About

Knuckles refers to the currently in development Paramount Plus series that is a spin-off of the Sonic the Hedgehog 2020 film. The series is being directed by Jeff Fowler, who directed the first two Sonic movies, with Idris Elba returning as the voice of Knuckles.

History

In February of 2022, Sega announced a spin-off series in the Sonic cinematic franchise centering on Knuckles.^[4] The series initially had a release window of 2023, though that was delayed.

On April 17th, 2023, the official Sonic Twitter^[1] account uploaded a picture of a director's chair and a clapperboard being held up by Knuckles's iconic cowboy hat. The tweet, announcing that production had started on the series, quickly started to spread, gaining over 1.4 million views in one week (shown below).

First Trailer

On February 8th, 2024, the first trailer for the series was released, set to "Knuck If You Buck" by Crime Mob. The trailer gained over 724,000 views on YouTube within hours of being posted by Paramount Plus (shown below). The trailer announced it would be a six-episode miniseries streaming on April 26th, 2024.

Online Presence

Announcement Response

Immediately after the announcement tweet came out, memes and images started to pop up surrounding the cowboy hat that was featured in the tweet. Knuckles first wore that style of cowboy hat in an Original Video Animation (OVA) in which he was a treasure hunter, with the hat later being said to belong to his grandfather. The Knuckles that was an instant hit with fans like @MegumiBandicoot,^[2] who wasted no time photoshopping the hat onto the Sonic Movie's version of Knuckles (shown below).

An interview with Variety that went out later in the day later confirmed what the plot of the movie is, as it is meant to be watched after Sonic the Hedgehog 2 and the third installment. Supposedly, the plot is supposed to revolve around the doofus character Wade, who is taught by Knuckles how to be a true Echidna warrior. This has caused people to guess at jokes the series will make, with Twitter^[3] user @Ovirtuous predicting the entire series will be a series of obvious jokes going over the character's heads (shown below).

Trailer Response

The trailer reignited interest in the series, as many on social media were excited by the footage. Many expressed excitement that the trailer used "Knuck If You Buck" as the backing track. For example, on February 8th, 2024, the day the trailer was released, user @elitelife_kd^[5] joked about the song, gaining over 600 retweets and 3,600 likes in hours (shown below, left). The same day, user @moneyymaya^[6] also praised the use of the song, gaining over 8,600 retweets and 49,000 likes (shown below, right).

Search Interest

External References