Knuckles kicks Sonic’s butt in the first Sonic The Hedgehog 2 trailer

We’ve known for a long time now that Sonic The Hedgehog—the video game adaptation that served as one of the last big budget films to debut before COVID came crashing into the global theatrical market—was getting a sequel, heralded in part by an after-credits scene introducing The Blue Blur’s faithful companion, Tails. Now, we’ve finally got a trailer for Sonic The Hedgehog 2, proving, among other things, that nobody went ahead and decided to revert anybody’s design back to their original, nightmare-toothed look for this second outing.

Star Ben Schwartz popped up at The Game Awards tonight to introduce the trailer (while also cracking a few jokes about the very rational internet response to those fabled hell teeth). Schwartz—who remains at his funniest when he’s quietly but cheerfully shitting on everyone and everything around him—also played a video from co-star Jim Carrey, in which Carrey did an enormous amount of schtick.

Anyway: There’s a new Sonic 2 trailer, in which we see that Sonic has now decided to become a vigilante, on account of having basically god-like powers. (Remember? From the first one? Little blue weirdo is functionally invincible.) Despite continuing to feature some very boring speeches from James Marsden as Sonic’s keeper/parent/handler, most of the focus in the trailer is put on finally inserting a whole bunch of elements from the games into this nascent movie franchise. That includes showing off a Chaos Emerald, a bald and mustached Dr. Robotnik, and, of course, the introduction of Tails (Colleen O’Shaughnessey) and Knuckles (Idris Elba), the latter of which casually starts tossing Sonic around and talking in a voice that he’d like to remind you is in no way sexy.

Sonic The Hedgehog 2 is currently zooming toward an April 2022 release date. Jeff Fowler is once again set to direct.