Where Does ‘Knuckles’ Fit Into the ‘Sonic the Hedgehog’ Timeline?

Amanda Bell April 24, 2024, 6:00 pm

The Sonic the Hedgehog film franchise is taking a quick detour to Planet TV this week, as Knuckles premieres on Paramount+ on Friday, April 26. The show features the voice work of Idris Elba as the titular echidna and an all-star cast of supporting stars joining in on the video game adaptation fun.

So where in the Sonic universe does the Knuckles series fit? The answer is simple — but also not.

Where does Knuckles fit into the Sonic film timeline?

Knuckles takes place after the events of Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (which, of course, took place after the events of Sonic the Hedgehog). It also precedes Sonic the Hedgehog 3, which hits theaters on December 20.

Knuckles was developed to coincide with the debut of Sonic 3 — for a very specific reason, too. Executive producers Toby Ascher, Jeff Fowler, and Neal Moritz decided they wanted to honor the trajectory of the video games, which saw the third installment split into two releases: Sonic 3 and Sonic & Knuckles. “We did Sonic 2 and brought in Tails and Knuckles, and then the next step is Sonic 3 with the Knuckles expansion pack,” Ascher told Animation Magazine.

What is Knuckles about?

The show follows Knuckles as he makes a new home on Earth and trains his dense pal Sheriff Wade Whipple (Adam Pally) how to be a warrior like him. According to Elba, part of the character’s journey in the six-episode inaugural season is going to lift the veil on the red-spiked newcomer, who went from foe to friend in the events of Sonic 2.

“I think that if you wanted to know a little bit more about Knuckles, you get to know a whole lot more about him,” the actor told Collider. “It is a real universe dive.”

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However, Elba also said that it’ll take another trip to the theater to get the full cinematic Sonic experience fans might be looking for, telling Collider, “I can tell you that it really does get deeper into the universe of Sonic. I think 3’s probably the one for all the real diehard Sonic fans. They’re gonna get all of those Easter eggs in it.”

Why did the creators decide to make Knuckles as a series?

After Sonic the Hedgehog 2‘s box office success proved this video game adaptation series could achieve a lot of levels, they decided that they wanted to take a beat with their newest character introduction in Knuckles.

Executive producer Toby Ascher told Paste Magazine, “We knew that, with Shadow coming into Sonic 3 and some of the bigger things that we want to do, the Sonic franchise on the movie side is going to be these Avengers-level events. They’re going to be these big, exciting stories that have a lot of different characters. And so what television did for us is it gave us time to go into some of the more supporting characters in depth and really build them out in cool ways.”

How does Knuckles differ from the Sonic films?

Aside from the obvious fact that Knuckles is a series while the films are, well, films, the creators revealed how Knuckles is tonally distinct from its cinematic predecessors in the franchise — and what stories inspired it. Ascher told Animation Magazine, “For us, Sonic 1 was our take on a buddy comedy like Midnight Run or Dumb & Dumber. Sonic 2 was our version of an Indiana Jones movie, a globe-trotting quest to find the Master Emerald. Now, Knuckles is a throwback to ’90s comedies that I grew up loving. We talked about Happy Gilmore, The Big Lebowski, and Kingpin while making it.”