Sonic’s most evil villain has a big secret that changes everything about Eggman forever – but it’s not what you’re expecting.
WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Sonic the Hedgehog: Imposter Syndrome #2, on sale now from IDW.
Dr. Eggman is undoubtedly a cruel megalomaniac without a conscience. It may be harsh to say that, considering he’s the villain of a family-friendly video game franchise, but he has done and still does some extremely cruel and terrible acts. The most horrific among them is that every robot in his vast empire is powered by a trapped animal. These innocent creatures are freed when Sonic bashes them to pieces but he’s only one hedgehog and he’s up against an army. It’s Eggman’s dream, after all, to rid the world of vibrant life and use it all as fuel for his twisted metallic dreams.
However, the latest reveal from Sonic’s comic book adventures added a major twist that changed everything about the iconic villain. Dr. Starline just took his new replacements for Sonic and Tails, Surge and Kitsunami, on a mission to take one of Eggman’s bases for himself in Sonic the Hedgehog: Imposter Syndrome #2 (by Ian Flynn, Thomas Rothlisberger, Gigi Dutreix, Valentina Pinto, and Shawn Lee). This involved knocking out the communications towers but there was one tower that didn’t need demolishing. When Kitsunami enquired as to why Starline gave an answer no one was expecting.
This special tower was simply a wi-fi tower, completely separate from Eggman’s Eggnet network. Its sole purpose? Gaming. That’s right, the notorious Dr. Eggman is a massive gamer. This is, of course, intended as a comical detail, but the implications it has are surprisingly groundbreaking for the villain. The only reason that Eggman would need an ultrafast wi-fi setup for gaming is if he was playing multiplayer games. Starline confirmed this, saying that the evil inventor’s ping is “immaculate.” The thing is, if Eggman wanted to rid the world of all life, who would he have to play against?
The obvious answer would be the equivalent of AI bots. However, if everyone was a robot, he wouldn’t have any worthy opponents to play against. He will have programmed them to play in a certain way and, eventually, that would get boring. He could program a select few specialized bots specifically for gaming but then, the question is, why would he need wi-fi? He would keep them near his gaming setup at all times, for whenever he felt like taking a quick break and hopping on his Egg-Box (pun very much intended).
The fact that Starline specified that this super-fast wi-fi was for playing multiplayer games implied that Eggman likes playing with other people. He probably likes to annihilate them in-game and feel superior to everyone, sure, but that doesn’t change the fact that he enjoyed playing with real players. As such, it confirmed a part of him doesn’t want to conquer the whole world and never will.
There have been other hints that this is what Eggman really wants in life, rather than the dream he’s e fruitlessly working towards since 1991. Sonic the Hedgehog #40 featured another gaming setup. In this case, the inventor had turned his testing site into a remote control setup. A headset and controllers made it a real-life video game where he tried to eliminate Sonic and the issue’s variant cover revealed he was live-streaming the whole thing. Although many of his followers were clearly bots, some were genuine, and it’s clear that Eggman wanted the attention. That’s always been the case, otherwise, why focus so much on his branding?
Other endeavors like Eggmanland and his Mean Bean Machine had gaming elements too and required other people to work. It’s clear that there are two sides to this evil scientist: one that wants to conquer the world and one that wants some sort of connection with others, even if it’s still a relatively twisted one. The memorabilia stash from this issue furthers this and showed that he’s much more human than anyone thought. Whilst he’s still a villain, it seems he’s not all bad.
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