much worried about, just sticking the echidna into whatever adventure everyone else was having. “Sonic Adventure” made the background of Knuckles' tribe part of the overarching story. Most modern stories center in on Knuckles' fixation on fulfilling his destiny as guardian of the Master Emerald. Ken Penders just said “fuck it” and introduced an entire city of echidnas. 

“What does it mean that Knuckles is the last of his kind” is surely a question screenwriters John Whittington and Toby Ascher must've asked when conceiving of the “Knuckles” streaming series. The movie version of “Sonic the Hedgehog 2” ejected most of the lore surrounding the character but did maintain his loner status. The solution the writers seem to have thought of is, if Knuckles is the last echidna, he must pass his culture onto someone else. Connecting various dots is probably how we got to the “Knuckles and Wade team-up” premise the show is seemingly built around.

Perhaps I'm getting ahead of myself. “The Warrior,” episode one of “Knuckles,” has the echidna struggling to square off his proud warrior ways with the more simple, suburban life he finds himself living in. After getting grounded by Maddie, he receives a vision from Pachacamac, the long gone chief of his people. The spirit tells Knuckles to teach his ways specifically to Wade Whippel. Wade is feeling down on himself after getting kicked out of his bowling club. He decides Knuckles' strength is what he needs to make it to the bowling tournament in Reno. Their road trip is interrupted by a pair of rogue G.U.N. agents, armed with weapons from a mysterious third party, who are determined to bring Knuckles in on their own.

By focusing in on the premise that Sonic and his buddies are essentially aliens from another world, trapped on Earth, the “Sonic” movie franchise have basically become fish-out-of-water comedies. Sonic has thoroughly absorbed himself in Earth pop culture. Tails is learning. Knuckles, meanwhile, is stuck in his ways as a proud warrior. This is where most of the jokes in this first episode come from. Maddie has a perfectly normal request for Knuckles. It results in him building a gladiator pit in their living room or forging a throne out of their car. Knuckles sees people remodeling the house and mistakes them for attackers. You get the idea. 

It's not the worst joke to play off of. I actually think the bit where Knuckles expects Ozzie, the family dog, to fight the mailman in mortal combat to be pretty funny. Yet it would probably get old as the basis of an entire series. This is where the buddy movie set-up comes into play. Sonic operated as the goofball loose cannon to Tom's straight man in the first movie. “Knuckles” looks to be trying a similar dynamic with different attributes. Knuckles is the straight man, in the sense that he takes everything extremely seriously and at face value. Wade is a big clown, mocked by little girls and the business card of his bounty hunter friend. You get sequences built around Knuckles taking classic hip-hop songs literally or overestimating Wade's strength. Set-ups like these are worthy of a chuckle or two but it remains to be seen if the show can ride this further.

This presents a different question: What of Wade Whipple? The live action “Sonic” movies have always struggled with this idea that they have to justify human characters being in these stories. Otherwise, it would just be a cartoon, which Paramount seems to think wouldn't be popular. In the better moments, you get Jim Carrey hamming it up and Lee Majdoub taking a nothing part and making a fan favorite out of it. In the worst moments, you get a subplot about Tom moving to San Francisco or an inexplicable interlude devoted to a mad black woman's wedding. Wade's antics, especially in the second movie, veered more towards the latter for me. I don't hate the guy.  Adam Pally can at least commit to a pratfall, even if I find his man-child demeanor more irritating than charming. 

Mostly though, if you were to ask me what I think of Wade Whipple, my answer would be “I don't.” He's in the parts of these movies that my brain edits out when I remember them. The broad, uninspired comedy inserted, I guess, to amuse the parents who it is assumed won't relate to Sonic and friends. Making Wade the secondary protagonist of the “Knuckles'” show is understandable. In the sense that Wade's back story hasn't been developed. His personality, outside of being an idiot and a klutz, barely exists. “The Warrior” gives us more insight into Wade's life. His general incompetence has left him with self-doubt problems, an eagerness to prove he's not a fuck-up. This seems born out of a traumatic childhood incident where his father abandoned him at a J.C. Penny's. 

Because that's what I want to see when I turn on a TV show about Knuckles the Echidna. An emotionally stunted man-child grappling with the burden of having an absentee father. I can tell that the show is going to try and bend this into some bullshit about Knuckles' own status as an orphan. A desperate attempt to connect these two characters. If Wade's weepy backstory strikes me as an odd decision, building a good chunk of this series' plot around a bowling tournament veers towards the asinine. Why bowling, you guys? Of all things, why bowling? Why is the “Knuckles” show partially about, in anyway whatsoever, fucking bowling?! 

I know I'm going to have to get over this. Accept the show for what it is, not for what it isn't! So let me focus on the things I liked about “The Warrior,” for a minute. Knuckles and Wade's back-and-forth has potential. The scene of them on the road and trading dialogue got a few chuckles out of me. I wasn't totally sold on Idris Elba's vocal performance in “Sonic the Hedgehog 2,” finding him a little flat at times. He does better here, clearly having grown into the character some. Playing up Knuckles' naivety, evolving out of his commitment to his culture, isn't a bad take on the character. As with the two feature films, Tom and Maddie accepting Sonic and his friends as their children is a surprisingly adorable story element. The scenes of Sonic, Tails, and Knux just hanging around the house, causing chaos, are kind of cozy. 

If I were to compromise on the idea of a ”Sonic” movies and TV shows focusing on the characters on Earth, the idea of them being on the run from oppressive G.U.N. agents is probably the main plot I'd follow. I still don't know if Kid Cudi, as Agent Mason, and Ellie Taylor as Agent Willoughby, will be compelling villains on their own. Honestly, I find their personalities extremely routine right now. When watching the fight between the agents, and their souped-up gear, with Knuckles in a bowling alley, I had a distressing realization: This is what I always feared the live action “Sonic” franchise would be. By which I mean, if you squint, it kind of resembles what we expect from this series... While also not really having anything to do with it. It's not bad. The special effects are very good, if noticeably a step-down from the movies. The action scenes are decently directed and choreographed. Yet... Knuckles fighting some rogue Men in Black types inside a bowling alley? I'm just going to need some time to accept that.

Ultimately, “The Warrior” is about on par with the movies in that sense. There's the typical, lowest common denominator inclusions you expect from kid-friendly, studio drivel. Lots of immediately recognizable pop songs on the soundtrack. Lots of quibby one-liners from the characters, many of which are more grating than amusing. Egregious product placement, something Paramount's “Sonic” titles clearly are trying to play off as an ironic joke while very unironically taking money from Dorito's and Zillow. This kind of thing – what my buddy JD calls “Hollywood bullshit” – coexists alongside genuinely cute shout-outs for the long-time fans. Such as an obstacle course being modeled after elements from the classic games, Knuckles' love of grapes, or the words “Green Hill Zone” being said on-screen. Pachacamac appearing as some sort of Force Ghost, filling the role usually occupied by Tikal, is the biggest example of this. Christopher Lloyd playing him as a confused old man getting the grips on being a ghost is funny, even if it has nothing to do with the character as he's always existed. 

Whether “Knuckles” will fall to the same obnoxious pacing problems all streaming shows struggle with remains to be seen. I'll say this first episode packs a lot of stuff into its thirty-three minutes. The series still has a long way to go to justify the bizarre decisions made in its conception. Wade Whipple being Knuckles' sidekick, a whole subplot about bowling, some chick with a bangs shooting laser beams: None of this stuff belongs here. But it is here and I'll have to grapple with that. “The Warrior” gets a [6/10], for now. And one more thing: Tom's absence in this episode is explained by saying he's out-of-town. I guess James Marsden is outside of Paramount+'s budget...