Sonic Prime
Netflix’s animated series Sonic Prime hit just as multiverse stories were in fashion. The show follows Sonic as he hops from universe to universe, encountering different versions of his friends (and also Rouge, whom Sega is trying to reposition as one of Sonic’s pals for some reason). This includes things like a dystopian science fiction world and a wilderness in which the crew tries to survive the elements. Heck, there’s even a pirate version of Knuckles at one point. The thought experiment of recasting these characters as different archetypes is fun, if often unbalanced, as the narrative centers on some worlds while sidelining others. But the best part of the show is easily the relationship between Sonic and his rival Shadow, which is explored to surprising nuance after Shadow had spent years being a Flanderized edgelord.
