Chaotix/Destructix Parallelism: Espio & Lightning Betrayal
Easily, one of the most interesting aspects of the Destructix, but one of the less exploring, is their rivalry with the Chaotix. It is something that was established since their debut, putting each member of the team as a contrapart of each member of the Chaotix. But sadly, the comic didn’t explore their possible differences and similarities, with the exception of Lightning and Espio.
If there is some that I really like about the Iron Dominion arc, it is the form in how the arc establish the enmity between Lightning and Espio, and while it’s true that it wouldn’t show again in the rest of the story, all the new information that it was revealed about their backstory gave to juice up their relationship not only for their similar origins, but also for the new parallelism between their teams, with their opposite reactions to their desertion.
When Fiona came to recluit the group again, Sleuth explained to her what happened with the team and how the lightning desertion left it complete detroit. But there is an interesting detail here, since Sleuth said that Lightning told ‘something about honor restored’ before he left, which implies that Lightning already told about his story in the Raiju Clan.
Let’s remember that Espio never told the others about his real origins because he had explicit orders to keep his mission as a secret. But Lightning did not, he was expelled from his clan, so he was never limited about telling his story to others, like Espio.
This could explain why the reaction of the Destructix was less violent and had a different effect on them, in contrast with the Chaotix. He left them not without an explanation, but he left them to come back to a place where he was scorned, even despite all that they live and share together, like it was really nothing.
And with all that in mind, the words of Sgt. Simian when they explain why they wanted back Lightning, because outside that he is their friend, ‘They know that he is being used’ has another and more emotional meaning.
I imagine that maybe some people would find stranger their extremely different reactions, beyond whether it is accurate or not to their videogame counterparts, for the moral positions of each team. Based on it, it would be expected that the Chaotix, ‘The heroes’, would be more sceptical or even understanding of Espio situation, instead react with anger and wariness like they really did. But precisely, the reason why I find this contrast so interesting is because of how it shows different and new aspects of each team.
The Destructix to this point, were just a generic group of secondary villains without much to highlight but thanks to this event, they started to show more about their individual personalities and of course, their connections between them. In this arc, they show us that despite being a group of criminals, they truly worry about each other, even if their methods are still questionable, being all a prologue about how the comic finally started to delve deeper in them as characters in Scourge Lockdown.
While the Chaotix had to face the betrayal of one of their members and even it wasn’t some that Espio chose to make, the fact that one of their oldest and closest friends wasn't who he said and hidden them a lot of important information is understandably shocking.
I think that the way it was managed was pretty good. Truly made that this event making them more closed and stronger, instead of breaking them up.
I don’t know what plans Ian Flynn had for the Destructix, beyond that in some point Fiona will become in their leader but after see all this, I think it will be really interesting that they continue exploring the rivalry and parallelism between both teams.
Maybe using this event as a start point to delve deeper in their personal relationships and other possible parallelism or simply making stories where the two teams interact directly and showing more about their similarities and differences. Like with Vector and Sgt. Simian, for example, who use to have the ‘muscle role’ in their teams, as well sometimes they have a more strategic and leader role, and who also ended up separated from their family for different personal conflicts.
Also, hey @ceoofdestructix 👋😊
