The Secrets of the Atmos - A Storm Hawks Retrospect
If Storm Hawks ever did get a new series, it would probably be a good idea to do away with the ‘target audience’ thing the original had going on. It’s hard to tell a good story when you are met with restrictions and censoring at every turn. Plus, fans of the series will start watching again and wonder if Storm Hawks was always this edgy.
The answer is… well, yeah. Yeah, it kinda was.
And we’re finally going to talk about that.
Atmos is a world of mountaintop kingdoms surrounded by nothing but sky. It sounds picturesque, doesn’t it? Makes for some exceptional views. You look out your window and gaze upon a sea of clouds. This idea was apparent even in the series’ earliest concepts.
But, don’t these kingdoms seem a little sparse, to you? Why is it that Atmos’ capital is little more than a small scattering of buildings?
Does it even need explaining? All the evidence is right there in front of you. These people are the survivors of a tragedy even more sadistic than what Cyclonia has been doing to what is left.
On this blog we’ve been preaching this forever. The Wastelands remain the most unnerving thing that ever came out of Storm Hawks. Everything that was not on the peak of a giant mountain was swallowed up by lava. We’re talking civilisations of many different races.
But, this was after the storm. You see, Atmos used to be held together by a powerful crystal known as the Helix stone. It was made up of multiple different entities that manifested as fierce storms when the crystal was taken apart, that ravaged the land to pieces.
In the original plot, the Storm Hawks had the task of collecting the broken pieces of the Helix, in the hopes to restore the balance and prevent everything else from crumbling into the Wastelands. They allude to this idea in series when the siren showed each member of the Storm Hawks their heart’s desire and Piper saw a Helix stone.
There isn’t any information on how the stone was ultimately destroyed, unfortunately. We are merely presented with the aftermath and how Atmos has evolved with the use of crystals mined from the earth. The story was meant to start on Terra Nimbus, which was Aerrow’s home terra, famed for their invention of the sky ride.
This terra got so far in development that a shot of it from the teaser trailer made it into the opening, but we never actually get to see it. Probably because the creators were forced to cut this section of the story from the show.
From what I can piece together, it seems that Nimbus had fallen into the hands of the Cyclonian Empire and they were exploiting its deep roots for crystal mining. This likely happened after the original Storm Hawks squadron were killed in battle, leaving Aerrow orphaned and forced to work in the mines or else be thrown over the side of the terra – a common thing the Cyclonians do to those who resist, as seen in the series proper and also adopted by the Cyclonian youth brigade.
I told you this rabbit hole was deep and we’ve barely even started. There’s a real good story here and I think with the proper execution it could be something great.
Snipe and Ravess were originally of royal blood, I kid you not. Perhaps they still are and Master Cyclonis is too ashamed to admit that these idiots are actually related to her. Anyway, Snipe and Ravess preside over the outlying regions of Cyclonia (something still noted on in the series), with Ravess controlling Bluster and Snipe’s domain being Nimbus.
Who we now know as Master Cyclonis (one of them, at least) was once banished to the Terra of Thorns (again, a location still mentioned in the show) by her brother, Heron, the rightful king. I’m unsure where this fell in the timeline, but Cyclonis eventually escaped her imprisonment and sought out the throne for herself, which gives Cyclonia some internal conflict and may be the reason the current Maser Cyclonis is left with a gap in her lineage.
A lot of what follows is contradicted by what happens in the show, but Aerrow eventually escaped the mines and lived on his own for a while, also befriending Radarr and later running into Finn (maybe he got caught up in one of Aerrow’s traps? We know he’s good at those, they made a point about that in ‘Escape!’). Piper is the only one out of human members of the team that didn’t grow up in a prison mine, so we can assume that it is common practice for Cyclonia to force prisoners of war into the mines, meaning that Finn may have also escaped from somewhere else. Perhaps Bluster, given it’s the only other Cyclonian terra we know of in the original story.
Piper comes along a little later, led to the group by a mysterious bird guardian known only as the White Hawk. The design for this bird is still used in the show.
This concept has been reworked since then, with the guardian bird role falling on Arygyn the Skeelur and his crew, or flock, I should say, so we can assume one of these shape shifters (the silver one?) led Piper to the others earlier on.
But, there’s still some things we don’t know. The show’s greatest unanswered question is why Dark Ace betrayed the Storm Hawks to join Cyclonia. There is little to no information about him in the original script, it merely states that he came out of the blue one day and that a dark storm follows him wherever he goes. Not even a single mention of his connection to the Storm Hawks is made. Possibly hinting that this was something they were going to reveal in the story.
Here are a few extra titbits of information on the Storm Hawks I uncovered:
The original reason Stork mostly stayed on the Condor is because the Cyclonians injured his leg.
Finn is the youngest and was originally in charge of heavy ballistics.
Piper was the one with the crossbow. She’s been all over the place and eaten a lot of strange things, including stink slugs.
Junko had anger issues, but took up meditation and yoga, which helped. Most of the time.
Aerrow and Radarr remain pretty much the same.
First mention of the majority of the team being fourteen years old.
The first thing I ever saw of the show was an early teaser trailer that aired before a movie I was watching at the cinema. I can’t for the life of me remember what movie it was and it just goes to show how much of an impression this thirty second clip made. At this point, the story included Terra Nimbus, as I mentioned before.
The animation was a lot different, too.
Aerrow’s design closely reflects the character designer’s original concept art plus he’s extra expressive and I honestly wished they stuck with it. He’s adorable.
Still no freckles, though. I fixed that in my comic, but I digress.
Right! Then they redid all of the assets. Everything. No info on that aspect, but the show went from…
Seemingly in the space of a year and a half and that’s when the story direction changed, but the world and the characters remained the same. This is what we’re going to exploit, here.
We can assume they were originally going to use the classic falling ‘Disney death’ as a way of killing off characters. This story is primarily about a war and the protagonists spend a lot of time hitting the opposition with crystal charged swords that cut through armour. Steampunk Star Wars, basically.
The creator talked a lot in interviews about how the broadcasters were pushing them to follow specific rules with what they were allowed to show, which has always been such a big issue in animation. Especially in the 90’s with a character like Wolverine who was not allowed to be seen attacking people with his claws. I’m not even kidding.
Anyway, they stuck a parachute on all of the characters, but apparently there is some without that fell through the cracks and made it past the censoring. Besides, the obvious one.
The Raptors are still technically cannibals and use bones for armour and sky ride parts, Stork still found the Condor crash site in the Wastelands (he’s twitchy for a reason), people are still afraid of Dark Ace because he actively hunts Sky Knights like it’s some kind of game and well, the Wastelands still exist. What’s the point of a parachute if you’re going to fall into lava?
The Storm Hawks make a point about not killing anyone, but let’s be real. They’re kids in a war. They can go out of their way to make sure everyone gets a parachute, but Cyclonia isn’t going to waste time rescuing Talons that failed them. They’d been doing a pretty good job in the war since the Storm Hawks were taken out of the picture, preserving their army had never been an issue.
The remaining Sky Knights are afraid of Cyclonia. The first two we encounter in the show had given up fighting. These are the people that had seen what Dark Ace did to the Storm Hawks ten years prior. Orphans like Aerrow and the others would not even been aware of the details of his betrayal and the Sky Knight council have likely tried to cover it up. It’s never talked about in the show. All the Storm Hawks seem to know is that he killed the old team. The remaining Sky Knights have to watch these kids reform the team and fight against the traitor, none of them having the heart to tell them who this guy really is.
Can we talk about Terra Deep for a second? One of my favourite episodes, by the way.
It’s a ship graveyard. If you look closely you can even see some kind of flying beast amongst the debris.
This is not somewhere you want to be.
They even touch on the fact that this location is so deep, the air pressure will eventually crush an entire airship.
There’s loads of locations like this in the show that the Storm Hawks have to somehow find their way out of and they’re by far the most engaging episodes.
The skies are so polluted with crystal fuel, they’re stained red. The smog gets thicker the further down you go, until you can see nothing at all. Can’t be good for your health, surely.
Do you remember in the first episode, when the Aurora Stone was removed from its pedestal on Terra Atmosia and the skies turned dark? Yeah, it’s keeping the skies free of Cyclonia’s pollution.
This Empire once ruled over the entire Atmos and the evidence of it is still seen in the show. Everything is recycled. Clothing is made up of scraps of materials that are peiced together. Even the designer stuff. Cyclonia still has a lot of influence over the resources and they are not willing to share.
Who is up for a new series? A season three would be cool, but there are so many missed opportunities, crystals that went unused and a backstory left unexplored.
All in all, regardless of what could have been, Storm Hawks was still a great show that left a lasting impression on many people.
