I want to see more of Shadow being a sort of medical caretaker.
I mean, despite all his cool chaos powers and being the Ultimate Lifeform, wasn't that one of the biggest reasons he was created? To cure Maria? But even though he couldn't cure her illness, he still seemed to have training on how to help someone who's sick or hurt. Exhibit A:
This is the most we've ever seen of Shadow truly taking care of Maria in reference to her illness. Still, you can see how attentive he was here. Even though they were standing a few feet apart, as soon as she started losing consciousness, he picked up on it and ran to catch her.
When she apologized and insisted that she'd just "pushed it a little," he gently scolded her by reminding her that her condition was only being kept in remission due to the low gravity on the ARK. Clearly, he was very knowledgeable on her illness and what she could and couldn't do, and he was always ready to take care of her if her condition suddenly dropped, or on her bad days (according to dialogue bits from the actual SXSG game).
And since Maria's been gone through the entire main timeline of the franchise, it seems we get so caught up in all of Shadow's coolness and powerful abilities and whatnot that we forget he's still trained— at least to some extent— in the medical and caretaking area.
That's where I'm glad we have something of an Exhibit B: the end of Sonic Prime.
I loved EVERYTHING about this whole group of scenes, but ESPECIALLY getting to see Shadow being so gentle and caring towards Sonic of all people. But to stay focused on the point of this post— even though Sonic's situation was more, shall we say, unique than Maria's, his health was still rapidly declining and he needed help for basically everything. Sure, they had a goal in mind, and all Shadow needed to do was take him to the Green Hill gateway. But knowing how violent Shadow can be (especially in context of the whole rest of the show), seeing the very gentle and clearly experienced way he assisted Sonic was both heartwarming and a strong reminder of his original purpose.
For one, in the above gif, the way he immediately went to support him the way one is supposed to with someone who can't really walk on their own— draping Sonic's arm around his shoulders and wrapping his own arm around his back to support him— with no pause, like he'd done it before. And how he waited for a moment until Sonic was ready, monitoring his face, before starting to move forward. Then—
—Sonic deteriorated to a point of being unable to walk or stand at all, or even move very much. Shadow hesitated only for a split second, but he stayed relatively calm, picked him up, and kept going. Even though he didn't say much throughout all this, he was keeping a watchful eye on Sonic through this whole sequence, even before he took over the mission of bringing him home. He knew what he was doing. It wasn't extensive, sure, but knowing his past, we know this was not his first time taking care of someone who couldn't take care of themselves.
He's saved people before from explosions and fights, but this is a whole different category of "saving" people, and like I said, it's one that I want to see more of with Shadow in particular. 🥹🖤❤️