“Love lost can ignite the flames of revenge, but it can also nurture healing.” -Rachel Winters

Shadow the Hedgehog, the Ultimate Lifeform.

Mewtwo, the Ultimate Pokémon.

Creation comes with purpose, yet that might not be so clear at first. In the field of science when doing whatever it takes to save a loved one, you create something that becomes more than you bargained for. What should’ve been salvation became destruction as tragedy struck these genetic lifeforms and the only thing that they sought out was revenge. But not all is lost as when finally talked to, they found a new purpose in defending the world they used to hate. But today, their defense will only be of themselves as this match gets a re-examination ten years in the making. Ultimate Lifeform versus the Ultimate Pokémon, will Shadow’s chaos take over, or Mewtwo’s psychic abilities provide order? Time to runback this DEATH BATTLE!

Before We Start…

For primary media, Shadow will be getting the standard set of canon material for the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise, being the mainline games, IDW comics, and Sonic Prime cartoon. Additional canon miscellaneous bonus content will likewise be in the table, including the Sonic Channel Calendar, Otherworldly Comedy, manuals/guides, and Sonic Speed Simulator (which is confirmed to be canon by multiple sources). Mewtwo will be getting the mainline Pokémon game continuity, spinoffs (when needed), Detective Pikachu, as well as their anime and (some) manga appearances. While said appearances aren’t technically canon to the games, they created the foundation of their character, and generally follow the same structure as the game continuity. Pokémon as a series heavily promotes their miscellaneous continuities, so it only feels logical to include the anime.

This logic also applies to other continuities, such as the Pokémon Adventures manga franchise. To be both fair and comprehensive to both characters, both will be receiving a soft composite. What this means for Mewtwo has already been clarified, though it extends to Shadow the various mobile games, game manga adaptations, Sonic Chronicles, and the Sonic X anime. To clarify again, it’s a soft composite only; no material that too heavily goes against primary source materials. So no Archie Comics or Sonic Boom for Shadow, or similar content for Mewtwo.

Shadow

Background

“I’m Shadow the Hedgehog, and I made a promise I intend to keep. With the power of these Emeralds, Black Doom and his army are finished! This is who I am!”

There was once a man named Doctor Gerald Robotnik, a genius researcher who’d made many breakthroughs – from studying the Master Emerald to Ifrit to uncovering the famed Gizoid, he’d made great strides everywhere. And yet, the one thing he hadn’t been able to do is save his granddaughter, Maria Robotnik, from her disease, NIDS. And so, he brought her to the Space Colony A.R.K., to try to treat her… and then, he got a proposal from the United Federation to work on Project Shadow. A being designed to be immortal – and while Gerald initially refused, he decided to work on it to save Maria. And yet, he made no progress, with failed prototypes like the Biolizard only costing him what he wanted – until he made a deal with the leader of the Black Arms, Black Doom, to have the project deliver him the Chaos Emeralds in 50 years, in exchange for his DNA. And so, a new being was born – the Ultimate Lifeform, Shadow the Hedgehog, based on the designs Gerald had seen on the Master Emerald’s altar so long ago.

Shadow’s life aboard the A.R.K. was peaceful for a time, as he grew up with Gerald and Maria, beginning to view them as his family, and even defending them from the Gizoid Gerald had uncovered – but all was not well. G.U.N. had found out about the things Gerald had done to finish Project Shadow, and sent a military raid on the space station itself – and while Shadow and Maria were escaping, Maria was shot, and Shadow was sent to the earth, alone and captured by G.U.N, where he would sleep for another 50 years – and thoughts of righteous vengeance would brew in his mind, aided by Gerald modifying his memories to believe Maria had wished for him to get vengeance for her, and destroy the accursed planet she couldn’t live on.

And then, he was released by the grandson of his creator, in a bid for him to defeat his longtime rival, Sonic the Hedgehog, which Shadow cooperated with, inadvertently causing Sonic to get framed for the crimes Shadow had committed. And the two fought as Shadow sought to gain the seven Chaos Emeralds, to activate the Eclipse Cannon and blow up the planet he hated so much. And yet, despite a few near death experiences, he and his rival were evenly matched, and even after causing said plan, he was encouraged by one Amy Rose, to fight on. And he remembered Maria’s true wish – not to destroy humanity, but to make sure that everyone on that planet would have the chance to be happy. And so, he fought the prototype of Project Shadow, the Biolizard, before unlocking his Super form and taking off his rings to stop the A.R.K. from fighting. But yet, his lack of experience with said form would be his undoing, as he ran out of energy and fell to earth, asking Sonic, in his mind the true Ultimate Lifeform, to carry on Maria’s wish. And so, that’s how the story of Shadow ended…

…is what you’d think. In reality, Eggman’s machines had saved Shadow after his fall to earth, and had put him in a stasis pod. However, he’d lost his memories, so when his old ally Rouge the Bat had saved him, and he, her, and Omega teamed up to form Team Dark, and find out the truth behind his lost memories. And yet, even after their journey had ended with a Metal Overlord being shown what he was made of, he still hadn’t remembered anything. And yet, all of that would change when the 50 year anniversary of that day the Black Comet arrived so long ago would pass – and Black Doom would return, offering Shadow the keys to his memory and past. Shadow couldn’t decide what he’d be, or who Shadow was – a mistake, an android copy of the original, a brave hearted hero, a black hearted evil? And yet, he found just who he was as he confronted his maker on the Black Comet, having gathered the Chaos Emeralds and unlocking his memories – he was a hero, through and through, despite everything. Even while everyone else was incapacitated, he fought Devil Doom and destroyed the Black Comet with the Eclipse Cannon, saving the world and fully realizing Gerald and Maria’s dream – to make everyone happy.

And so, Shadow and the rest of Team Dark would continue on – from fighting dark gods of light to an alternate version (or future version, no one knows) of Eggman to even engaging in racing competitions, the three would still be a team to the end. But, on one mission to recover a fake Chaos Emerald, everything would change as the world ended around Shadow – and Black Doom returned, seeking to make Shadow the vessel for his return that he was always meant to be. And yet, even in this white space and with new Black Arm powers changing who he was, Shadow never stopped his fight for what he believed to be right, and destroyed his maker again, putting an end to the Black Arms once and for all. No matter who or what faces against him, he’ll never turn back on his wish to make the world happy – to fulfill the dream that his family had had so long ago.

Experience & Skill

Gerald’s Ultimate Lifeform obviously comes with impressive combat skill and experience. To start off, Shadow has an IQ of 200, and he’s a very impressive hand-to-hand combat fighter, and in many games we can see him use those skills alongside his chaos energy powers. He can not only beat people hard, but he’s also very good at analytical predictions—reading opponents’ next moves and observing patterns, skills taught to Shadow by Rouge. Shadow mentions that he keeps training in his free time, sharpening his skills for whatever threat he needs to be ready for next, as well as reading about history and strategy. Somehow, he even got skilled in ninjutsu on his own to beat Sonic’s training with Espio. Aside from close combat, he’s very skilled at the use of various different weapons like swords, guns, bazookas, hammers… you name it; he can pilot jeeps, motorcycles, jet gliders, and small walkers—he worked hard for his license!

Speaking of Chaos powers, Shadow is very talented and creative with the use of his Chaos powers, using them for very creative combos, especially for abilities such as Chaos Control. You have to be skilled to use this move, and simply using it without being skilled enough can cause devastating damage. For example, when Eggman used it, it was to cause the planet to split into pieces. Despite being very knowledgeable about the technique himself, he has to “dominate the technique”.

Shadow was even put in military training and put into tests designed specifically mentioned to be “the true test of his abilities”. He was doing very well even early on, with results being so impressive that it reached the top brass of GUN (the ones behind said tests). And those skills are something he shows a lot: he’s consistently (and constantly) a match for Sonic the Hedgehog, as he is his biggest rival. In fact, Shadow is not only stated to match Sonic in abilities, but also said to be greater. The same Sonic that is capable of mastering martial arts, machines specifically designed to counter him, and so on. He’s also battled other skilled martial artists like Knuckles the Echidna, powerful psychic users like Silver the Hedgehog, many Robotnik inventions, anomalies like Mephiles, and mercenaries like Infinite the Jackal.

He’s fought and defeated Emerl (this sequence is a hallucination of Shadow, but it is based on an actual combat according to Gerald’s journal and is based on Shadow’s memories and experience), who makes, with skill data strictly related to martial arts and weapon mastery of entire civilization, Gerald Robotnik’s strongest computer crash upon trying to load it all with over 4000 years of experience. Sonic also beat Emerl in combat, and we already addressed how much of an equal he is to Shadow. Shadow has also fought many clones of Zavok during the war in Sonic Forces (clones that are as formidable as the originals), and Sonic, his equal, fought Zavok directly multiple times, a character who is stated to be student of all martial arts and has more than a hundred years of experience. Sonic has also fought and defeated Zik (with Zik even acknowledging Sonic’s skill multiple times), who has been a master of all martial arts since youth, and has more than a thousand years of experience. Shadow, being Sonic’s equal, should be no different from this level of skill.

Perhaps even more impressively, Shadow has a notorious record of defeating opponents who know and can do everything he also can, or even greater. He’s defeated a Phantom Ruby copy of himself in one blow, and even fought against many more in the war, as well as clones of other enemies like Zavok, Chaos and Metal Sonic; the Phantom Ruby clones being as formidable as their originals. He defeated Metal Overlord by himself, who had the bio-data of all characters in Sonic Heroes, including Shadow himself. That includes not only the abilities of everyone, but also their skill and knowledge. He defeated the god of time Solaris, who was an omnipresent deity existing across time periods: past, present and future. He defeated even his creator, Black Doom (twice!), who shared many of the same abilities, and can read his mind, sense his emotional state and intentions, and communicate with him telepathically all the time. He’s got everything to be the ultimate.

Equipment

Air Shoes

Shadow’s cool shoes are for more than just fashion. Created by Gerald Robotnik with the purpose of aiding in Shadow’s mobility, these shoes are actually the main source for Shadow’s incredible speed! Thanks to them, he can move as fast, if not faster, than Sonic himself! After uncovering an upgrade for them in the White Jungle, the Air Shoes even allow Shadow to perform the Light Speed Dash technique. Shadow’s Air Shoes are also mentioned to be Extreme Gear tech by Wave.

Limiter Rings

Special rings that restrict Shadow’s power but are free to take them off if he feels like the situation calls for it. When these rings do come off, Shadow’s power and speed increase tremendously, letting blow through things much quicker than before. The only downside is that this can leave him tired afterwards. However, removing them in combination with his Doom Powers is said to make Shadow explode, likely from overloading his body with too much power.

Rings

You know ‘em! Scattered across all of Sonic media, the Rings are probably some of the important items in the series. Rings protect their characters from deadly blows, as seen in not only multiple games and shows, but various manuals and in-game descriptions. In fact, their protection is so good, that when Starfall Super Sonic got knocked out of its form, with enough Rings, Sonic managed to withstand constant attacks from a being leagues beyond him in power, and had still enough Rings to keep going and return to the form. The higher your durability is, the less Rings you can lose. With high enough durability, attacks that would naturally cause you to lose Rings can make you not lose any Rings at all. Rings also do many more things than just grant protection against damage: users can use Rings to restore their power, fill up boost gauges to give more energy, and increase your speed.

Power-Ups

Like many Sonic characters, Shadow can use power-ups that give him benefits, both offensively and defensively. By either tapping or breaking into one of these is enough to apply their abilities to Shadow.

Picture	Name	Function
	Extra Life	Grants an extra life to Shadow.
	Power Sneakers	Shadow’s speed and jump height are both increased. (Lasts 15-20 seconds)
	Invincibility	For a brief period of time, Shadow will gain a sparkly aura and become invincible to any attack. (Lasts 15-20 seconds)
	Shield	A single-use barrier that is used once Shadow takes any hit, allowing for an instance of free damage.
	Super Ring	Can grant from 5 to 100 Rings.
	Random Rings	Grants a random amount of Rings.
	Smart Bomb	Upon use, all enemies on the screen are destroyed.
	Magnetic Shield	A barrier which functions exactly like a normal Shield, but with the additional properties of attracting Rings to Shadow.
	Health	Restores a decent amount of health.
	Bowling Strike	A bowling ball is thrown ahead of Shadow, colliding into and stunning those it hits.
	Free Throw	Shadow throws basketballs at an opponent, stunning them. GEEET DUNKED ON
	Octo-Boost	The Octo-Boost creates an exhaust from its mouth, giving Shadow a burst of speed.
	Octo-Ink	The Octo-Ink will release a cloud of ink behind Shadow which forms a dome, said dome causing an obscured field of vision should somebody make contact with it.
	Soda Rocket	A soda can with an image of Dr. Eggman on it. Shaking it will enlarge the soda can, with Shadow jumping on the giant can to gain a few moments of being shot forward at extreme velocities.
	Target Torpedo	Shadow will gain a torpedo, which will lock onto whatever target Shadow is aiming at before homing in and hitting them directly to inflict damage.
	Tee Shot	Shadow will gain a golf club, allowing him to strike a golf ball at an opponent and stunning them.
	Warp Ring	Teleports Shadowl through a Warp Ring to above the opponents’ position, crushing them from above.
	Omochao	Gives Rings to the user.
	Homing Punch	A homing boxing glove missile that hits the nearest opponent.
	Triple Homing Punch	Now imagine Homing Punch… but thrice.
	Rocket Punch	A boxing glove missile that bounces on walls. It can also home if targeted.
	Triple Rocket Punch	Now imagine Rocket Punch… but thrice.
	Slime	Summons a Warp Ring to throw slime at an opponent, messing with their view for a moment. It also makes opponents drop items.
	Weight	An anvil that can be summoned above an opponents’ head, crushing them.
	Dark Chao	Lets Shadow swap the items of the opponent with new ones.
	Shield	Turns Shadow’s body into metal and protects him from items in CrossWorlds. This includes items like Slime and Dark Chao.
	Tornado	Summons a tornado around Shadow to protect him from incoming projectiles.
	Spiked Iron Ball	A spiked ball that can be thrown to deal damage to opponents.
	Slicer	Used to slice machines in half in the game it comes from. Outside of a race, it do be an awesome weapon to throw. Be careful, Mewtwo!
	King Boom Boo	Summons King Boom Boo to deal damage to opponents.
	Monster Truck	FUCK YEAH TRANSFORMS CARS INTO AWESOME TRUCKS!! Shadow LOOOOVES this one

Flame Ring

An accessory that Shadow obtained in the Radical Highway. While Shadow wears this ring, his somersault becomes fiery and greatly increases in power, capable of destroying containers made of pure iron.

Ancient Light

Found by Shadow in Sky Rail, this mysterious orb of light was absorbed by the hedgehog, allowing him access to the Light Speed Attack.

Power Cores

Power Cores are multi-colored orbs that Shadow [and Team Dark] can collect through the events of Sonic Heroes. These energy cores serve as a form to upgrade the skills of an user, and boost their attack power, acceleration, or flight power. In IDW, they are also shown to double the physical stats of users, being capable of even empowering Mimic enough to overpower Silver’s psychokinesis, and are even capable of improving technopathic abilities.

Dark Rider

Shadow’s legendary motorcycle. Originally, the Dark Rider was a standard issue bike used by GUN, but Shadow took a liking to it and modified it to serve as his ride during the All-Stars Grand Prix. In addition to being a sweet ride, the Dark Rider comes equipped with machine guns to mow down any enemies in the way, and can increase its speed with a Boost Dash.

Dark Reaper

Shadow’s signature vehicle in the Sonic racing games. Besides looking cool as hell, the Dark Reaper does not only function like a speedy racing car, but it has other transformations functions like turning into a plane, a boat, or a monster truck with items.

Black Shot + Gravity Band

Black Shot is the name of Shadow’s Extreme Gear board. Extreme Gear are powerful hover technology that can be used for transport through pseudo-flight. They can generate air through tricks in the sky, or turn into different types of vehicles by changing gears. Pretty cool, huh? But with the Gravity Band, Shadow can further enhance the Extreme Gear’s capabilities by manipulating gravity through bursts.

Darkness

Shadow’s Extreme Gear skates that he uses in Sonic Riders. It’s less powerful than your average Extreme Gear board, but also more fuel-efficient and way more agile.

Guns

Shadow through his adventure has used various common weaponry, both man-made and alien-made. Interestingly enough, Omega surmises that Shadow is able to create guns out of his hands thanks to his Black Arms DNA. Here is a list of all the weapons that Shadow has used before:

Weapon	Name	Description
	Pistol	Standard issue handgun. Carries 10 rounds.
	Sub-Machine Gun	A regular automatic sub-machine gun. Carries 20 rounds.
	Semi-Auto Rifle	Semi-automatic military rifle that bears a long body and a thin barrel. Carries 30 rounds.
	Heavy Machine Gun	Long-barreled gun with a meter long frame. Carries 30 rounds.
	Gatling Gun	A giant six-barreled gun with a central shaft. Carries 40 rounds.
	Egg Gun	The standard issued gun used by the Egg Pawns that fires at a high rapid pace. Carries 20 rounds.
	Flash Shot	A Black Arms weapon with two parallel gun barrels, it is capable of firing purple energy at a quick pace. Carries 20 rounds.
	Light Shot	A short-range laser pistol used by the Black Arms. Carries 20 rounds.
	Heavy Shot	Yet another handgun used by the Black Arms, although this one carries more ammo. Carries 30 rounds.
	Ring Shot	A powerful Black-Arms weapon that can fire ring-shaped purple energy blasts. The speed of the shots scales to the momentum of the user. Carries 20 rounds.

Cannons

Heavy weaponry that can fire deadly explosive shots in an area to wreak havoc. Not much else to say about them, just aim and shoot then kaboom.

Weapon	Name	Description
	Bazooka	KABOOM (Carries 6 rounds)
	Egg Bazooka	KABOOM Egg Edition (Carries 6 rounds)
	Grenade Launcher	A medium sized military weapon that can fire explosive grenades. Carries 6 rounds.
	Tank Cannon	An extremely powerful cannon ripped right out of a Tank that fires heavy shots at enemies. Carries 4 rounds.
	Big Barrel	Alien-made explosive launcher that makes short work of any area fired upon. Carries 8 rounds.
	Black Barrel	A powerful yet shorter ranged version of the Big Barrel that also blows up areas. Carries 8 rounds.

Laser Weapons

As the name suggests, these are weapons that fire laser beams at opponents. These beams can scatter off walls and other objects to attack in multiple directions.

Weapon	Name	Description
	Laser Rifle	A high-tech weapon utilized by GUN. This rifle can refract laser energy and scatter in multiple different directions, being able to hit multiple enemies at once. Carries 20 rounds.
	Refractor	Used by the Black Arms, this weapon is an organic-looking weapon that can fire laser beams. Carries 20 rounds.
	Splitter	This weapon fires cutter-shaped laser beams that go right through targets. Carries 20 rounds.

Lock-On Weapons

As the name suggests, Lock-On weapons are weapons that can track an opponent and fire multiple shots at them after they’ve been targeted. Useful for shooting down moving targets.

Weapon	Name	Description
	RPG	A rocket launcher that can lock-on to an enemy and fire a homing rocket at them. Carries 6 rounds.
	4-Shot RPG	As the name suggests, it’s a shoulder mounted rocket launcher that fires 4 rockets at once at targeted enemies. Carries 12 rounds
	8-Shot RPG	Same as above except it fires 8 rockets all at once. Carries 24 rounds.
	Worm Shooter	A Black Arms biological weapon tracks enemies and fires small internal parasitic worms that bite to a locked-on target. It can lock onto two targets at once. Carries 6 rounds.
	Wide Worm Shooter	Same as the Worm Shooter except it can lock onto 6 enemies all at once. Carries 18 rounds.
	Big Worm Shooter	Same as the Worm Shooter except the shots are much more powerful. Carries 6 rounds.

Close-Range Weapons

Beyond just guns and weaponry to shoot with, Shadow also has access to melee weapons that he can swing at enemies in close range.

Weapon	Name	Description
	Black Sword	A sword used by the Black Arms for close quarters combat.
	Dark Hammer	Giant hammer used by the Black Arms that deals a lot of damage.
	Egg Spear	A lance used by the Egg Pawns of the Eggman Empire
	Survival Knife	Standard issue razor-sharp knife used by GUN soldiers.

Vacuum Pod

A unique weapon type that specializes in sucking in objects with the option to fire them back. This includes items such as rings, walls, and even other enemies.

Special Weapons

These weapons are unlocked by completing the final stages of the story mode of Shadow the Hedgehog. These weapons don’t differ besides carrying the same attribute as one of the six weapon types mentioned above.

Weapon	Name	Description
	Egg Vacuum	Same as the regular Vacuum Pod except it’s Egg themed. It’s based on Billy Hatcher.
	Heal Cannon	“Winning the battle through the power of healing. A weapon developed as a medical device, which fires heal units at a targeted point. Targets hit by the energy wave exerted by the heal unit lose their will to fight and stop attacking.”
	Omochao Gun	This funny weapon fires bullets resembling its head that can attack multiple enemies at once. Beware the Omochao.
	Samurai Blade	Unlike other melee weapons, this one can send shockwaves as attacks with each swing.
	Satellite Gun	This weapon functions as a Lock-On type of weapon and causes a giant laser beam to fire down from the sky.
	Shadow Rifle	The ultimate gun for the ultimate life form. This gun can defeat most enemies with one shot only.

Sonic Rivals Power-Ups

In Sonic Rivals, Shadow gains access to various power-ups that can be used offensively and defensively:

• Fire: Shoot a homing fireball that attacks the opponent, or it can create a defensive fire shield to block an attack.
• Ice: Shoots out a bolt of ice that freezes enemies, can also be used to drop an ice cube that freezes enemies if they step on it.
• Illusion: Distorts the opponent’s vision.
• Lightning: Zaps a foe to paralyze them, can also drop decoy rings that paralyze the opponent if they pick them up.
• Ring Magnet: Attracts nearby rings.
• Mine: Sends a proximity mine that explodes when near enemies.
• Wind: Throws out a tornado that picks up enemies and scoops them up in the air.
• Glue: Drops away a blob of glue that sticks the opponent to the ground, rendering them immobile.
• Oil: Throws out a puddle of oil that causes the enemy to slip on.

Sonic Chronicles Items

_{What a good friend 🙂}

Shadow can use various types of gloves, shoes, consumables and accessories in Sonic Chronicles. These items have various effects that can enhance physical stats and defenses, revive Shadow from a deadly blow, infuse attacks with elements, heal Shadow overtime, etc. There are multiple items that prevent or even grant Shadow immune to status effects. These status effects include being stunned or put to sleep, poisoned, weakened, etc. A list of the items is listed below:

Gloves

Name	Description and Effect
Boxing Gloves	Super tough gloves provide the maximum fighting edge. Slightly increases damage.
Cloth Gloves	Casual, stylish and comfortable. Slightly increases attack.
Cursed Gloves	A prototype combat glove. Tough to control, but very powerful. Very greatly increases damage, though it lowers defense.
Golden Gloves	A master crafted combat glove without peer, a rare artifact. Slightly increases damage.
Gritty Gloves	All-around tough gloves for tough customers. Moderately increases armor, moderately increases damage and decreases a bit of defense.
Lucky Gloves	Durable, yet agile gloves soaked in clover juice. They increase luck and a bit of attack.
Mirror Gloves	Made with flexible metal, these shiny gloves boost combat prowess. Moderately increases damage and defense.
Polymer Gloves	Gloves made with durable polymers. Slightly increases damage and armor.
Power Gloves	Infused with power, these gloves hit hard but can be tricky to handle. Greatly increases damage but reduces attack.
Rubber Gloves	Light and smooth gloves for faster reaction. Moderately increases damage.
Sparkly Gloves	Light and dazzling, these gloves tingle with energy. Greatly increases damage.
Work Gloves	More durable gloves to pack extra punch. Slightly increases damage.

Shoes

Name	Description and Effect
Light Sneakers	Simple, reliable sneakers. Slightly increases armor.
Shielded Sneakers	Prototype footwear offering the best armor available. Greatly increases armor.
Speedy Sneakers	Light and well cushioned for more agility. Slightly increases armor.
Spiked Sneakers	Sneakers with cleats provide an edge in combat. Slightly increases armor.
Stiffed Sneakers	Sneakers made with tough polymers. Moderately increases armor.

Consumables

Name	Description and Effect
Antidote	A curative elixir that removes all bad status effects from one team member.
Clover Juice	Made with an extract capable of boosting one’s luck for short periods.
Crazy Beans	Boosts you in unpredictable ways. Try them and see what happens!
Cure All Spray	A large dose antidote able to remove status ailments from all team members at once.
Health Leaf	The leaf of a plant known for its healing effects. Heals 100 HP.
Health Root	The root of a plant known for its healing effects. Heals 250 HP.
Health Seed	The seed of a plant known for its healing effects. Heals 50 HP.
Immunity Booster	A vaccine effective in preventing debilitating symptoms for short periods.
Iron Tonic	Made with medicine capable of toughening the skin for short periods. Moderately increases armor.
Mad Emitter	An alien device that produces an energy pulse that heals 250 HP of all party members.
POW Candy	A refreshing formula that invigorates mind and body. Restores 5 PP.
POW Drink	A refreshing formula that invigorates mind and body. Restores 50 PP.
POW Gum	A refreshing formula that invigorates mind and body. Restores 10 PP.
Prune Juice	Made with an extract guaranteed to improve combat abilities for short periods.
Psychic Water	A rare concoction capable of providing heightened premonition for short periods.
Refresher Wave	An alien device that produces an energy pulse that invigorates all party members, giving all +50 PP.
Rock Salt	A rare earth extract capable of raising one’s raw strength for short periods. Moderately increases damage.
Speed Bar	Made with medicine capable of boosting one’s reflexes for short periods of time.

Accessories

Name	Description and Effect
Elemental Rings	Within Sonic Chronicles, these Elemental Rings add one element’s properties into your basic attacks. There are five elements: earth, ice, water, lightning and wind.
Kron Hammer	A rock hammer infused with ultimate combat power. Very greatly increases damage.
Economizer	A wrist device able to boost its wearer’s energy levels. Lowers PP cost of all POW Moves by 1.
Immunity Idol	A mystical charm with the inexhaustible ability to make one immune to afflictions.
Refresher	A medical kit that recovers 1 POW Point at the end of each round of combat.
Replenisher	A wrist device able to regenerate the wearer’s health over time. Regenerates 5% of maximum HP per round.
Voxal Teleporter	A teleporter infused with ultimate agility. Greatly increases defense.
Zoah Shield	An energy shield infused with invulnerability. Greatly increases armor.
Nocturne Blade	A blade infused with ultimate martial skill. Greatly increases attack.
Spooky Charm	A mystical charm likely to cause fear in one’s enemies. Increases probability of enemies attempting to flee.
Angel Amulet	A mystical amulet with the inexhaustible power to put the fallen back on their feet. Automatic revive with 1 HP, once during a battle.

Sonic Forces: Speed Battle Items

Shadow is a playable character in Sonic Forces: Speed Battle. In fact, he has a lot of alternate versions in this game! In case you are not familiar, this game allows players to have three types of items and a shield if you’re up ahead, in order to beat rivals to reach the goal first: Projectile, Boost and Trap. We’ll be listing Shadow’s notable abilities, as well as from other Shadow skins that are not Paramount’s Shadow. This includes: Vampire Shadow, Idol Shadow, Outlaw Shadow, Demon Hunter Shadow, Warrior Shadow, and Riders Shadow.

Name	Description and Effect
Lightning	Hits your leading opponent with a short, sharp shock, making them drop an item.
Storm Cloud	A burst of bad weather that zaps any runners passing through it, removing an item.
Drac-O’-Lantern	Pummel opponents with this explosive pumpkin that can pass through obstacles!
Electro Boost	Puts a little zip in your running, attracts Rings, and zaps opponents so they drop items.
Chaos Cord	Shadow’s vocals are unmatched! Silence (lock their abilities temporarily) rivals with circling notes, then launch them down the track!
Ultimate Waveform	Grab the notes to extend your boost as you rock on down the track!
Lucky Horseshoe	Your rivals won’t be so lucky when they’re sent into a spin with this horseshoe!
Highway Robbery	Pilfer your rivals rings with a speedy snatch as you boost past them!
Explosive Mine	Explodes on impact causing considerable delays to opponent journey times.
Demon Blade	Hurl forth a magical blade which will paralyze rivals in their place then come back for another attack!
Wind Boost	Storm ahead like a mighty wind, stealing Rings from the opponents you hit.
Charm Trap	Looks like a regular item. If collected, rivals will find an item locked out until the sealing charm ransom is paid.
Chaos Flame Sword	Throw this sword augmented with chaotic flame and create a pool of lava for your rivals to contend with! “I NEED IFRIT!”
Chaos Boost	Fly down the track and rush past your enemies! Slam down while flying to create an explosion!
Deadly Spears	Damaging spears pop up out of the ground – jump over the short one!
Electric Rush	Look at Shadow ride that turbulence! Launch a damaging electric wind forward and use its slipstream to gain speed!
Air Dash	Watch Shadow soar above his Rivals by extending his boost through floating dash rings!
Wind Turbine	Slow your Rivals to a crawl with this projected wind trap! Spawns a tornado in front of a rival to slow them down.
Chaos Cage	Trap your rivals with Chaos Emerald energy. Shadow locks opponents on a sphere of energy, sealing them.

Support

Chao

Everyone loves the Chao! But while they are cute and innocent pets in most of the games, in Sonic Chronicles, they’re deadly support, and crucial help in battles. They bring to the table a lot of benefits, and each Chao possesses unique attributes. A list of Chao is present below:

Chao	Ability
Barbo	Increases Shadow’s maximum HP.
Spartoi	It has the ability to grant Shadow’s normal attacks with the chance that it can KO enemies in one hit depending on the user level, with the max level in the game granting a 10% chance.
Belgog	Decreases the likelihood of Shadow getting hit.
Ferox	This Chao allows Shadow to automatically succeed in using their POW moves without the need of the player performing any real-time events on the Touch Screen.
Rugle	Increases Shadow’s luck.
Cheese	Cheese is a Unique Chao that raises the entire team’s luck when bonded to a character depending on their level.
Koolet	The character who equips it will be less likely to be hit by an enemy attack. This possibility decreases even further when Koolet is traded between players.
Churdle	Will boost up the chances of hitting an opponent better.
Oldarg	It can grant Shadow a greatly increased chance to hit targets in battle. When traded between players, this chance of hitting targets in battle increases even further.
Dusty	Increases the chance that the team will catch a fleeing opponent(s). When traded between players, the chance of catching a fleeing opponent(s) is increased further.
Gibber	It increases Shadow’s resistance to battle damage. When traded between players, Gibber can grant more resistance to its bonded character to battle damage.
Ovus	It has the ability to revive a character if they are knocked out in battle. The number of revives per battle is dependent on its level, and its max is 3x.
Bepke	One enemy will automatically attack Shadow instead of other team members. Erm
Blayze	Shadow does much more damage in battle.
Bobo	Shadow will always find an extra reward item after combat.
Cheezlet	Shadow does more damage in battle.
Choo	Shadow regenerates PP at the start of each combat round.
Ghise	Shadow’s attacks do water damage.
Griff	Shadow’s attacks do ice damage.
Hayda	Regenerates PP at the start of each combat round for all team members.
Jirna	Chao creates an earth shield to protect against damage.
Joy	Regenerates HP at the start of each combat round for all team members.
Kayla	Reduces the team’s chance of being ambushed.
Keroyo	Increases odds of enemies fleeing from battle.
Knickt	Chao creates a shield of lightning to protect against damage.
Korus	Chao creates a shield of fire to protect against damage.
Luunan	Greatly increases Shadow’s maximum PP.
Oolean	Increases Shadow’s maximum PP.
Perty	Chao creates a shield of water to protect against damage.
Pyraz	Shadow’s attacks do fire damage.
Radu	Greatly increases Shadow’s maximum HP.
Seeri	Chao creates a shield of wind to protect against damage.
Seggo	Shadow’s attacks do wind damage.
Stebsly	Shadow regenerates HP at the start of every combat round.
Stiglin	Shadow’s attacks do earth damage.
Velk	Increases Shadow’s resistance to damage.
Zimba	Shadow’s attacks do lightning damage.

Wisps

Aliens that possess a power known as Hyper Go-On and when harnessed, lets the user temporarily use one of many Color Powers, completely transforming them into a new state. Shadow has used a good majority of the Wisps throughout the series with exceptions being Green Hover and Purple Frenzy, so they are not being included here.

Wisp	Ability
White Wisp	White Wisps are mostly effectless but do replenish the Boost gauge when collected.
Red Wisp	The Red Wisp enables the use of the Red Burst, transforming the user into a flame that can bounce around using mini explosions or charge it up to release a massive one that sends them flying sky-high and burning all foes in the vicinity. It can also create barriers of fire for protection. As to be expected with fire, water instantly puts this transformation out of commission.
Orange Wisp	Enables the use of the Orange Rocket, letting the user fly upwards to a high altitude before slowly falling back down to earth. The rocket transformation also lets it defeat enemies by ramming into them at high speeds.
Yellow Wisp	This pointy fella transforms the user into the Yellow Drill, able to burrow through the dirt beneath and is also surprisingly good at underwater mobility. Anything in the way gets a hole drilled into them.
Cyan Wisp	A speedy guy that transforms the user into the Cyan Laser, becoming an incredibly fast laser that burns through enemies and can reflect off of surfaces. In Team Sonic Racing, this laser can be fired off as a beam.
Violet Wisp	A Wisp that was mutated by Dr. Eggman, becoming more feral in the process. Violet Wisps let their user become the Violet Void, a black hole that sucks up anything it comes across and gets bigger and faster as a result, even capable of eating up entire spaceships.
Blue Wisp	Blue Wisps transform their user into the almighty Blue Cube. When using its power, blue rings will be transformed into blocks and vice versa when it is used again. The Blue Cube’s power can also be used to crush enemies in the way. In Team Sonic Racing, cubes are thrown forward or behind the user in order to attack opponents, instead of transforming their user.
Pink Wisp	These guys are actually nicer than they seem at first. Pink Wisps transform the user into Pink Spikes, becoming a deadly ball that rolls along the surface without a fear of falling off. It even lets them perform a unique Spin Dash to barrel through enemies at a quick pace. In Team Sonic Racing, pink spiked orbs are produced instead and orbit around the user, damaging anyone who gets too close. (We swear, they don’t play rough).
Black Wisp	Lil’ splodey guys that enable their user to become the Black Bomb, rolling across the ground to crush enemies and growing in size. And right when the transformation is about to end, it detonates and explodes anything in the blast radius. This explosion size is based on how big the bomb had gotten. In Team Sonic Racing, it functions identical to that one guy’s kart racer and its bomb item.
Gray Wisp	Transforming the user into the Gray Quake, the user can roll along the field to damage enemies and if it’s mid-air, it can quickly slam itself back down to generate shockwaves that blow away all enemies within the vicinity. In Team Sonic Racing, the Gray Wisp will fly ahead of the competition and it will generate stone pillars to obstruct opponents with.
Crimson Wisp	This eagle-eyed fellow lets its user become the Crimson Eagle. As the Crimson Eagle, the user has flight capabilities and can even dash to move faster at the cost of shortening the duration of the form. In Team Sonic Racing, it can be fired off as a projectile that homes in on an enemy.
Indigo Wisp	The Indigo Wisp grants access to the Indigo Asteroid transformation, becoming a mini celestial body that can break apart enemies and parts of the environment to add to its Asteroid Ring. This ring grows in size the more it gathers, enabling it to assimilate things from farther away. It also levitates.
Ivory Wisp	The Ivory Wisp lets the user become Ivory Lightning, zapping anything it makes contact with. It can also perform a version of the homing attack that releases electrical surges upon contact and it draws in nearby Rings for easy collecting. As water and electricity don’t mix, entering water will shut this transformation down early.
Magenta Wisp	The Magenta Wisp lets the user become the Magenta Rhythm, allowing for sustained periods of air time with bounces. In Team Sonic Racing, it creates musical notes to distract opponents with and reduces their speed.
Jade Wisp	The latest member of the Wisps, the Jade Wisp transforms the user into the Jade Ghost, letting them phase through certain walls and obstacles and is untouchable by most measures.

Sonic Runners Buddies

In the Sonic Runners mobile game, you can have up to two buddies to help you in your runs. Most of them aren’t applicable in a versus scenario, so we’re listing the ones that can fit the criteria and help in a fight, but you can see a full list here.

Buddy	Effect
Gold Chao	Boosts Rings acquired.
RC Piggy Bank	Restores Rings when damaged.
Wizard Chao	All items (except Color Power items and shields) last longer.
Nightopian	Chance of destroying iron balls, spikes and enemies when damaged.
Halloween Chao	Chance of keeping Rings when damaged.
Black Bomb	Chance of destroying all enemies on screen when performing special actions.
Chaos	Chance of using an item without losing it.
Death Egg	Chance of continuing after being defeated.
RC Block Face	Chance of destroying everything on screen except terrain when performing special actions.
	Chance of reducing the game speed.

Friends and Trails

Buckle up as we talk about everyone’s favorite Roblox game yet again! Blame SEGA, they’re the ones telling us this game is canon. In case you are not familiar yet (somehow), Sonic Speed Simulator is a game built all around speed, so you’re constantly upgrading yourself more and more to get more attributes to go faster and faster. And here’s where Friends and Trails come in! Friends are equippable pets that you can carry around, while Trails are… well, trails; an aura that follows your movement. You can equip up to 5 Friends and 1 Trail. Albeit different things, they both share the same functions: make you go fast as hell. But that’s not all! They can increase the damage you do, a player’s luck, energy, jump height, and other attributes of a player’s stats. They can even increase Ring magnetism to collect Rings that are farther away, or even more impressively, increase how many Rings you can collect. Friends and Trails can make a player collect hundreds, thousands or maybe even more Rings by every one Ring they collect.

Gadgets

Gadgets are unique skills that appear in Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds. With them, characters can modify their machines or Extreme Gear with several to enhance performances on a race, crucial if you wanna reach the end first. While specific to their cars and Extreme Gear, Sonic characters are more than capable of fighting in Extreme Gear (even in Super forms), and Shadow has an Extreme Gear version of his Air Shoes, so he’s not having any issues using them in this fight. Now, there’s a lot of Gadgets that are not really applicable in a DEATH BATTLE! context, so we’re just listing down the ones that help Shadow in a fight. You can see the full list of Gadgets here.

Gadget	Effect
Air Trick Bounty	Get a small amount of Rings for each rotation from an Air Trick.
Item Attack Bounty	Get Rings when hitting others with items.
Runoff Bounty	Continuously get Rings when using Speed items.
Ring Doubler	Double the amount of Rings gained.
Less is More	Increases top speed when holding fewer Rings.
Ring Engine	When holding 1 or more Rings, +12 to all stats but slowly lose Rings over time.
Hyper Ring Engine	When holding 1 or more Rings, increase all stats based on number of Rings held, but slowly lose Rings over time.
Ring Thief	Steal Rings when colliding with other machines.
Ring Gain Boost	Get a burst of speed when obtaining Rings.
Ring Range UP	Increases the range to pick up Rings.
Ultimate Air Trick	Do more than 3 Air Tricks to become invincible for a short time.
Collision Boost	Collide with others to get a Boost.
Ring Evolution	Get 10 Ring(s) to change all stats by +1.
Collision Evolution	Bump into others to change all stats by +1.
Damage Evolution	Taking damage changes all stats by +7.
Item Hit Evolution	Land a hit with an item to change all stats by +7.
Ring Mercy	Get rings after taking damage.
Damage Mercy	Become temporarily invincible after taking damage.
Item Mercy	Get an item after taking damage.
Maximum Traction	Prevents slipping on sand and ice.
Item Keeper	Prevents items from being dropped.
Quick Recovery	Recover from attacks quicker.
Crash Pads	Halves the number of Rings lost when taking damage.
Lucky Pair	Occasionally get double the items.
Go Go Omochao	Omochao distributes Rings for longer and appears more often.
Item Buster Kit	A kit that makes Attack items appear more often. Get Rings for attacking others.

Fake Emerald

Created by Tails back in Sonic Adventure 2, the Fake Emerald is pretty similar to a normal Chaos Emerald. It’s meant to be; even machines can’t tell the difference. Tails says that it’s pretty much just like a normal Chaos Emerald—sharing the wavelengths and properties of one, with the only drawback that it’s less powerful. Sonic managed to use Chaos Control with it to avoid death. Shadow Generations shows that the Fake Emerald stayed at the Space Colony ARK, and Shadow took it for himself during its events. It would later prove itself to be a very useful tool to trick Sonic into snatching the fake Emerald instead of the real one.

Chaos Emeralds

Ah, those damn mystical gems. Coming from Ancients outside of the planet brought to the Sonic world as the ultimate Deus Ex Machina to every problem, they’re the legendary seven Chaos Emeralds, known to grant wishes and miracles to life. Shadow has collected them multiple times in the series—much like everyone else—and has aided him in multiple battles. The Chaos Emeralds possess infinite power, and positive thoughts can also give Emeralds power; and beyond juicing Shadow up to that shining gold Super state, they can heal users, give energy and vitality, and revive the dead, absorb energy sources, manipulate environments and the weather, among many more properties and immunities/resistances that will be mentioned later on. Shadow always has one at his disposal as much as he can to boost up his powerful Chaos Control technique. The Chaos Emeralds can respond to the user’s desires and will in order to power themselves up from a distance and even if someone else took the Emeralds and used them to power themselves up, they can be called back to.

Abilities

Ultimate Lifeform Physiology

Shadow was created to be the perfect being. Made to be the cure to Maria’s disease, and having an immortal [ageless] body. Shadow also possesses Black Arms’ DNA, which, according to Gerald, is what lets him use Chaos energy more easily. It also gives him access to special powers that will be brought up later.

Spin Attack + Spin-Dash

Everyone and their grandmothers in the Sonic series can perform these basic abilities, and that includes Shadow. By curving into a ball, Shadow can use his spiky body to attack foes by launching himself onto them. The Spin-Dash is even more devastating: charging energy by spinning in place builds up speed and momentum for a power-packed maneuver and high-speed movement, allowing for even more powerful blows and speeds that far surpass Shadow’s usual top speed normally, seen a decent amount of times like in the Sonic Prime series.

Homing Attack

By locking a Spin Attack into an enemy, Shadow can perform the Homing Attack; Spin Attacks that can shortly attack anyone with homing properties.

Chaos Attack

After successfully performing a Homing Attack, Shadow can follow it up by attacking foes with a barrage of punches and kicks.

Dark Spin-Dash

By using the Spin-Dash in the Black Arms’ slime transportation, Shadow can utilize the Dark Spin-Dash to go through said slime’s path, giving him access to the Black Arms’ transport network. Truly… dark…

Black Tornado

Shadow can spin around an enemy with enough speed to generate a tornado, sending enemies flying and removing any shields they might be holding.

Light Speed Dash

With a trail of Rings, Shadow can use the Light-Speed Dash to travel that trail with the speed of light.

Light Speed Attack

Shadow is capable of charging up attacks that attack multiple enemies at once with the speed of light.

Fire Somersault

Shadow can do a quick somersault to hurt enemies, but because of the Flame Ring, that somersault can now gain fire properties to even break through steel blocks.

Boost

If he wasn’t running fast before, Shadow can use the Boost in order to go a lot faster. This even lets him damage enemies and surfaces by simply crashing into them with Boost active.

Danger Sense

Much like Sonic himself, Shadow has displayed a lot of instances where he senses incoming danger. In Sonic Adventure 2, he feels “danger all around him”; he can tell when something is about to happen in Sonic Heroes; he manages to spot someone [Metal Sonic] by sensing him around in Sonic Rivals 2, and he protected Rouge by being attacked from the Ifrit by warning her to not touch the Chaos Emerald.

Stomp

When mid-air, Shadow can rocket downwards with a powerful stomp. This breaks multiple enemies and can generate a small shockwave when landing.

Chaos Energy Manipulation

Shadow’s specialty is tapping into the power of Chaos Energy, directly tied to the Chaos Emeralds. Because of his Black Arms DNA, Shadow is innate at manipulating this source of energy for all sorts of attacks—with or without the Emeralds. Chaos Energy comes with Chaos Powers, and Shadow has a ton of these! Starting with his favorite…

Chaos Control

The Ultimate Lifeform’s ultimate technique; his signature move. Using the power of a Chaos Emerald (or, arguably, without one at all), Shadow can perform Chaos Control—the ability to manipulate space and time, warp reality and control the fabric of the universe. This ability has endless possibilities, and within the Sonic series, it has done multiple things. It is mentioned that Chaos Control becomes more effective the more Chaos Emeralds someone has in hand, evidenced by games like Shadow the Hedgehog where Super Shadow can utilize a much stronger Chaos Control that Devil Doom cannot resist. Shadow can use a few of the Chaos Control abilities without the use of an emerald, but more special abilities require one or more.

Spatial Manipulation

First is the spatial warping aspect of Chaos Control. We see it being used by Shadow on his first time appearing in the series, utilizing the technique to warp his speed to blitz through Sonic. Sonic also has used Chaos Control to significantly boost his speed against Reverse-Flash in the crossover. It can teleport Shadow and other objects too, like in Shadow the Hedgehog. Just a single Chaos Emerald can power up a Chaos Control to teleport other objects in a big, wide area. To be fair, we know it has a limit, but nothing that we know as of yet—especially when Chaos Control can also teleport Shadow across dimensions, like in Sonic Rivals 2, and warp Shadow out of the Paradox Prism’s universe-shattering explosion.

Time Manipulation

The most iconic use of the technique is the ability to control time. With it, Shadow can slow or stop time completely. Chaos Control’s time stopping properties are powerful enough that the move can work in White Space, y’know, the place with no time. While we don’t know the limit of how long the technique goes, Metal Overlord’s Chaos Control lasted 20 seconds, but there are implications that it can last longer. In Sonic X, Shadow stopped time for about 90 seconds. When Super Shadow used Chaos Control on Planet Seed, despite being noted to be low on energy, he managed to leave time stopped for at least two minutes around the area he was in. In Shadow Generations, Shadow even implied he could freeze Gerald and Maria in time forever, though it can come off as weird. Chaos Control can also make users time travel if there are two users present with two Chaos Emeralds.

Sealing

Perhaps the most interesting ability in Chaos Control’s disposal. In 06, Shadow was capable of using Chaos Control to seal Mephiles into the Scepter of Darkness. Silver tried using it too [on Iblis] before Blaze took it and sealed Iblis inside herself to another dimension. Not the first time it happens as Elise’s father sealed Iblis inside of her daughter’s soul; Sonic Frontiers directly supporting this with the Ancients utilizing the Emeralds to forge Cyber Space, harnessing its cyber energy to influence, trap or encode souls. Additionally, Tikal sealed her soul alongside Chaos’ in Sonic Adventure inside the Master Emerald.

A misconception is that users have to sacrifice themselves or die, but that’s incorrect: you could see that Shadow sealed Mephiles just fine, but Blaze had to use her soul as the seal. Not to mention, she didn’t die, she sealed herself in another dimension. Encyclospeedia and Ian Flynn also imply she didn’t die. And obviously the Duke was already pretty massively injured from protecting Elise.

Chaos Control-based Abilities

Shadow has even more applications of his Chaos Control, many that he translates Chaos Control’s space-time manipulation into battle, mostly by distorting space-time with projectiles, energy blasts, or even his fists.

• Chaos Burst: Shadow teleports to an area of distorted space, disappearing for a few seconds, before emerging with a power explosion of energy. Its Air variation allows Shadow to disappear from the air and surprise opponents that are directly below him with a space-time vortex around him.
• Roaming Chaos: Using Chaos Control, Shadow creates an orb-like projectile of distorted space that follows opponents and damages them on contact.
• Chaos Upper: Shadow uses space distortion on a single fists that generates a sphere of energy to blast away enemies.
• Chaos Nightmare: Shadow uses distorted space on his fists to smack away opponents.
• Chaos Magic: Shadow uses spatial distortion to create a space-time rift that appears wherever he pleases, damaging opponents. Its air variation makes the distortion of space-time go from the air to the ground diagonally below.
• Shadow Guard: Shadow uses Chaos Control to create a shield that blocks attacks. It can block even moves that can OHKO him with the Ichikoro Gauge.
• Shadow Heal: Shadow uses Chaos Control to restore health.
• Chaos Regeneration: A move performed by Super Shadow in Sonic X, though it shouldn’t be out of league for base Shadow. Essentially like Shadow Heal, Chaos Regeneration serves as a healing attack to prevent death. Super Shadow and Super Sonic used it as a projectile in an attempt to save Cosmo, but it ended up turning her up into a seed.
• Orbs: Using Chaos Control, Shadow can create small orbs that can induce confusion on opponents or trap them shortly.
• Triplication: Albeit not a move performed by Shadow, Emerl—using Chaos Control—triplicated himself momentarily to attack with spatial distortion similar to a Chaos Burst.

Chaos Dash

As long as there is a trail of Chaos energy around, by performing Chaos Control, Shadow can use Chaos Dash to zoom through that trail at high speed.

Chaos Snap

This chaos technique is a mix between Chaos Control and the Homing Attack, wherein Shadow teleports to an enemy he’s homed in on to attack them. This move allows Shadow to bypass laser fields, projectiles, and even spike walls. He can even homing attack large chains of enemies all at once. Shadow can perform this technique even without any Chaos Emerald.

Chaos Shift

An ability shown by Shadow in Sonic Dream Team. Chaos Shift lets Shadow slow down time and aim to dash forward at high speed in a green aura.

Chaos Boost

While in possession of items known as Memory Shards, Shadow can call upon the powers of Chaos to give himself a temporary boost in power. While in this state, Shadow radiates with pure power, increasing his strength and speed while making him practically invulnerable to enemy attacks.

Chaos Spear

Shadow can release multiple energy projectiles in the form of yellow energy spears. It’s not inherently a strong projectile, but it possesses useful properties like paralyzing opponents and bypassing armor and barrier techniques. In Sonic Chronicles, it can pierce through Armor, similar to the other games. It should be noted that Shadow doesn’t need to just shoot them: he can summon Chaos Spears directly at an opponent just as easily. In some instances, the Spears seem to possess homing properties.

Chaos Lance

An upgraded and stronger variant of the Chaos Spear, utilized by Shadow while boosting his Chaos powers. While the Chaos Spears are able to damage foes or cause temporary paralysis, the Lances actually achieve both effects simultaneously. It also makes for an effective short ranged weapon like when Shadow used it against Super Neo Metal Sonic to bypass his unstable Super form’s invulnerability.

Chaos Blast

One of Shadow’s strongest techniques. By charging himself up with large amounts of Chaos energy, he can release it into one mighty omnidirectional blast that will leave anyone reeling in pain from the ensuing explosion. While initially a technique that could only perform in his Dark Shadow state on Shadow the Hedgehog, he has since learned how to do it in base. The explosion itself can be so catastrophically large and powerful that it was once capable of destroying the Death Egg. Additionally, Shadow can perform multiple Chaos Blasts repeatedly. In Sonic Chronicles, Shadow can use Chaos Blast as an energy wave (garlick…gun…), with the chance of applying the Weakened status.

Chaos Rift

Shadow can create a rift in time and space, which he utilizes to banish foes and remove them from the battle entirely. Even those who manage to escape the rift have a high chance of becoming Distracted, lowering their attack and accuracy.

Ichikoro Gauge

See it up there? It’s that blue bar. The Ichikoro Gauge is a mechanic originated from Sonic Battle. When the Ichikoro Gauge is charged, Shadow can knock out anyone in a single hit. Its drawback is that it can be blocked by powerful enough guards.

Resistances

• Extreme Temperatures: Has been frozen and broke free out of numerous ice attacks from Eggman’s contraptions and can endure outer space just fine. He’s also been able to endure places dominated with heat and tanked multiple fire attacks. He should also be comparable enough to the Sonic cast surviving falling into the Sun. Invincibility options and Super Shadow are also completely immune to ice and fire abilities in Sonic Forces: Speed Battle.
• Paralysis: Shadow was unaffected by Black Doom’s paralyzing gas. Invincibility options and Super Shadow are also immune to the Gift Wrapped, Lockup, and Dragon Trap abilities from Sonic Forces: Speed Battle which have said effects.
• Poisons, Gases and Diseases: Not only was Shadow created with the intention to cure Maria’s disease, but he has been able to survive the toxins of the Black Arms, contaminated waters of Prison Island, and the various chemicals and toxins in Chemical Plant. Shadow also withstands the acid of poison frogs in Sonic Heroes with no negative side effects. Additionally, due to having Black Arms DNA, he’s immune to the gas emitted by the Black Comet coming in contact with the Earth’s atmosphere. This causes a chemical reaction, turning into deadly poisonous gas that will paralyze the victim’s nerve cells. Prolonged exposure to the Black Comet’s gas causes the victims to lose consciousness. Items like the Immunity Idol protect from poison.
• Sleep Inducement/Unconsciousness: Not only would Shadow’s DNA protect from the previously mentioned Black Comet’s gas that makes people lose consciousness, but the Chaos Emeralds also restored both Sonics’ consciousness in Sonic Generations. Immunity Idol also offers resistances.
• Transmutation: Shadow was unaffected by Team Chaotix’s Chaotix Recital, which turns enemies into Rings. The Chaos Emeralds can also fully cure someone of the Metal Virus, which converts organic tissue into mindless robots. Even a single Chaos Emerald could nullify Zavok of its effects. Not inconsistent with other media like the Blades of Courage manga, in which a Chaos Emerald can undo crystallization of the body. Interestingly enough, Shadow was said to be capable of halting the Metal Virus with his speed similar to Sonic. Being his rival, Shadow should be also similarly capable of doing the same as Sonic breaking out of petrification.
• Technology Manipulation: His Air Shoes were not affected by Mephiles bursting out of the Scepter of Darkness, which disabled the other machines next to it. Shadow can also resist Silver’s psychokinesis, which can do the same to machines. In Sonic Forces: Speed Battle, Invincibility and Super Shadow are immune to the EMP Shield attack, and base Shadow can take them without losing his Air Shoes.
• Matter and Antimatter Manipulation: Shadow withstood attacks by the Particle Beam Cannon from Heavy Dog and Blue Falcon, and also Diablo’s antimatter cannon.
• Black Holes: In Sonic X, Super Shadow managed to withstand the pull of a black hole for a noticeable time, withstanding its really strong gravity, and managing to escape it with Sonic. Shadow should also be comparable enough to Sonic withstanding moon-sized black holes made of Hyper-Go-On energy and its effects (that are stated to have event horizons like actual black holes). Even lesser Sonic characters can resist falling into black holes and resist their gravitational pull, or resist the effects of Violet Void’s Hyper-Go-On black holes.
• Statistics Manipulation: Immunity Idol protects Shadow from being Weakened or Vulnerable. Rings and Chaos Emeralds boosts his stats back.
• Confusion and Accuracy Manipulation: Immunity Idol protects Shadow from being distracted. Invincibility options and Super Shadow are also immune to the Confusion Boost, Confusion Mine and Sonic-in-the-Box abilities that confuses enemies by reversing controls.
• Items Manipulation: In Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds, Super Sonic is completely immune to any ability/item in the game, which includes Slime that can make you drop your items and Dark Chao that can remove and swap items. Even defensive items in the game, like Shield, help Shadow avoid those. Invincibility options and Super Shadow offer protection against item stealing (Steal, Lucky Draw, Wall of Cards), item removal (Lightning, Motobug, Electro Boost, Zap Trap, Storm Cloud, Honor Guard, Harvest Time, Meteor Charge, Dark Blast, Lightning Bolt, Swarming Darkness, Dark Embrace, Stalking Shade), and also blocking usage (Booby Trap, Audio Assault, Hard Rock, Choc Lock, Chaos Chord, Fairy Ring, Sweet Silence) in Sonic Forces: Speed Battle.
• Sealing: Invincibility options and Super Shadow in Sonic Forces: Speed Battle are immune to the Chaos Cage ability, which traps opponents in Chaos Emerald energy.
• Energy Draining: Both Sonic and Blaze displayed the ability to recharge the power of the Chaos Emeralds after they were drained by Chaos and Egg Salamander, respectively. In Sonic X, the Chaos Emeralds negated Dark Oak’s energy draining. Furthermore, in Blades of Courage, not only did the power of a Chaos Emerald undo crystalization, but restored their energy. Speed Battle grants Super forms immunity to the Power Surge attack, which drains power.
• Speed Alterations: When Dr. Robotnik created Slow-Down Boots to make Sonic’s speed drastically slower, the Chaos Emeralds were responsible to undo its effects and bring Sonic’s speed back. Additionally, Invincibility options and Super Shadow are immune to abilities that steal your speed in Sonic Forces: Speed Battle, like the Chao-nado, which steals opponents’ speed and making the user faster, or other speed stealing moves like Chao Chase and Soul Slash.
• Telekinesis: Shadow can actively break out of Silver’s psychokinesis holding him. In order to be able to grab Shadow, you have to stun him, and even then, he can break out quickly. Interestingly enough, when Shadow was transformed into a Zombot, he managed to break free of Silver’s psychokinesis almost instantly after being grabbed, and Zombot Shadow was explicitly noted to be inferior to a normal, healthy Shadow. Power Cores could also break Mimic free from Silver’s psychokinesis, and Super Shadow is immune to Speed Battle’s Psychokinesis, which grabs opponents and makes them unable to move with the power of… well, psychokinesis.
• Battlefield Removal: Just touching a Chaos Emerald can let people like Sonic leave other dimensions such as the Special Stages. Shadow has used Chaos Control to warp between dimensions and out of the reaches of the universe-shattering Paradox Prism, too.
• Mind and Memory Manipulation: The big one. Shadow can resist Black Doom’s mind control on him. Ifrit’s mind control also did not work on Shadow, and we know this because Ifrit consistently mind controls people the moment he is awoken. Despite seeing Ifrit wake up in his face, even after a while and a boss fight against Metal Sonic 3.0 while the Ifrit was present, Shadow was not mind controlled like Tails or Rouge. Aside from those, the Chaos Emeralds offer even more layers of protection. A single Emerald (or at least 2) can protect memories and prevent anomalies from completely rewriting their memories, and all seven can even absorb brainwashing lasers. The Phantom Ruby can affect/alter memories, plant false memories and with enough power even control all the people and the planet and the planet itself. In fact, when Eggman was using an amplified version of the Phantom Ruby as Lightman Eggman, his “Egg Field” had an even stronger memory overwrite, to the point it affected the characters that had memory protection thanks to the power of the Chaos Emeralds. Despite this, with the full power of the 7 Chaos Emeralds, Super Sonic completely neutralized Lightman Eggman’s “Otherwordlification”—unaffected by its much more potent manipulation. Even dismissing all of that, Gerald also installed within Shadow pre-programmed knowledge prior to his birth, which Shadow can parse through and apply to his current situation, which is why he can fight and use his Chaos powers despite having no memories.
• Mind Reading and Telepathy: The Phantom Ruby—just by picking it up—read Dr. Eggman’s mind and manifested his thoughts of the Eggmanland of his dreams as illusions, and, as mentioned above, Chaos Emeralds can protect from the Phantom Ruby’s access to one’s mind, and Super Sonic can neutralize its effects entirely. In Sonic Chronicles, a single Chaos Emerald was used to block out the Overmind’s powers while on Beta Colony. While the Overmind’s telepathic field is admittedly weaker on Beta Colony than it is on Alpha Colony—hence why they needed a Great Emerald to enter the Alpha Colony—the telepathic field over Beta Colony was still potent enough to constantly mind tap anyone inside of it (“mind tap” is a vague term, but japanese, for example, it’s specified as invading the mind) which would include Sonic and friends. A Chaos Emerald also protected the Sonic cast from the powers of a Great Emerald even after it increased the power of said field.
• Soul Manipulation: Similarly to mind manipulation, Shadow also resisted Ifrit binding his soul. In Shadow Generations, Shadow was able to resist the influence of the Doom Powers trying to take his mind, body and soul to gain their power and claim it as his own despite Black Doom’s intent for otherwise. Even In the manga, Black Doom tried to absorb Shadow’s soul and failed. There’s games that support Chaos Emeralds protecting and bringing back your soul, too: in Sonic ‘06, when Sonic was killed, his soul was implied to have left his body, with Elise saying that she could “feel Sonic’s breeze”. Silver then says that the Chaos Emeralds would be able to catch Sonic’s soul back; in Sonic Frontiers, transforming into Super Sonic always halted his cyber corruption, despite it worsening throughout his journey, becoming physically and spiritually debilitating. When fully corrupting someone, it can trap their bodies within Cyber Space, separating the soul in a “cybernized” state. Amy, Knuckles and Tails mention how they are only souls, their bodies trapped in Cyber Space. In fact, when Sonic absorbed their cyber energy and was fully corrupted, his soul was prisoner to “cybernization” and was separated from his body, leaving him static. Still, Sonic could still fight it for a significant time with sheer will and endurance, and transforming into Super Sonic completely nullified these effects on his body while in the form.
• Illusions: Super Shadow is immune to attacks like Reality Warp, Deadly Replica, and Phantom Dagger.
• Power Nullification: Was able to activate Chaos Control during his final battle with Neo Devil Doom while inside of a Doom Zone; Doom Zones had previously prevented Shadow from utilizing Chaos Control while he was inside of them. As mentioned previously in Items Manipulation, Invincibility options and Super Shadow are also immune to abilities that block usage of abilities in Sonic Forces: Speed Battle.
• Time Stops: Mentioned above, Shadow broke out of Devil Doom’s Chaos Control easily. Similar to Metal Overlord, who remained unaffected by Shadow’s Chaos Control due to possessing his own from Shadow’s bio-data.
• Existence Erasure: Shadow managed to withstand Time Eater’s erasure point blank, which erased all of time and space.
• Causality, Law and Fate Manipulation (Debatable): The End states that “the end” of everyone is inevitable, and that “it cannot be denied”; that Super Sonic and Sage could strike it down but it would result to nothing, as the end comes for all, backed up by the japanese localization saying that The End already determined fate. Despite that, Super Sonic “broke fate” by defeating The End, and the latter referred to its own defeat as something that transcends law and time, despite its attunement being the ruling of everything in the universe that exists that has gone unchallenged since time immemorial. Additionally, Cyber Space and its technology is powered and made by Chaos Emeralds, which was what powered that shield that sucked up Sonic and his friend which Tails stated that was defying the laws of physics and manipulating causality to make them fall on the Starfall Islands. Obviously, the main issue here is that most of these are from the japanese localization, and Sonic Frontiers is originally written in english. Japanese Sonic Frontiers is very well known for its differences. However, even in the original English, there is context that makes the japanese’s interpretation of The End’s dialogue and “causality messing” Cyber Space logical. Not to mention, Morio Kishimoto, the director of Sonic Frontiers, said that he only rewrote dialogue, not the context of the story. There’s also the possibility that The End was just “hyping itself up” or that the ability is something exclusive to Sonic, so we’ll leave it as debatable.

Forms

Hero Shadow & Dark Shadow

In Shadow the Hedgehog, Shadow presents two states in which he can tap. The form he achieves depends on his thoughts. Hero Shadow is achieved when Shadow’s mind is fueled by thoughts of justice; Dark Shadow is achieved when Shadow’s mind is fueled by thoughts of anger and vengeance. Both forms share things in common: they’re both completely invulnerable to physical damage—bullets, hits, toxins, cannons, electric rails, you name it!—, and they gain the ability to utilize all weapons without running out of ammunition (heh, infinite ammo). But here’s where the differences start: Hero Shadow’s unique traits are that this form focuses more on Chaos Control, like warping Shadow to zoom through a stage by boosting his speed with its space-time manipulation (although it can be used as a normal time stop) and also generates positive Chaos energy. Dark Shadow, on the other hand, is all about destructive output, releasing his energy into even more powerful Chaos Blasts.

Super Shadow

The iconic transformation achieved by utilizing the full power of the seven Chaos Emeralds. Shadow turns into (the totally not ripoff) Super Shadow, significantly increasing his power and speed to fight even the mightiest of threats, and he gains unlimited energy thanks to the infinite source of energy that Chaos Emeralds offer. The biggest drawback of the form is its time limit, depending on how many Rings Shadow has to maintain it. While the transformation typically requires Rings to be achieved, even more recent games like Sonic Frontiers make Sonic achieve Super Sonic without Rings, and he gains Rings for the transformation. If a Super form is inactive fighting, they can regenerate Rings to increase their time limit in games like ‘06; Super Sonic could even last a few days in the form, likely due to that.

With this form, Shadow is granted the ability to fly freely, and his body is now completely invulnerable to any physical means of damage. He can generate after-images with speed, enhance their blows to cause more damage than average ones, attracts Rings, and their sheer aura alone can cause damage on contact, generate electricity and enough heat to completely vaporize the Metal Virus. Speaking of aura, because of the positive energy they possess, Super forms can pacify any evil or negative energy entities, like Perfect Chaos or Mother Wisp. They also possess the ability to share Chaos energy with other people, and let them turn into a Super form too—something that can happen just by standing around one.

But aside from those, Super forms have displayed the ability to generate and utilize energy in battle in multiple ways. A Super form can create punches, kicks, chains and swords of energy, as well as multiple copies of themselves against enemies, or shoot opponents’ with multiple energy projectiles; not too far off from Super Shadow’s signature move: Spear of Light. By absorbing light to enhance himself, Shadow can launch way more Chaos Spears in quantity, and are far more powerful than your average ones, capable of dealing damage to foes like Solaris. E-123 Omega also states that the Spears of Light are capable of closing dimensional portals. Additionally, Super Shadow can stack up his Hero or Dark states in the form.

Doom Shadow

Shadow could not deny his fate forever, and after many trials and absorbed Doom Powers, Shadow awakened his inner Black Arms’ DNA in a transformation: Doom Shadow (or, Shadow Evolved, which sounds cooler ngl). As Doom Shadow, the black jet hedgehog becomes even more powerful than he already was: he could beat down Metal Overlord on his own, despite Metal Overlord previously needing 3 Super-powered heroes, and Neo Devil Doom, an even stronger stage than Devil Doom, an enemy that needed Super Shadow to be defeated. Along with a great power boost, came new Doom Powers that Shadow mastered. Those being:

• Doom Spears: Augmented versions of Shadow’s Chaos Spears. It allows Shadow to fire five amplified energy spears at once, with similar properties as the Chaos Spear.
• Doom Blast: Doom Blasts allows Shadow to aggressively strike an enemy with a series of punches and kicks before launching them away with a power-packing blow. Shadow can combine it with Chaos Snap for even deadlier combos.
• Doom Surf: Shadow creates a creature similar to a Manta ray, allowing him to surf on water with precise movement. It also allows Shadow to reflect projectiles.
• Doom Morph: Transforms Shadow into a SQUID gooey creature with black tendrils. Sounds familiar? No? Great; anyways, it allows Shadow to move through specific surfaces on the ground or walls, as well as going through gates and other types of surfaces. He utilizes this to also swing around with his tendrils.
• Doom Wings: As the name implies, Shadow grows a pair of wings from his back and (eventually) also a beautiful golden aura that not only looks sick as hell, but gives him plenty of abilities compared to the rest: it obviously allows him to fly around at will, but there’s more! He can create way more Doom Spears, more powerful and bigger, he can reflect attacks with his Wings, and the form’s invulnerable to physical damage.

With Doom Wings, the form does possess a time limit in the form of Rings (similar to Super Shadow), but in the story, it’s likely the form can go on for much longer, given it was with Shadow since he unlocked it, until he defeats Black Doom. This means he went through a White Space trial, both acts of Radical Highway, and fought the stages of Devil Doom all with the form maintained. And, contrary to popular belief, while Gerald did say Shadow would “explode” if he took off his Inhibitor Rings, he only meant that he would burn out like he normally does when he takes off his rings. He wouldn’t actually explode into a million pieces.

Feats

Overall

• Saved the world multiple times
• One of GUN’s top agents
• The biggest rival to Sonic the Hedgehog
• Teamed up with Sonic and Silver to defeat timeline whipping Solaris
• Brought an end to the Black Arms Invasion practically single-handedly
• Finally moved on from his past, honoring Maria’s wishes
• Defeated Sonic, Emerl, Silver, Biolizard, Metal Overlord, Mephiles, Black Doom, Dr. Eggman, Infinite
• Had a whole year dedicated to him
• Had a song with Hatsune Miku

Power

• Equal in strength with Sonic the Hedgehog
• (Base) Capable of breaking and kicking away a massive missile, seen above
• (Base) Destroys hoards of robots just by speeding through them
• (Base) Destroys the Death Egg with a Chaos Blast
• (Base) Knocks back a nearly 200 ton space ship
• (Base) Destroys several Metarex ships after taking off his Inhibitor Rings
• (Base) Stops and pushes back Final Mova
• (Chaos Boost) Repeals Mephiles just by tapping into the state
• (Doom) Kicks away Metal Overlord
• (Doom) Blasts through Neo Devil Doom
• (Base) Holds Final Mova in place
• (Super) Holds the Black Comet falling and teleports it into space
• (Super) Shatters Solaris’ armor with the Spears of Light
• (Super) Destroys the Final Hazard hard enough to create an explosion that’s nearly the width of the Space Colony Ark (7.8 megatons of TNT)
• (Super) Stops the Space Colony Ark’s collision with Earth for a short period of time with Super Sonic
• (Super) Splits the planet seed with Super Sonic (39 zettatons of TNT)
• (Super) Destroys Planet Aqurius with Super Sonic

Speed

• Equal in speed with Sonic the Hedgehog
• (Base) Can casually dodge bullets
• (Base) Can attack multiple time-stopped missiles in a flash, seen above
• (Base) Stated to move at lightspeed with the Light Speed Dash and Light Speed Attack
• (Base) Teleports behind Abraham the moment he fires his gun
• (Base) Saves Rouge and Molly from an explosion
• (Base) Able to react and control himself while moving through lightspeed circuits
• (Base) Dodges lasers from mass produced Death Egg Robots
• (Base) Restores space-time with his speed, just like Sonic
• (Doom) Evades Devil Doom’s lasers
• Chaos Control warps Shadow fast enough to avoid the Paradox Prism’s explosion (1.46 quintillion c)
• (Super) Circles around Final Mova in seconds
• (Super) Dodges Final Hazard’s lasers
• (Super) Reacts to Devil Doom’s lasers
• (Super) Dodges Solaris’ light attacks

Durability

• (Base) Survives a fall from outer space
• (Base) Gets launched into a stone pillar by Mephiles
• (Base) Barely hurt by multiple bombs
• (Base) Survives getting knocked 5000 feet into the air by the Ifrit
• (Doom) Shakes off getting punched through several skyscrapers
• (Super) Survives getting blasted by the Final Hazard’s lasers
• (Super) Survives getting blasted by Solaris’ “world-ending” lasers
• (Super) Resists the gravitational pull of a black hole
• (Super) Tanks the planet seed exploding with no damage

Scaling

Sonic & Silver

Shadow has fought against the likes of Sonic and Silver plenty of times throughout the series and oftentimes, Shadow is portrayed as equal to them. Even when it’s time to fight cosmic threats, his Super transformation can keep up with theirs as well. Pretty easy to see Shadow would be equal to them.

• Sonic kicks over a 250 ton Golem
• Sonic runs fast enough to activate warp panels, which require light speed movement
• Omega claims Sonic can exceed light speed
• Sonic dodges Cyan Lasers, which are stated to be light speed
• Sonic outruns a Violet Void’s event horizon
• Sonic withstands the Paradox Prism’s explosion
• Sonic is capable of flying through interstellar distances (16 million c)
• When Sonic was amplified with the power of the Paradox Prism, he was capable of moving so fast he appeared in two places simultaneously for a high-five with himself (potentially Immeasurable)
• Silver stops the Death Egg with his telekinesis (59.81 gigatons of TNT)
• Silver’s Shield of Light blocks a shot from the Eclipse Cannon at 0.5% of its power (160 ronnatons of TNT)
• Super Sonic is stated to fly near light speed
• Super Sonic is stated to move at light speed
• Super Sonic flies to the moon in a few seconds
• Super Sonics can react to the Time Eater’s Warping Arm Attack
• Super Sonic and Silver circle the planet in seconds
• Super Silver’s telekinesis lifts and throws the Metal Virus into the sun (1.1 ronnatons of TNT)
• Super Sonic uses Chaos Control to scatter the Chaos Emeralds across the galaxy
• Super Sonic’s Sonic X card states he has unlimited power and speed
• Super Sonic rams into The End hard enough to make a crater (9.26 yottatons of TNT)

The Supporting Cast

The rest of Sonic’s friends have been on their own journeys from time to time, whether it’s on their own or with Sonic. They are all portrayed as being pretty relative to the blue blur himself, which naturally means Shadow is gonna be comparable to them as well.

He likes to beef with Tails especially

• Knuckles punches a moon receiver hard enough to create an explosion
• Knuckles gets pulled into a black hole
• Tails knocks back Metal Sonic with a kick, who had been powered up by all seven Chaos Emeralds
• Knuckles can lift up an entire mountain
• Amy smashes a robot so hard it creates a dust cloud bigger than a stadium
• Amy throws a Piko Piko Hammer with enough force to knock a ship
• Characters can stop a moving train

Dr. Eggman

The mad doctor and recurring villain of the Sonic series, Eggman has more times than not, found himself fighting against Shadow (with the occasional team-up) and finds himself thwarted by the hedgehog. With Shadow also being comparable to Sonic, another pain on Eggman’s side, we can scale Shadow to Eggman and his many creations.

• Eggman survives the Death Egg exploding
• Eggman survives the Death Egg II exploding
• The Final Egg Blaster destroys a group of stars (465 ExaFOE)
• The Nega-Wisp Armor creates rotating black holes (0.29 FOE)
• Eggman’s Cognitive Friction collecting antenna had the power the blow up the planet four times over
• The Egg Mobile survives getting sucked into a Hyper-Go-On black hole, which destroyed Terminal Velocity (1.7 to 379 KiloFOE)
• The Egg Wizard had a planet-busting laser

Chaos Emeralds

The almighty emeralds of infinite power. All 7 of the Chaos Emeralds have been used by various characters throughout the series for either the sake of transforming into a stronger state or used as a power source. Shadow himself uses at least one Chaos Emerald pretty consistently and has used all 7 to transform into Super Shadow. Feats involving all 7 of the Emeralds are only applicable to Super Shadow.

• When powered by six Chaos Emeralds, the Eclipse Cannon destroys half of the moon
• Sonic states that a Chaos Emerald can blow away a moon
• The Chaos Emeralds and Sol Emeralds were tearing apart the space-time continuum and merging their universes
• Sonic’s control over the Chaos Emeralds prevented his universe from destabilizing
• Eggman uses Chaos Control to split the planet into seven regions
• Eggman uses the Chaos Emeralds to break the planet…again
• A single Chaos Emerald moves piece of the planet (0.47 FOE)
• The Ancients used the Chaos Emeralds to create Cyber Space

Final Bosses

The various final bosses across the series, and the ones who offer the biggest stakes. While regular Shadow might not stand a chance against most of these guys, Super Shadow certainly can, especially when he’s equal to other Super characters like Sonic, Silver and Blaze.

• Perfect Chaos floods Station Square
• Master Core ABIS creates a planet destroying black hole (6.5 FOE)
• Erazor Djinn had harvested half of the Arabian Nights (½ Universal)
• The Egg Wizard has a planet busting laser
• Dark Gaia lifts Eggmanland and covers the planet in darkness
• Alf Layla wa-Layla was going to destroy the Arabian Nights and recreate it in his image
• Void’s darkness would’ve eventually destroyed Maginaryworld
• Solaris would eventually consume all existing timelines (Low Multiversal to Multiversal+)
  • Solaris’ light spread across the universe, possibly all timelines (77 quadrillion c to Immeasurable)
  • Solaris eats dimensions for lunch
  • Solaris had absorbed multiple dimensions
  • Solaris was threatening to end all of time
• Time Eater erased all of time and space, reducing reality to a single white voidin a few seconds (Low Multiversal to Multiversal+, 147 quadrillion c to 6 quintillion c, maybe Infinite)
  • The Time Eater and the Super Sonics flies through the End of Time, an infinite tunnel dimension described as a timestream (potentially Immeasurable)
• The End destroys a planet
• Supreme blocks The End’s planet busting laser
• The End boasts that they’ve destroyed stars
• The End said that they’d break the walls between dimensions and consume all
• Doom’s power holds the Doom Zone together
• Black Doom had influence over White Space and was preventing the time anomaly in White Space to heal (Low Multiversal to Multiversal+)
  • Shadow had to save “all of creation” from Black Doom
  • In the manga, Black Doom says that White Space is being held by his power, and it will disappear once defeated, and everything return to normal
  • Black Doom envelops White Space in a Doom Zone (potentially 489 quadrillion c – 1.46 quintillion c to Infinite)

Cosmology

Primary Universe

Starting with the most obvious one out of the way, it’s the main universe where Sonic and his friends live. There’s not much else to say here, it resembles our own real life universe and that’s about it.

Special Stages

The special stages are unique locations that can be found in various Sonic games. It is in these places where Sonic usually finds the Chaos Emeralds or other powerful items. In the manual of Sonic Chaos these locations are referred to as parallel universes.

Shatterverses & Void

After the Paradox Prism broke, it “fractured”/“splintered” the universe into a set of parallel dimensions called “Shatterspaces”. It should be noted that the original universe wasn’t altered, but “broken“, with it ceasing to exist entirely. Separate from the multiverse, each of the five Shatterspaces is a unique but distorted version of the original universe. The Void is the space between the Shatterverse realities created by the Paradox Prism, functioning akin to a nexus point between the different dimensions. The Void is shown to contain an “eternity of darkness” that “decays all life”, with other official translations implying that it means “infinite”. Shatterspaces contain their own celestial bodies, and are said to be entire universes of their own. Additionally, time is shown to flow differently within different Shatterspaces.

Cyberspace
(Shadow the Hedgehog)

Cyberspace as we see it in Shadow the Hedgehog is a digital dimension where all the information of planet earth goes. They exist in different, separate spaces from the world. Interestingly enough, Black Doom states that there lies infinite darkness below (この下は無限の暗闇 落ちたらはい上がっては来れん。/ “There is infinite darkness below. If you fall, you will never come back up.”)

Cyber Space
(Sonic Frontiers)

Cyber Space is an alternate dimensional plane; a reality made of information created by the alien civilization of The Ancients more than four thousands years ago. This place functions as the hopes, dreams, memories, souls and the very essence of The Ancients. Cyber Space functions as a method to pass the legacy and information of its creators to future generations, while also being a macrocosm of dreams as it is said to be a dream in of itself. The amount of information that this place carries is described as “beyond quantification”.

Storybook Worlds

The Storybook Worlds come from the two games of Sonic and the Black Knight and Sonic and the Secret Rings. These worlds are respectively based on the story of King Arthur and the Knights of the Table for the World of Camelot, and the 1,001 Nights, Aladdin, Ali Baba & the 40 Thieves, Sinbad the Sailor and more for the Arabian Nights. Both of these two worlds would compose entire separate universes. There is a place called “Lost Prologue”, which is described as a space between the Storybook universe and the normal reality that visitors cross before fully entering the world. In the Arabian Nights, Erazor Djinn possesses a realm called Night Palace which is a fantastical, glass-looking otherworldly space that connects to the real world that seemingly has an astral place. It is also noted to be a Milky Way.

Sol Dimension

The home world of everyone’s favorite, Blaze the Cat. This world is said to be a parallel universe of Sonic’s own world. Thus, the Sol Dimension should be similar in scope to the Primary Universe.

Chaotic Inferno

This fiery place is where the demonic entity, the Ifrit, resides. Shadow and Metal Sonic had to use Chaos Control with a Chaos Emerald to escape this place.

Digital Dimension

The Digital Dimension is a place found in Sonic Riders. Found inside the Babylon Garden, it is a world of infinite nothingness.

Paramount Universe

The world of the Paramount Sonic movies is also part of the grand cosmology. In Sonic X Shadow Generations there is a DLC stage of Tokyo from the movie Sonic 3, Shadow’s appearance even changes to accommodate the world and comments how he left his own dimension. The movie version of Eggman even mentions the multiverse. Furthermore, Sonic Speed Simulator has the Movie versions of the cast available as playable characters. With all this in mind, the universe of the movies seems to take place in the wider Sonic multiverse.

Maginaryworld

Maginaryworld is a realm formed from the dreams of beings across all dimensions through the power of the Precioustone. Every time a person dreams, that dream world is created in Maginaryworld and becomes reality. We know these dream worlds are real because Illumina was able to visit them and the manual says dreams and reality co-exist. In the case of our heroes: Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, and Amy all had their own dream worlds created in Maginarworld. So how big are these dream worlds? These worlds showcase outer space or a starry sky, but that’s not all, it is important to note that wishes/desires become dream worlds as expressed by Lumina and Void. Maginaryworld as a whole carries different space-times and has its own time flow, as shown when we compare the different dream worlds passing at different times of day; like how emerald city takes place in the midday while Natural Zone has multiple instances of being at night with the ring of fire minigame.

The highest point of Maginaryworld is the Fourth Dimension Space. This place encompasses the entirety of the dream worlds, as Sonic notes that the previous worlds they went through are found here and Tails notes they look like they are projected images on a screen. Seeing the previous boards as flat projections supports this place being a higher dimension, especially as it encompasses all the dream worlds. Furthermore, in the Sega Dreamcast magazine published by Softbank, the Fourth Dimension Space is directly stated to have infinite space (You can see the kanji “無限” which means “infinite”). There are points of evidence supporting this magazine being official. For starters, the publishing company Softbank, entered a joint partnership with Sega to distribute games, and also collaborated with Sega to make an officially licensed gaming magazine prior to the Dreamcast magazine known as the SEGA magazine. Another point in favor of this magazine is that an earlier issue of the Dreamcast magazine contained an interview with the head of SEGA AM1, Rikiya Nakagawa. It is not the only instance as Rikiya has given numerous interviews for the Softbank magazine, even when it was called the “SEGA Saturn” magazine. It should be stressed that while the magazine cannot be 100% verified, the previous evidence provided would at the very least showcase the validity of it. The magazine works as supporting evidence to what is already shown, the fact that the dream worlds are seen as flat projections in this space alongside the game referring to it as a Fourth Dimension Space (in the magazine the Japanese wording refers to it as 4次元 which is four-dimensional) does lend credence to this place being an actual fourth dimensional space.

The Exception

This location is where the final battle of Sonic Rush takes place. It is referred to as a space between dimensions, and is also called a collapsing dimensional rift. With the power of the emeralds, both Eggman and Eggman Nega were planning to create an Eggman Land that surpasses all dimensions.

The “Endless Possibilities of Space”

Of course, the Sonic multiverse goes way beyond just a few pocket dimensions and other universes and dimensional planes. There are many more implications that the Sonic multiverse goes way further beyond just those. You know it by this point, but it all starts from TailsTube, the YouTube series where Tails comments about many things that happened within the series. In one of the episodes, when talking about Classic Sonic (the events of Sonic Generations in general), Amy questions Tails that Classic Sonic should be the only other Sonic variant, in which Tails affirms not necessarily. According to Tails, time is just one dimension of reality, and within the endless possibilities of space, there should realistically be an infinite amount of Sonics in the multiverse. This is an obvious nod to the Many-worlds interpretation theory (MWI, for short). According to that theory of quantum mechanics—to simply put—there may be an infinite amount of multiple, and increasingly divergent, copies of us living in multiple worlds. He suggests that any conceivable variation of Sonic could exist somewhere in the vast multiverse, emphasizing the quantum idea that all potential variants of a situation or character do exist across different universes; Tails discusses the possibility of multiple Sonics existing, which introduces the concept of parallel universes where different outcomes of events have occurred. For instance, the scenario where there is “a Sonic with four arms” or “a Sonic with blue arms” shows different physical outcomes that may have manifested in different realities, and it’s directly supported by Paramount’s version of Sonic being implied to exist in the Sonic multiverse.

It’s especially implied when Tails says time is “just one dimension of reality”, hinting at the MWI idea that suggests that different timelines can coexist as separate dimensions. When Tails talks about multiple Sonics, he’s illustrating this concept: every different event or decision might create a new universe. This shows how variations in time can lead to a multitude of outcomes, each represented in its own universe, simplifying the complex idea of a multiverse influenced by time and choice. Funnily enough, this is exactly something that Shadow proves in his game, Shadow the Hedgehog: in it, all of Shadow’s actions matter, and the game not only has just 10 traditional unlockable endings, but 326 total different outcomes depending on whatever he chooses. It’s a direct nod to not only the theory, but Tails’ whole implication of many different universes within “endless possibilities of space”.

The main issue that always held this from being applied in versus was that, at the end of the day, these were all theories that Tails suggested in TailsTube. No game or anything confirmed or backed up Tails or the theories that his words implied, right? Well, not exactly; there’s a few things to consider. Firstly, Tails only noted the “could be” part when referring to the amount of Sonics in the multiverse generated by MWI. The use of “could” here is when referring to the result of the endless possibilities of space, which, again, is MWI, so you can say it was not even a theory to begin with. Besides, when referring to “the endless possibilities of space” [the endless multiverse] there was no suggestion of a hypothetical, so this could be supported by the franchise in which parallel universes have alternate versions of Sonic that are not Sonic (main example: Blaze the Cat), for instance. But even if you think that is not enough, various factors across different games support the idea of an infinite multiverse within Sonic cosmology. Firstly, the aforementioned Shadow the Hedgehog alternate paths. They’re very clearly making a nod to MWI as a whole, and illustrating Tails’ explanation with a practical example: that other worlds can be generated by different decisions, which is a factor the game is all built around: Shadow’s choices.

But that’s not all, another game that supports this idea is Sonic Speed Simulator. In the game, there can be numerous Sonics running around in the same lobby, and believe or not, that’s a canonical thing; there’s canonical reasons why multiple Sonics can occupy the same space that are not just your average gameplay thing. Developer Nibroc Sarkaria states that every single player in Sonic Speed Simulator comes from an alternate universe brought to the Sonic Speed Simulator lobby thanks to the power of the World Rings. That means that for every player, there is an alternate universe within the Sonic multiverse. At minimum, this would imply a very big number of universes: Sonic Speed Simulator has a grand total of 1.5 billion visits, but it’s not as simple as that, as Roblox visits don’t exactly equal the amount of unique players visiting the experience. However, we can still use the CCU [Peak Player Counts], and Speed Simulator has a peak player count of almost 300 thousand players. Obviously, that is just a finite end; it’s way more likely that the game just further supports the idea of an infinite amount of universes, as the amount of Sonic Speed Simulator players keep expanding as the years ago [for instance, the CCU was calculated in 2022, so way more players came to the game after it]. It all explicitly confirms Tails’ statements are correct.

But that’s not the final nail in the coffin. Lastly, Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds, the game centered around dimensional racing, confirms the multiverse to have infinite worlds in the website of the game. Furthermore, this idea is directly supported by the 35th Anniversary special video, which also says Sonic has infinite worlds. Now, it’s important to address that this video also mentions that Sonic has “countless friends”, and you might assume all of that would narrow down to hyperbole given Sonic obviously doesn’t have infinite friends, but that’s a misinterpretation. Countless is not infinite. Countless is, well, something you cannot count, and that directly applies to how many friends Sonic has and had throughout the franchise; while infinite is infinity, something that goes beyond being capable of being counted. To simply put, one is a very large finite number [too big to count], the other means the quantity goes forever. So, you have infinite multiverse statements that yet again prove the vast expanse of the cosmology.

So what does this all mean at the end? Well, it means all the theories are right: Tails is directly supported by many different sources [Shadow 05, Speed Sim and CrossWorlds]. At minimum, the finite reaches of the Sonic cosmology would add 326 more universes, from Shadow the Hedgehog, almost 300 thousand universes from Speed Sim, but, really, with all the evidence of the endless possibilities of space housing infinite amount of Sonics, the endless worlds implied by Speed Sim, and the infinite number of worlds said by CrossWorlds and the official Sonic YouTube account, it all adds up to an infinite amount of universes.

White Space

Beyond all the previous realms mentioned thus far exists White Space. Our heroes found themselves here after Time Eater erased all of time and space. It is mentioned to be a realm between dimensions that holds the universe together; an interdimensional space where space and time have lost their meaning; a hub between time periods / shattered timelines, which implies it also is between all timelines. Examples of these can be found with how it houses: the Primary Universe, Stardust Speedway as an alternative “Bad Future”, Crisis City, an alternative timeline/an universe “that never was”, and even several special stages. Furthermore, Omega refers to Kingdom Valley as a “temporal desynchronization” and that everything appears to be “a future relative to ours”, which further proves the existence of alternate timelines in White Space.

Additionally, Gerald mentions that time has little to no meaning inside of White Space, and that you can catch a glimpse of the past as much as the future. In terms of size, White Space has been described as a “ceaseless expanse” [not so inconsistent with other translations referring to it as “huge space” and “infinite”] and as an endless space. With all of this in mind, White Space appears to be a bulkspace that encompasses Sonic’s cosmology as a whole, as it exists between all the possible universes and timelines, even timelines that were wiped from existence appear in it, as shown with how Mephiles appears in White Space as a boss who seeks to return back to the existing timeline.

End of Time

This is where the final boss fight of Sonic Generations takes place at. It is noted to be in a different dimension with a flow of time that exists beyond White Space, that required the power of all seven chaos emeralds to travel to. It is implied to be a time dimension and its structure is described as a “stream” that the Super Sonics and Time Eater can enter and exit freely. It’s also referred to as an infinite tunnel dimension.

Misc. Smaller Realms

Flicky Dimension

The Flickies according to Sonic 3D Blast live in another dimension. However, considering how little we know of this dimension, it’s hard to claim it’s a whole universe on its own.

Aquatic Planet Zone
& Sleeping Egg Zone

These two zones come from Sonic Chaos. According to the game manual, both of these two worlds are separate dimensions. However, just like the dimension of the Flickies, we don’t know much about them to properly call them universes.

Phantom Ruby Worlds
(Egg Reverie & Nullspace)

Both of these worlds come from the Phantom Ruby. In the Egg Reverie case it is referred to as a strange crystalline void where time constantly shifts. As for Nullspace it is an endless void of nothingness closed off from all other dimensions. These two worlds probably don’t add to the overall cosmology size number.

Weaknesses

_{(art credit)}

First of all, he’s not Vegeta-

Despite being the Ultimate Lifeform, he’s got his faults. His arrogance and stubborn personality has led to his downfall some times, like in the Metal Virus saga. A majority of his transformations have a timer on how much they last and he reverts back to his normal self once time is up. Taking off his Limiter Rings can also tire him out much faster than usual, and while it has yet to be seen, if those Rings come off while he’s in his Doom state, Shadow could very much just waste all of his energy due to the overdose of power flowing within him. Many power-ups of his are one time only as well, meaning he can’t spam shields and speed sneakers like crazy.

Mewtwo

Background

“I see now that the circumstances of one’s birth are irrelevant; it is what you do with the gift of life that determines who you are.”

Note: Despite Mewtwo’s background taking many branches depending on the continuity, the background here will focus on the anime, as it is the one most are familiar with.

Hello! Welcome to the world of Pokémon! This world is inhabited by creatures known as Pokémon. To some people, they are pets, for others they are partners. But this story starts before the world of Pokémon. Long ago, before there were Pokémon, before there was any life on the planet, there was Mew. An immortal, godlike cat creature containing the DNA of all the potential sapient life on the planet. Alone in this world, Mew did what any living being would do: it multiplied. And in this budding world, life flourished. Super ancient Pokémon created the land and sea and sky, while legendary titans pulled the continents into place. All the while, Mew relaxed, enjoyed living, roaming this beautiful planet.

Fast forward hundreds of millions of years, humans have emerged, allegedly evolved from Pokémon long ago. And humans come in many shapes and sizes. There’s good humans, like Red, a trainer who wants to be the very best, or Cynthia, an archeologist who studies the myths of the universe. And there are bad humans. Very bad humans. Enter Team Rocket, a mafioso style organization hoping to use Pokémon for evil, to achieve world domination. And in order to do that, they wanted to create the strongest Pokémon in the world.

This is where Mew comes in. In South America somewhere in the world, Team Rocket’s men found a remnant of Mew: an eyelash. And with said eyelash, they decided to play god. Led by Dr. Fuji, a man grieving from the recent loss of his young daughter, they began to clone Mew, alongside several others: a Charmander, a Squirtle, a Bulbasaur, and Fuji’s daughter Amber.

Inside the incubation chamber, the four older clones greet the newly created Mew clone, dubbed Mewtwo, and they become fast friends, flying around in a linked mental space, enjoying life like Mew before it. But tragedy struck. The cloning process is a failure, and one by one, the original clones all fade away. Mewtwo is the only one exempted, attributed to inheriting Mew’s immortal life force. This does not however, change Amber’s fate, and as she fades away, she tells Mewtwo to keep on living, because life is wonderful. The young Mewtwo, having experienced loss shortly after creation, doesn’t know how to process this, and the psychic meltdown his real body is causing prompts the scientists to wipe his memory. And here, Fuji gives up on reviving his daughter, dedicating the rest of his life to the Mewtwo project.

A few years later, Mewtwo is complete. The scientists congratulate each other on the success, vowing to continue the experiments. Mewtwo is lost in the world. He doesn’t know what he is. But what he does know is that these scientists don’t see him as a living being. They see him as an experiment, nothing more. And Mewtwo, emotions he can’t yet process, strikes back. He goes on a rampage, blowing up the lab, killing everyone on it. They aimed to create the world’s strongest Pokémon. And they succeeded.

A little while later, a young trainer named Ash gets an invite to an island, to test himself as a trainer. Little does he know, this wasn’t a test for Ash, but for Mewtwo, to test himself on other humans. Before this, he was under the control of the leader of Team Rocket, Giovanni, and he recently escaped upon realizing how evil this man was, and attributed the actions of this one man and his organization onto all of humanity.

Which only furthered Mewtwo’s complex. And during this, Mewtwo fought its original. It fought Mew. In a bid to prove it was worth living, Mewtwo and its army of clones fought Mew and the original Pokémon that got cloned. And Ash wasn’t having it. He jumped in the middle of a clash between the two gods, causing a big explosion, turning Ash to stone. Mewtwo was shocked, a human sacrificed himself to stop the war between Pokémon. This made Mewtwo’s stony heart melt, and luckily for Ash, the tears of Pokémon, natural and clone alike, restored him to life. Mewtwo realized that the circumstances of one’s birth are irrelevant, and it’s what you do with the gift of life that determines who you are. And he calls off the war, wiping the memories of all he brought there and leaving with his clones. From here, Mewtwo spends his time helping other Pokémon, helping them live better lives. Because, as Amber told him all those years ago, life is wonderful.

Experience & Skill

_{(Credit to PGX mew2)}

Mewtwo is a genius in many ways, fitting for its Psychic typing. It can create cloning machines that copy Pokemon in seconds with just a strand of DNA, and orchestrate an entire journey sized Puzzle League adventure just for kicks (with Mewtwo battling Ash after he won the tournament). But what makes Mewtwo special is just how much it stands above all other Pokemon, as all of its battle abilities were raised to the ultimate level. This is incredibly impressive given what other hyper-intelligent Psychic types are capable of. Slowkings can supposedly think up a solution to any presented problem (to the point there’s a proverb in different regions saying “When in doubt, ask a Slowking”) and work to solve the mysteries of the world with an award winning scientist level of intelligence. Metagross uses calculations to analyze and beat opponents with thinking speeds faster than a super computer. Orbeetle can study their surroundings across six miles. Alakazams remember everything they ever learn, outperform supercomputers, wield an IQ of 5,000, and have their brains continuously grow endlessly until death.

Again, Mewtwo’s intelligence is superior to all of that. It’s additionally above Orangurus, who can act as Pokemon trainers with medical and battle knowledge. This adds up, given the research efforts towards developing Mewtwo were focused on dedicating their power to battle. While time in Pokémon is… tricky, it’s easy to assume gen 1 at least took place 30 years ago, like in real life. Bare minimum, Mewtwo has been around and fighting some of the best of the best trainers for that long. Red, Ethan, Calem, Paxton, all after they completed their journeys and became some of the best trainers in history. And if we use Pokopia, Mewtwo has been living for hundreds, if not thousands of years, long after humanity left the planet.

Mewtwo is more than just the people they’ve fought though. Mewtwo is excellent in battle, operating as its own trainer in the Pokemon Stadium games (consistent with fighting those top trainers mentioned earlier), and being superb in fast paced close quarters combat in Pokken Tournament. It’s moveset is even based on Kazuya Mishima and his shotokan karate inspired hand to hand skills (fun fact, Shadow Mewtwo is instead based on Algol from Soul Caliber). Mewtwo’s analytical skills are also great, figuring out Deoxys’ core’s importance to its shape shifting before breaking it apart to limit its versatility. And as mentioned before, Mewtwo was designed to be superior to all other Pokemon in all ways important to battle, which of course includes… battle. Alakazam use their IQ to gain the advantage in battle, but Gallades are also masters of swordsmanship to an impressive extent, and Machamps have mastered all martial arts.

Equipment

Cloak

It’s just a ragged cloak, but ragged cloaks are cool as hell.

M2 Bind

We’re calling it this as a placeholder for the armor Mewtwo has in GO, as it’s nameless. The actual M2 Bind is a crippling Mewtwo-specific trap suit from the manga that’s a reference to the Movie 1 armor. In GO, it’s really just a defense boost. Because it’s exactly what it says on the tin: armor.

Mega Stones

With the power of Mewtwonite X, or Mewtwonite Y, Mewtwo can Mega Evolve! Achieving a much, much stronger form in either physical strength or psychic power respectively. While Mega Evolution does normally require a trainer with a Mega Ring to perform, Mewtwo is one of a few select Pokemon that have shown to be able to mega evolve independently in some media.

Psychic Tera Shards

Tera Shards that Mighty Mewtwo drops upon defeat. Ogerpon is able to naturally Tera at will as her masks are made of the shards. So it stands that Mewtwo is able to do the same with his 100 count. Also, they can be turned into a sandwich that changes Tera type to Psychic.

Clone Balls

During Mewtwo’s time as an antagonist in the first movie, Mewtwo managed to make its own version of Pokeballs. These can catch anything, including already caught Pokemon, as well as Pokeballs themselves. (Don’t be a thief!)

Master Ball

In the timeframe between modern day and Pokopia, Mewtwo seems to have caught itself in a Master Ball, and uses it to transport itself around the post-apocalyptic world, talk about riding in style.

Bright Powder

A glittery powder with a tricky glare. Equipping it makes the holder harder to hit, with any attack coming their way having its accuracy reduced by 10%. (Only works for the opponent for some reason)

Chesto Berry

A chestnut-inspired berry that is used to wake up the Pokemon that eats it. Mewtwo holds this item in its Tera Raid fight, where it specifically uses it for what is known as the “Resto Chesto” strategy, using the move Rest to heal itself to full while eating the Chesto Berry to immediately wake itself up.

Custap Berry

A custard apple inspired berry that when eaten at 25% health or below, allows Mewtwo to move first in its priority bracket.

Twisted Spoon

A spoon imbued with telekinetic power, this curious item boosts the power of psychic moves by 10%. Wait, it’s after 2006, make that 20%.

King’s Rock

An Item that is really important to Slowpoke and Poliwhirl. But for anybody else, it makes every attack have a 10% chance to flinch.

Psywave Spoon

The trauma-inducing utensil of legend, the spoon. Mewtwo is extremely effective at using it in combat, with the spoon being surprisingly versatile given, well, it’s a spoon. It can be used to parry attacks, as well as lead the offensive for quick attacks. It’s very durable, but even if broken, Mewtwo has shown he manifests these by simply conjuring them out of their body.

Abilities

Mew Clone Physiology

Mewtwo, true to its name, is a clone of Mew. Its DNA is nigh-identical, but its size and disposition are far different. It inherited a Psychic typing from its parent, alongside its immortal life force, which is what kept Mewtwo alive in incubation despite the other clones dying. Due to his nature as a clone of Mew, Mewtwo has a very extensive moveset. It isn’t quite as expansive as Mew’s, but of course, Mewtwo isn’t a perfect clone, so it’s kind of fitting, isn’t it? Nonetheless, they share many of the same psychic powers, telekinesis, teleportation, flight, and much more.

Mewtwo’s Cells

A horde of renegade Mewtwo cells. This allows anyone to become linked with Mewtwo and gains them the ability to track Mewtwo, but at deadly cost. According to Blaine, said cost was to take over their body and slowly kill them over time. However, this can be cured by Entei’s special fire that was said to burn away diseased cells.

Berserk Gene

_{(It’s that tiny container in Mewtwo’s hand)}

Mewtwo’s DNA. For any other Pokemon, consumption would sharply raise their attack stat, but make them go berserk in the process, of course the dna being Mewtwo’s they wouldn’t have any problem with it. In Detective Pikachu, Team Rocket developed the R drug based on it.

Pressure

Like most legendary Pokémon (and also King*mbit), Mewtwo has the ability Pressure, making opponents moves and techniques take double the energy to pull off. The way this ability operates has Mewtwo put its target under pressure. This ability is passive, and will remain in effect as long as Mewtwo is present on the battlefield. This effect ends when Mewtwo faints or Mega Evolves, though in Unite, their Mega Evolutions keep the ability Pressure. In the manga Deoxys’ pressure makes it so that you wouldn’t be able to use the same powerful move again throughout the battle and both Cynthia’s Spiritomb and Cyrus’ Weavile both cause the enemy to use much more energy in battle. Pressure also makes its opponent do 20 less damage as long as Mewtwo is active at all in the TCG card. Pressure increases Mega Energy with basic attacks in Pokemon Unite, increasing all its stats the more Mega Energy gathered.

Unnerve

Mewtwo’s second passive ability, Unnerve prevents the opposing side from consuming berries during battle. Specifically berries. Not anything else. Oddly specific but sure. Anti-Farigiraf ability

Psychic Powers

Oh my god it’s glowing, why is it glowing!? Ahem, as we all know by now, Mewtwo is in fact a psychic type and being a psychic pokemon gives Mewtwo a bunch of abilities and luckily Mewtwo is incredibly adept when it comes to utilizing its inherent psychic powers. Mewtwo on their own have shown being able to Use its psychic powers, Mewtwo to cause powerful shockwaves and explosions to blast their opponents away. And it did that without moving any of its limbs and they can use their psychic powers to shoot out a bunch of psychic projectiles. But that’s just the surface of their psychic powers.

They can use it to create barriers, cause explosions, engulf themselves in psychic aura for protection that damages anyone that comes anywhere near them, create psychic swords, trap opponents in psychic binds, augment their physicals and Create objects out of tin air, even things as big as the Mystery Rock from Kingdom Illusion. They can also use its psychic powers to suppress the powers of other pokemon and much more.

Psychic powers have been stated to be like a “sixth sense” and spiritual energy, being able to Use psychic powers without needing to move an inch, which is consistent with Mega Mewtwo Y being able to crush skyscrapers with a thought and psychic users can even use their powers while they’re asleep or unconscious. Those who possess powerful spiritual energy get stronger with the more danger they face and even hide their presence.

Telekinesis

One of Mewtwo’s classic go-to abilities. By focusing their psychic energy, they can move things with his mind. Mewtwo can affect multiple targets at once with this ability, such as when he lifted himself, as well as all of his clone Pokemon, and flew off at the end of Mewtwo Strikes Back. But don’t be fooled, Mewtwo can also use his telekinesis in combat, as it’s been used to hold Pokemon in place and then blast them backwards. Though besides using their telekinesis to hold and ragdoll others, psychic users have different ways of using their telekinesis. Meowstic (Female) can use her psychic powers to shred objects and others apart, such as a tanker, Bruxish can stun its prey using its psychokinesis and Espathra can immobilize its opponents by bathing them in psychic powers. Mewtwo themselves have shown to be able to constantly damage their enemies through using their telekinesis.

Mewtwo has also shown to be able to move, redirect and reshape energy projectiles; they did this in order to stagger Deoxys, by turning their energy attack, transforming it and then launching a giant spoon through its core, preventing it from switching to its Defense form. Which is consistent as Alolan Raichu can use its psychokinesis to control electricity around it, which is how they use their electric moves. Notable Mewtwo doesn’t need to move an inch to use their telekinesis.

Flight

Mewtwo can use their psychic energy – we assume – to take flight to the skies and space. This is consistent with Alolan Raichus using their psychic powers on its tail to ride it like a levitating surfboard, or Galarian Rapidesh using its psychic powers to dash airily through forests.

Psychic Enhancements

Mewtwo’s psychic power is immense. In fact, it’s so powerful, that it can amplify his own physical strength greatly, allowing it to become one heck of a physical brawler. It’s like a lesser version of Mega Mewtwo X, whose muscles have been augmented by its psychic power, giving it a grip strength of one ton. Though besides augmenting their strength, Mewtwo can also use their psychokinesis to increase the range of his physical attacks as shown above.

Telepathy

Mewtwo as a Pokemon doesn’t have the vocal cords required to speak human language. So instead Mewtwo talks to people with its mind. Obviously the range of their telepathic powers is quite large, being able to talk to others from miles away, and if they ever desired, speak directly into the mind of only one person alone. You know, for some privacy.

Telepathy is so basic to psychics that NOT having it for human psychics makes you a disgrace to your family. Poor Avery…

Teleportation

Exactly what it says on the tin. Mewtwo can teleport itself and others. It does not need to be in contact with people to teleport them. Pokemon have pinpoint teleportation powers, like how even Abras can teleport (ANNOYINGLY) or how a random Alakazam was able to specifically warp away Professor Oak’s clothes. In Mewtwo Returns, Mewtwo was able to teleport away a whole lake and a bunch of people and pokemon with it.

Mewtwo’s boss fight in Ramanas Park takes place in Strange Space, which is located in the Distortion World. Somehow Mewtwo managed to warp itself there (and for some reason the Tower Duo and Weather Trio had the same ideas).

Mind Manipulation

Throughout the events of the first movie, Mewtwo has shown great control over reading and controlling minds. He managed to mind control Nurse Joy for over a month, gaining knowledge of her expertise in Pokemon anatomy via reading her mind (and they did the same thing via reading Genesect’s mind… twice. Seeing eons of memories from them in seconds. He could also wipe the memories of an entire room of people and Pokemon. Mewtwo has such control over specific memory targeting, to where just imbuing a group of Butterfree’s sleep powder with his powers was enough to mind wipe all of Team Rocket of his existence. They can also put you to sleep.

As mentioned before, Mewtwo was designed to be the ultimate Pokemon, and it’s been shown to be superior to other psychic Pokemon in the past. Thus, its mental abilities should be superior to other showings. Abras and Galarian Ponytas are able to read minds, but far stronger Pokemon can manipulate them in a variety of ways. Kadabras, Alakazams, and Hatterenes can emit psychic waves to passively give people headaches, Gothorita and Lunatones can put people to sleep, Kirilias and Gothitelles can enforce visions onto others, and so on. The big stuff are showings like Grumpigs and Malamars directly being able to control people’s minds, or Elgyems and Beheeyems being able to target opponents’ brains and rewrite their memories rather than just erasing select ones.

Illusion Creation

_{That lady’s not real. Sorry, Brock…}

Psychics in the Pokemon World can use their psychic powers to make illusions, and Mewtwo is no exception. Mewtwo has used the power to show Tim his dad’s fate in the movie. Furthermore, other psychics like Ninetales and Gastly have shown powerful illusory abilities (note: psychic abilities and Psychic Pokemon aren’t mutually inclusive; Pokemon can be psychics without being psychic type. As seen above, an exceptionally powerful Ninetales created an illusion of one her long dead retainers to trick Brock into staying with her, making her long rotted mansion look brand new to the point where Team Rocket was eating dried leaves thinking it was food. Gastly also moonlights as the Ghost of Maiden’s Peak to keep her legend alive, and a group of Haunter and create illusions as pranks. Stantler constantly warp reality to create illusions for defensive purposes, and that’s without becoming a Wyrdeer. And of course we have Zoroark specializing in illusions capable of fooling hundreds to ward off trespassers. Confuse Ray has shown the ability to cause illusions as well. Mew even once showed Goh the creation of the Pokemon World.

Precognition, Retrocognition
& Human Psychic abilities

_{(Omg Sabrina hi!)}

Mewtwo knows the move Future Sight, which can be used to see the future. However even without the move Future Sight, psychic pokemon and even humans have shown the ability to see the future. Mewtwo themselves were able to see a Genesect’s entire life in literal seconds, processing eons of memories instantly.

Pokemon like Delphox and Gardevoir can see/predict the future using their psychic powers, even their pre Evolution, Kirlia can use their psychic powers to see the future. Medicham can also predict their opponent’s next move with their psychic powers. Gothitelle uses their psychic predictions more specific than the rest, they can see the future through the placement and movement of the stars. It can see Trainers’ life span and even the end of the universe. A male Indeedee can use his psychic powers to predict their trainer’s actions for the entire day. Of course, for a day to day basis. Mega Alakazam can send out psychic energy from the red organ in its forehead to foresee its opponents every move.

However psychic powers don’t end with just seeing the future. Xatu can see both the past and the future and Calyrex can see all events from past to future. With a glance at someone Mega Alakazaam can gain knowledge of the course of their life, from birth to death.

Even human psychics like Sabrina can use precognitive abilities to see up to three years into the future.

Enhanced Senses

Another common psychic power. As shown above Mewtwo is able to sense other’s hidden and their general location. Other psychic pokemon have shown similar levels of enhanced senses. Pokemon like Ralts are capable of sensing the emotions and hostility of pokemon and humans. Medichams can see the aura of their foes and through meditation (and a little starvation) has gained its sixth sense and psychokinesis. Both Solrock and Gallades can sense what others are thinking. Abras can sense incoming attacks and have a telepathic radar that warns them while they’re asleep and Orbeetles can use their psychic powers to study and analyze their surroundings.

Weather Manipulation

Another ability coming right from their psychokinetic powers, they’re able to use their telekinesis to manipulate the weather itself. Creating massive storms spanning multiple islands and large tsunamis. He’s also shown the ability to disperse storms as well.

Spatial Manipulation

Strange as it is, Psychic powers can distort space if they’re strong enough, as shown with many psychic pokemon. Wyrdeer is especially notable because it’s stated under no uncertainty that this is off of raw psychic power. Kirlia can use its psychokinetic powers to distort the air around it, creating mirages of nonexistent imagery, distort space itself and create a rip in the dimensions and their evolved form; Gardevoir, can use its psychokinetic powers to distort the dimensions. Starry skies thousands of light years away are distorted in space by Gothitelle’s psychic power. Mega Meowstic can use their psychic power to compress and expand anything, even contorting space itself.

Mewtwo’s spatial powers don’t stop there though, a multitude of Pokemon media provide examples of Mewtwo’s powers being able to bend space itself, through methods such as, but not limited to:

BFR/Portal Creation

Of course Mewtwo psychic powers don’t simply stop at warping itself, they’re also capable of warping people away, even to other dimensions.

In the Mewtwo Strikes Back: Evolution movie, Ash and co. are given an invitation to a brand new Island called, well, New Island. However, during their journey, Mewtwo whips up a very large and fierce storm, causing Ash and the gang to end up at a nearby Pokemon Center, where a large group of other promising young trainers were waiting for a ferry, but they were met with resistance. The storm was too fierce for the staff to allow trainers onto the ocean in good conscience.

However, at the end of the movie, after Ash’s showcase of bravery touched Mewtwo’s heart, the Pokemon chose to stop the storm, as can be seen while Mewtwo admires the spectacle that is the Human heart. Afterwards, Mewtwo opens up a portal and sends everyone back to the Pokemon Center where they started out, and also erases their memories of what happened on top of it. This is proven when none of the talented trainers that traveled to New Island by themselves nor Ash, Misty and Brock remembered what happened.

This is actually consistent as in general Mewtwo has shown to be able to teleport several people, objects and even a gigantic lake at once away. And in Pokemon Rangers; Guardian Sign, Mewtwo could use its psychic powers to throw black and purple orbs that can send people to another dimension. Said dimension being a pitch black area of nothingness, essentially the void. He can then teleport there to retrieve them. They can also simply create portals to travel to other dimensions. Although if Mewtwo wants to be a dick, they can just leave you stranded there forever.

Black Holes

Ever tired of humanity? Well Mewtwo can be at times, thus as a solution, they can casually create ever expanding black holes that are capable of, in their own words; “simply destroy everything”. Everything is the world in this case. Luckily they can also disperse black holes just as easily. Strangely, creating black holes is actually consistent with psychic types, most notable; Gardevoir who can use their psychic powers to create small black holes according to the Pokedex. This was also showcased in the anime, with Oak also clarifying it being a black hole.

Barriers

While Mewtwo is more than able to take a hit, he prefers not to take damage needlessly, and is helpfully armed with the ability to raise barriers and defensive shields to defend himself from oncoming attacks. These can range from such simple threats as local rookie trainer Ash Ketchum trying to punch him, to local Alola Champion Ash Ketchum’s Lucario dropping a dozen or two Aura Spheres on him simultaneously. Furthermore, Mewtwo can raise these shields at will without any motion or action needed, being yet another extension of his immense psychokinetic powers.

And of course, these shields can protect Mewtwo entirely from all directions if he so chooses, rendering attempts to get around the shield or sneak attack him entirely useless and allowing the Pokemon to put the brakes on any manner of attack. Mewtwo can even use these forcefields for offensive properties and can still move and fly around while putting up these shields. Obviously the ability to create barriers & forcefields isn’t limited to Mewtwo alone. Several psychic types have also shown the ability to create barriers. Mr. Mime is capable of creating invisible objects such as walls and forcefields and Sabrina’s Mr. Mime was able to create a forcefield that surrounded all of Saffron city, no way to get in or out.

Technology Manipulation

As shown above, psychic powers can manipulate technology such as the Pokedex to their whim. Furthermore, psychic powers emit Alpha Waves, which causes tech to malfunction. Notably, Kadabra’s mere presence infests TV screens and monitors. Looking at the shadow brings bad luck.

Energy Manipulation

Besides the many pokemon moves that allow Mewtwo to shoot energy beams or projectiles, Mewtwo has shown great control over energy. Being able to fire large powerful energy beams, create massive barrage of beams that ascends up into the sky or ones that constantly rain down from the sky. Both of them being able to cause the effect “Paused”, which makes it so that you’re unable to perform a move for a whole. It can also fire beams that constantly rotate around them across the battlefield and in the manga, they can catch and absorb others energy attacks. In the manga, Mewtwo was able to turn residual psychic energy that it left floating in the sky into a spoon that he uses to impale Deoxys through its core in order to stop it from being able to regenerate and change forms.

Of course being a Psychic type, Mewtwo can also manipulate their Psychic energy for attacks. Being able to shoot out constant psychic projectiles, homing orbs or homing blades, psychic arrows and shockwaves that can protect them. They can create massive twisters as well as tornadoes around themselves, erupt psychic energy from underneath the ground and so much more. They can rapidly shoot their psychic projectiles as much as they want.

Mirage Clones

In Pokemon Rangers, Mewtwo can create illusionary clones of itself that after some time, explode into energy orbs and shockwaves to attack their opponent. This is different than Mirage Mewtwo, which is yet another different Mewtwo that is completely separate.

Soul Manipulation

In Detective Pikachu of all things, Mewtwo can swap the souls of people and Pokemon, removing it from their bodies. Though it’s said that the Pokemon to be in an enraged state for it to work, Mewtwo has swapped the souls of Time’s father and his Pikachu without said condition needing to happen. Weaker Pokemon like Gengar, Dusknoir and Shedinja can rip souls out with no issue.

Petrification/Transmutation

We’re pretty sure everyone who’s watched the first movie remembers this, but through a clash with Mew, Mewtwo was able to leave Ash completely petrified, quite literally turned to stone. However, this is not the only time that this happened, in fact it happened in the Manga as well.

Duplication

Mewtwo apparently learned how to clone Pokemon without the use of his cloning machines, albeit with no specified methods or timeframe.

Black Orbs

In the hit Pokémon game; Pokémon Pinball, Mewtwo can create several black orbs that act as protection for any oncoming attacks and pokeballs. They can constantly generate them.

Immortality & Regeneration

Mewtwo inherited the millions of years old Mew’s immortality. This immortal life force kept it alive in incubation despite other clones living 4 years max. And in Pokopia, Mewtwo is still alive and in its prime, despite the game taking place hundreds if not thousands of years after the events of Red & Blue. Which makes sense as Mew has been stated to have a life force that allows it to live forever. Mewtwo’s regeneration is more than just moves like Life Dew. Its Recover is built-in. See, Recover in its original language is translated as Self-Regeneration, and Mewtwo takes that to the fullest. Mewtwo has recovered from being shish-kabobed by Deoxys. More notably, in the Birth of Mewtwo radio drama, Mewtwo used Recover after being shot in the head fresh out of the incubation chamber…and killed. Mewtwo regenerated post-mortem in a matter of seconds and it only pissed him off. In the same Radio Drama, Mewtwo could regenerate after getting hit by a massive flamethrower explosion, with it being stated that Mewtwo is Indestructible. Oh and TCG says Mewtwo can heal 60 damage.

It’s stated in the manga that Deoxys was able to regenerate its core after Mewtwo had pierced it by using Recover, which adds further proof that fatal blows can be healed off by simply using Recover and regenerating from the damage done. In the same scan they also state that Deoxys immediately gained their lost strength back, which is consistent with Mewtwo using Recover to regain their strength to launch an attack and even move. Mew instantly healed Goh’s, Gary’s, and the rest of Project Mew’s Pokemon it just spent the past few minutes no diffing and ko’ing. Besides regeneration, Mewtwo has also shown to be able to heal others from mortally fatal wounds.

Stamina & Endurance

Given Mewtwo has gotten into its fair share of fights over the years, it’s safe to say that the Genetic Pokemon has quite a bit of fight in him. Not only has Mewtwo taken on Champion Red’s team on his own, which was a one on six matchup by the way, but he’s also taken on several different other legendary Pokemon, including Deoxys, 50% Zygarde, and Genesect. In Pokemon Stadium, he even took on the champion player’s team in another one-on-six fight, twice. On top of that, in Stadium 2, he does it again, though this time with help from Ho-Oh and Lugia. Mewtwo’s Tera Raid has him being attacked by four Pokemon at once, with Mew (going all out) being among them.

Mewtwo should also be comparable to Groudon and Kyogre, who were able to fight for 20 whole days with no signs of stopping, only getting stopped by Rayquaza. Gyarados’s rampages can last a full month. Even low tier Pokemon like Raticate have been recorded to swim across oceans, which takes a lot of stamina. The Pokemon of characters like Paxton and Taunie can fight from sunset to sunrise in the Z-A Royale, of which Mewtwo can be one of them. Speaking of Z-A, Mewtwo can take part in the trials that are Rogue Mega Battles. In Z-A, for the Project M quest, no matter how many times the player knocks out Mewtwo, Mewtwo will get back up and continue the fight from full HP. Mable even derides you for flexing that you can KO a Legendary, proving it’s not just some game mechanic reset. In GO, as a Unity Raid boss, Mewtwo can fight thousands of trainers at once.

Energy Absorption

Using this ability, Mewtwo can draw back upon energy that it previously expended in order to keep fighting. In the Pokemon TCG, the energy cards required for attacks are treated as the actual fuel, or, uh, energy necessary to perform the move. Using attacks costs energy, and so does retreating. With that being said, Mewtwo’s ability to regain lost energy means it could potentially draw upon its own used up stamina and fight on, indefinitely.

Rage Boost

Pokemon when pissed off temporarily activate an omniboost and make themselves immune to Pokeball catching, Mewtwo included. It lasts until they calm down, which normally happens around 30 seconds.

Basic Attack

Exactly what it says on the tin. A basic attack. For base Mewtwo and Mega Mewtwo Y, it’s just a lob of a psychic ball, though Y’s has increased range. While X has it as a melee attack. When Mega Y hits a basic, it lowers the opponent’s movement speed. When Mega X hits a basic attack, it heals Mewtwo based on the damage dealt.

Pokémon Moves

Mewtwo and all Pokémon’s signature method of action are their iconic moves, utilizing power points to execute various effects. Mewtwo’s advanced genetics leads to it having access to a gigantic plethora of moves. Some moves have categorized effects, so to simplify things, here’s a quick dictionary of some important Pokémon terms.

As an additional note, we will be including TM learnt moves for Mewtwo’s toolkit. While these do require trainer assistance to obtain, Mewtwo’s story has led to him being under the ownership of trainers multiple times, such as Red or the protagonists from Z-A. Thus at his best, it makes sense for him to have access to these additional moves. Some moves he uses to an iconic extent like Shadow Ball are also ™ only, so it only makes sense.

Stats

• Attack: The stat correlated to physical attacks like punching and kicking.
• Special Attack: The stat correlated to ranged attacks like energy blasts, though it doesn’t apply to directly throwing physical projectiles.
• Defense: The stat correlated to taking the physical attacks mentioned above.
• Special Defense: The stat correlated to taking the ranged attacks mentioned above.
• Speed: A distinct stat compared to the others, its focus is on movement speed, with the Pokémon that has the higher speed stat typically attacking before its opponent in battle.
• Critical Hits: An attack effect that has a small chance to happen, most recently a 1 in 24 chance as of Pokémon Scarlet and Violet. Critical hits do 1.5x damage and ignore defense or special defense increases, as well as attack or special attack debuffs, when doing damage (Note: this applies to move based stat buffs, not changes in stats caused by altering forms through something like Mega Evolution or item based multipliers like Eviolite or Assault Vest). There is some evidence that crits aren’t entirely luck based and require some skill, as some trainer dialogue praises you for being a prodigious trainer after landing one, and Galarian Farfetch’d requires 3 in a single battle to evolve into Sirfetch’d.

To note, one stage of buffs or debuffs for the 5 main stats listed above can go up / go down by a maximum of 6 stages. Each increase is a 50% increase, leading to a max buffed stage of 4 times normal stats. Each stat debuff stage is calculated with a formula of X times (2 / (2 + Stage Count)), so for instance, a one stage debuff would be X times (2 / (2 + 1)) for a result of 67% of someone’s normal stat. The max six stage debuff would result in having 25% of the normal stat.

Status Conditions

• Burn: A status condition from the after effects of harsh fiery damage, burned opponents lose 1/16th of their health at the end of each turn, and their attack stat is cut in half. This is a separate debuff from Attack Stage debuffs, and therefore they multiply off of each other.
• Paralysis: A status condition typically depicted as a consequence of electrical damage, paralyzed foes have a 12.5% chance to be unable to move each turn. There is also a 50% speed debuff, which has the same alternate function as the burn attack debuff.
• Poison: A status condition arising from poison infliction (I mean what else would “Poison” be from), inflicted opponents lose 1/8th of their health at the end of each turn. On top of poison, there’s Bad Poison, which compounds at a rate of 1/16 (does 1/16 the first tick, 2/16 the second, so on and so forth).
• Frozen: A status condition that freezes an opponent solid, this is a very rare status condition, only inflicted by specific attacking moves, all moves that can inflict freeze only have a 10 percent chance to do so (likely game mechanics given how often characters get frozen over in other media). There’s an infuriatingly small chance of thawing each turn, but a thaw is guaranteed if the inflicted is hit by a fire attack (or Scald/Steam Eruption), or uses certain fire moves.
• Frostbite: A variation of freezing. What it lacks in the absolute immobility of the frozen status, it makes up for basically being a special variant of burn, doing 1/12 of health and halving the special attack of the inflicted. The same moves that can freeze can also inflict frostbite, and unlike freeze, the chance to have said moves inflict a status increases under hail/snow.
• Sleep: A status condition resulting from induced eepiness, sleeping foes are unable to act for between two to three turns depending on how long it takes them to wake up.
• Drowsiness: A variant of sleep, an opponent is still conscious but now takes 33% more damage from physical moves and doubles the cooldown of moves. Furthermore, they have a chance of not acting, and the chance increases if it is snowing.
• Confusion: A distinct status condition, confusion is more of a mental effect rather than a physical one. It lasts for a few turns, and inflicted foes have a 33% chance of damaging themselves when trying to use attacks. This is a volatile status condition, in comparison to the former being non-volatile.

Status Conditions (Ranger)

Ranger has a handful of unique status effects that aren’t in the mainline games that Mewtwo has access to.

• Immobilized: The opponent is unable to move but can still attack.
• Paused: The opponent is unable to use any attacks, though they can still move around.
• Stopped: Best of both worlds.

Plus Moves

Pokemon can use Mega Energy to imbue their moves with Plus Effects. Plus Moves do 20% extra damage (30% if Super Effective). They also bypass protection, having their effectiveness reduced by 75% in the process. Healing moves heal even more. The chances of omniboosts from Ancient Power doubles and Charge Beam is guaranteed to raise Special Attack. Cooldown and charge of moves decrease. Moves have higher range and AoE. And multi-hit attacks may fire an extra projectile.

As Mega Mewtwo, all of Mewtwo’s attacks are Plus Moves, no Mega Energy needing to be sacrificed.

STAB

Short for Same Type Attack Bonus, Pokemon have a mechanic where moves that correlate to their type do 1.5 times the damage they’d have otherwise. In Mewtwo’s case, this powers up his Psychic-type moves in base and as Mega Y, and powers up his Fighting-type moves in addition to Psychic as Mega X. This is not just a game mechanic, as it is brought up in the school textbooks in Scarlet/Violet, and in the manga, Ruby mentions it by name for Zinnia’s Salamence’s Aerilate to get a leg-up in battle, as shown above.

Psychic

Moves Learnt by Level Up:

• Confusion: Not to be confused with the status effect of the same name, this attack damages the opponent with psychic energy, though it does have a 10% chance to inflict the confusion status condition.
• Psychic: THE psychic type move. Psychic is a beast of a move, a monstrous 90 power with perfect accuracy, it can even cause a special defense drop. The bane of many Gen 1 Pokémon’s existence. This move can also be used as Telekinesis, being able to control others and objects and also crush them with the user’s mind. Psychic can also be shot out like a beam or homing bombs.
• Future Sight: By looking into the future, Mewtwo can direct a delayed psychic attack of intense strength. In the games it takes about two turns. The move can be used to lock on to targets in Pokemon Unite, dealing more damage to a locked opponent, and can outright be used to see the future, as the name implies.
• Psycho Cut: A slash of psychic energy with a high critical hit ratio. Can also be used as psychic swords.
• Psywave: A wave of psychic energy that varies in the damage dealt based on the user’s level. Ranging from 50-150% of said level. Mewtwo however, can use it for even greater purposes, using it to make psychic tornadoes for a wide area of effect, that can trap others, work as a forcefield and reflect projectiles back and even conceal them or focus it in the shape of a spoon. Yes. That spoon. In general Psywave is crazy versatile, it allows mewtwo to shoot powerful energy balls and swirl up a vortex around themselves, which can, break through guards and defenses, hit you multiple times and even home in on you. Psywave can also specifically target the opponent’s mind, ignoring any defense.
• Psybeam: A beam of psychic energy, it has a 10% chance of inflicting the confusion status effect.
• Psystrike: Last but not least, Mewtwo’s signature move. It strikes with far higher force than his other Psychic type attacks, but has the additional benefit of targeting physical defense instead of special defense, countering foes with greater resistance to energy projectiles. They can also use this move to launch psychic energy into the air and then make it rain down on their opponents.

Moves Learnt by Technical Machine:

• Stored Power: A psychic energy attack that looks weak at first, but increases in power with each stat stage increase. Would it be attack or defense or speed or even evasion, a stat increase will increase the move’s power to immense heights.
• Zen Headbutt: A physical attack involving a headbutt enhanced by psychic energy, it has a chance to make the opponent flinch. This move can also be used to erase projectiles Mewtwo charges into without taking damage.
• Expanding Force: A big area of effect psychic explosion that becomes significantly stronger under the effects of Psychic Terrain.
• Psychic Noise: A decently strong move involving psychic sound damage, it has the special ability to disable all healing methods usable by the hit opponent for a brief period.
• Dream Eater: Allows the user to devour the dreams of a sleeping target, doing damage to the opponent and restoring Mewtwo’s health.

Normal

Moves Learnt by Level Up:

• Swift: A flurry of decently strong star shaped projectiles, they have the perk of enhanced accuracy. These projectiles home onto the target, only failing against barriers, immunities, and foes out of range such as Pokemon high in the sky or burrowed under the ground.

Moves Learnt by Technical Machine:

• Mega Punch: RYUUUUUUKEEEEEEEEEEEN!!!!
• Mega Kick: Mega Punch, but he kicks.
• Body Slam: An attack involving slamming down onto the target with the user’s whole body, it has a 30% chance to inflict Paralysis.
• Take Down: Slams into a target at the cost of a little recoil damage.
• Double Edge: A reckless all-out charge, stronger than Take Down, but at some cost of more HP after the move in comparison.
• Hyper Beam: The classic Pokemon super move, involving a beam of absurd powerful force. So powerful that it results in some necessary recharge time, though in the anime, powerful Pokemon have shown to not need the recharge, like Tyranitar. This move is powerful enough to pierce through most defenses and barriers.
• Payday: Bring in the moneyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy.
• Rage: A power of rage which raises the attack if hit. Yeah.
• Bide: Through concentration, Mewtwo can endure a large amount of attacks before releasing an equivalent amount of force with one devastating counter attack.
• Self Destruct: Self-explodes on the point if move is selected. Bro is not Vegeta!!
• Skull Bash: Tucks in user’s head in order to boost defensive stat in first turn, then ram the foe on the next turn.
• Tri-Attack: Launches three types of beam at once, can freeze, paralyze, or burn the foe.
• Headbutt: A standard headbutt with a flinch chance.
• Hidden Power: A unique move that’s different for every Pokemon that uses it. It can be any type, though which type it is depends on the Pokemon’s exact IVs.
• Snore: If Mewtwo is caught asleep, it can still manage to attack with the energy releasing from snoring. The move has a chance to cause flinching. It’s not much, but what do you expect, they’re snoozing.
• Frustration: Ghetsis’s favorite move. The angrier Mewtwo is with the trainer commanding him, the harder they can hit by using this move. I guess the power of friendship sucks.
• Return: Nevermind, as the stronger the bond between Mewtwo and its trainer, the harder they can hit by using this move for a strong physical attack.
• Facade: A decently strong standard attack, it doubles in power if Mewtwo is under a physical status condition (with the move ignoring status conditions that weaken physical attack like burn).
• Secret Power: An environmental influenced attack with 30% chance to add effect depends on which environment this move was used in.
  • Any building, road, plain terrain, link battle or Electric Terrain can cause Paralysis
  • Cave can flinch opponents.
  • Sand, dirt, and rock can lower Accuracy by one stage.
  • Water can lower Attack by one stage.
  • Snow and ice can freeze opponents.
  • Volcanoes can inflict burns on opponents.
  • Ultra Space can lower defense by one stage.
  • Grass, fields, flowers, and Grassy Terrain can cause opponents to sleep.
  • Misty Terrain can lower Special Attack by one stage
  • Psychic Terrain can lower Speed by one Stage
• Giga Impact: Full power! Channeling all its power into a physical charge, Mewtwo does extreme damage at the cost of a recharge turn after impact.
• Natural Gift: A damaging move that changes in typing and damage output depending on… what type of berry Mewtwo is holding? Sure, that makes sense.
• Round: A sound based attack that can decently damage an opponent with a small blast of sound. Is stronger when used with a partner, so I guess it’ll be cool if Shadow feels like going on an encore.
• Strength: Enhancing their power to the max, Mewtwo can release a barrage of powerful blows with this attack.
• Rock Climb: The user attacks the target by ramming into them with a lot of force. This move has a chance to confuse the target.
• Tera Blast: A basic energy wave attack, it changes typing based on Mewtwo’s Tera-Type.
• Weather Ball: A basic energy ball attack, it doubles in power and changes typing based on the current weather. Changing depending on if it’s raining, blazing hot, snowing, or, uh… sand-ing.
• Comet Punch: A series of 2 to 5 repeated strikes, with each hit becoming stronger than the last

Fighting

Moves Learnt by Level Up:

• Aura Sphere: For a distant energy projectile, Mewtwo can use Aura Sphere. A move powered by the user’s aura, that has enhanced accuracy. Only missing foes out of range.
• Counter: After receiving a strong physical blow, Mewtwo can immediately respond by dealing a Counter that’ll do exactly double the damage received. However in the anime this move gets into ridiculous territory. With Mewtwo using Counter as a barrier that reflects attack and projectiles right back onto the attacker without Mewtwo even needing to get hit.

Moves Learnt by Technical Machine:

• Submission: Mewtwo grabs the target and recklessly dives for the ground, but is hurt in the process. Ganondorf would be proud of him!
• Seismic Toss: Based on his level, Mewtwo can throw you into orbit with increasingly more force, leading to a nasty fall. Just ask Goro!
• Dynamic Punch: A hard move to hit, but a 100% Confusion infliction chance along with high power, Dynamic Punch is a devastatingly strong physical move. In Go, Mega Mewtwo X has a variation called Dynamic Punch+ (not to be confused with Dynamic Punch as a Plus Move), which is stronger and breaks shields.
• Rock Smash: A physical move capable of breaking down rocks. Has a chance to lower the target’s defense by one stage.
• Focus Punch: By charging up, Mewtwo can hit with a brutally strong punch, though even the smallest distraction will break their concentration.
• Brick Break: A simple yet strong karate chop attack, it has the extra perk of being able to instantly shatter damage reducing barriers in Mewtwo’s way.
• Focus Blast: Misses. (In reality it’s a blast of energy after focusing mental power)
• Drain Punch: To get some health back, Mewtwo can hit with this decently strong punching move to heal equivalent to 50% of the damage dealt.
• Low-Sweep: A low kick (no not that one) to hit the opponent and knock them off balance, lowering speed by one stage.
• Power-Up Punch: While it may seem like a weak punch, each usage of it raises Mewtwo’s attack by one stage, giving it incredible potential. The scourge of all Mega Kangaskhan’s opponents.
• Reversal: An attacking move that does more damage the lower percentage of the user’s health remains, leading to a last ditch high damage option.
• Vacuum Wave: A speedy fighting type energy wave, its extra priority allows the projectile to move too fast for even the quickest Pokemon to outspeed.

Rock

Mewtwo knows quite a few rock type moves that can pack quite the punch. Moves like Ancient Power, rock tomb and stone edge to launch rocks at their opponents to moves like sandstorm that’s… more of a detriment. However besides these rock moves, they have shown to be able to use their psychic powers to hurl rocks at others or use them as a barrier to block attacks.

Moves Learnt by Level Up:

• Ancient Power: A move involving launching several rocks at the opponent embedded with mystical power. While the strength of this attack isn’t impressive, each use of the move has a 10% chance of giving Mewtwo an omniboost, boosting all of its in battle stats by one stage.

Moves Learnt by Technical Machine:

• Rock Tomb: Hurling several rocks at the opponent, Mewtwo can do decent damage while lowering enemy speed by one stage.
• Stone Edge: For painful piercing damage, Mewtwo can use this attack to raise the earth and have a formation of sharp rocks, resulting in a higher critical hit ratio.
• Rock Slide: A fall of rocks from the sky, it can hit multiple foes and has a 30% chance to flinch hit opponents into inaction.
• Power Gem: For a ranged rock attack more up Mewtwo’s alley, he can flurry special gems at the opponent with heavy force.

Fire

Mewtwo learns a large variety of fire-based moves, such as Flamethrower and Fire Blast. It even learns more minor moves such as Sunny Day. But based on its appearance in Pokken Tournament, it seems that Mewtwo simply possesses the ability to use fire-based attacks in general, even if they aren’t actual Pokemon moves, such as surrounding their opponents in large pillars of fire or straight up shooting flames from its hands. They can even create giant flaming swords to both slice and burn people with, it can also send out waves of fire and even break through guards. In general psychic powers are somehow capable of creating fire, Delphox can use their psychic powers to generate a fiery vortex of 5,400 degrees Fahrenheit, incinerating foes swept into this whirl of flame.

Moves Learnt by Technical Machine:

• Fire Blast: The peak of his fire type offense, Mewtwo can fire (ha) a kanji shaped… fire blast at the opponent, with the bonus of a 10% burn chance.
• Fire Punch: FAAAALCOOOOO- oh yeah it can also armor right through attacks.
• Flamethrower: For a more precise stream of flames, Mewtwo can use this weaker but more accurate fire attack (also featuring a 10% burn chance).
• Incinerate: A weaker fire type move that can hit multiple targets, with the perk of burning any berries the target is holding. Screw your lunchables.

Water

Besides the few water type moves Mewtwo is capable of using, Mewtwo has shown to be able to manipulate water with his psychic powers. Such as creating water vortexes to block attacks with a simple hand motion. Refreshing!

Moves Learnt by Technical Machine:

• Bubble Beam: Bubbles!… has a 30% chance of a one stage speed decrease against hit foes.
• Water Gun: Shoot someone with some water sure I’m sure that’ll be good here.
• Water Pulse: A pulse-based attack, dense water hits with decent force and has a 30% chance to inflict Confusion.
• Chilling Water: A decently strong water attack that has the bonus of dropping hit foes’ attack by one stage.
• Aqua Tail: Mewtwo surrounds its tail in water for additional force, hitting the opponent with aquatic energy.
• Dive: The user submerged themselves in the water for a turn, protecting them from most attacks. They then strike on the next turn with a physical attack. That said, the user also takes double damage from moves like Surf and Whirlpool.

Grass

Moves Learnt by Technical Machine:

• Solar Beam: By harnessing sunlight, Mewtwo can release an absurdly powerful blast of grass type energy at a foe. In harsh sunlight, the charge up time is skipped entirely.
• Energy Ball: For a quicker but still strong ranged grass type track, Mewtwo can use a ball made of pure natural energy for a strong grass type attack.
• Grass Knot: By tripping up a foe with a special pull of grass from the ground, Mewtwo can trip up a distant foe, doing more damage based on how much heavier they are than him. Considering Mewtwo’s 122 kilogram weight compared to Shadow’s 35… maybe a bit pointless.
• Trailblaze: For a quick physical attack, Mewtwo can charge into an opponent with Trailblaze, also gaining a one stage speed increase on use.

Bug

Moves Learnt by Technical Machine:

• Signal Beam: A decently strong bug type energy beam, it has the extra perk of a 10% confusion chance. It’s a really useful move with good distribution, good power, a unique effect, and SHOULDN’T HAVE BEEN DEXITED.

Ice

Its reputation as one of the most powerful Pokemon in the world comes with the ability to utilize many Ice-type attacks. Fan favorites such as Blizzard and Ice beam are no stranger to Mewtwo, as it has shown great aptitude for wielding this unforgiving element. In Pokken Mewtwo has also been shown to manipulate ice without using any of the usual pokemon moves. Such as launching giant icicles.

Moves Learnt by Technical Machine:

• Ice Beam: The user fires off a rather strong freezing beam that deals damage to whoever it hits. It has a 10% chance to freeze the target.
• Blizzard: Mewtwo can conjure a literal ice storm to blow away foes. It lacks in accuracy, but this issue is negated if the move is used in an already freezing stormy environment. It also has a 10% chance to Freeze the opponent.
• Icy Wind: The user blows chilly air at the target or an entire ice tornado, lowering their speed stat by one stage.
• Ice Punch: A freezing punch, it deals solid physical damage with a 10% chance to Freeze the opponent. They can also use this move to create icicles to stab people with.
• Avalanche: Quite literally the name, though it has the perk that if used after the opponent’s action in a turn, it’ll double in damage.

Electric

Thunder Wave, Thunder Punch, Thunderbolt, Thunder. If it’s got “thunder” in the name, there’s a good chance Mewtwo’s got the technique down. If that wasn’t good enough, it also learns Electro Ball, and everybody loves Electro Ball! Though besides these tricks, Mewtwo has shown to manipulate electricity in Pokken without any pokemon moves. Being able to shoot out a bunch of electric orbs, strike with bolts of lightning and discharge electricity in front of itself.

Moves Learnt by Technical Machine:

• Thunderbolt: A strong flow of electrical energy, it hits with heavy force and has a 10% chance to paralyze the opponent.
• Thunder: At the cost of reducing accuracy, Mewtwo can call down Thunder to smite foes with even more force, and an up to 30% paralysis chance. It also has enhanced accuracy in storms.
• Zap Cannon: Sacrificing accuracy even further, this move hits with even more power than Thunder, and will Paralyze the hit foe 100% of the time.
• Thunder Punch: CHIDORI!
• Shock Wave: Mewtwo can strike his foe with a quick jolt of electricity and that they cannot evade it. UNLIMITED POWER!
• Charge Beam: Mewtwo can launch an electric charge at his foe with a 70% chance to boost his Special Attack stat after use.
• Electro Ball: Mewtwo can hurl an electric orb at his foe like throwing baseball at them directly. The faster Mewtwo is than his opponent, the stronger the power of the move (though there is a damage cap eventually).
• Discharge: A large AOE electric energy release, hitting all nearby Pokemon with a 30% chance to inflict Paralysis.

Flying

Of course they can also use air type moves… or well just two air type moves. In addition to the spoon, Mewtwo can turn Psywave into a tornado for an aoe attack.

Moves Learnt by Technical Machine:

• Aerial Ace: A decently strong flying type cut, with the perk of a guaranteed hit as long as the opponent is not out of range.
• Hurricane: For a devastating ranged attack, Mewtwo can manifest an actual hurricane to call down onto opponents. It has less accuracy than other moves, but has perfect accuracy in rainstorms, as well as a 30% chance to inflict Confusion on hit.

Ground

Moves Learnt by Technical Machine:

• Mud-Slap: A rather weak ground type projectile, though it does lower opponent accuracy by one stage.
• Earthquake: When Mewtwo wants to devastate the whole field, he can release an extremely strong Earthquake. Hitting all non-flying foes, including ones trying to hide in the ground.
• Bulldoze: A weaker variation of Earthquake, it has the benefit of lowering hit enemy speed by one stage to make up for the power gap.
• Stomping Tantrum: An in your face smacking attack, if Mewtwo’s previous action failed due to prevention or flinching or so on, its power doubles.
• Earth Power: Area 17 flashbacks… The user causes the ground beneath their target to erupt. This has a chance to lower the target’s Special Defense stat by one stage.

Poison

Moves Learnt by Technical Machine:

• Poison Jab: A powerful poison punch, this move has good strength behind it along with a 30% Poison chance.

Dark

Moves Learnt by Technical Machine:

• Fling: An attack performed by throwing whatever Mewtwo’s currently held item is at the foe. The power increases depending on the item, with some items having extra perks like inflicting status effects.
• Brutal Swing: A decently strong, wide range swing attack that can hit the whole field. Interestingly, it can’t be remembered once forgotten, though Mewtwo learning it through ™ makes this irrelevant.
• Foul Play: Using the target’s power against them, this move uses the opponent’s physical attack stat when determining dealt damage.
• Dark Pulse: A strong pulse of dark energy, this move also has a 20% chance to flinch foes.
• Knock Off: A base 65 power dark type move that doubles in power if the opponent is holding an item. It removes the target’s item if landed.
• Lash Out: An angrily performed physical attack, with the perk that if Mewtwo’s stats were lowered before performing the move, it does double damage.

Ghost

Moves Learnt by Technical Machine:

• Shadow Ball: The iconic ghost type attack that Mewtwo loves to spam in all media but the games’ wild encounters since he doesn’t get it by level up. An energy ball of spectral energy, it hits with a good amount of force while having a 20% chance to lower enemy special defense by one stage on hit. Of course Mewtwo can also increase the size and power of their shadow balls. They can also create several at once to fire at their opponents.
• Hex: A weaker in comparison but still decently strong wave of ghost type energy, it has the additional perk of doing double damage if the enemy is under the effects of a non-volatile status condition.
• Night Shade: Mewtwo can cast frightening mirages and make his foes see it, the total damage dealt to them depends on Mewtwo’s current level.

Steel

Moves Learnt by Technical Machine:

• Iron Tail: A hard to hit but strong move involving Mewtwo coating his tail in unbreakable steel. Landing the move also has the bonus of a 30% chance of lowering enemy defense by one stage.

Status Moves

For the moves that don’t do damage, but still have an effect on the battle.

Moves Learnt by Level Up:

• Disable: As the name implies, it causes the target’s most recently used move to be unusable for 1-8 turns.
• Barrier: Mewtwo puts up a psychic barrier, raising his physical defense for up to five turns. For some reason in the manga adaptation of the movie, it was also able to reflect projectiles back.
• Recover: Allows the user to regenerate up to 50% of their maximum HP.
• Mist: Mewtwo (somehow) releases mist into the air, making it immune to stat drops from the opponent.
• Amnesia: Mewtwo clears its mind, the focus granting it doubled special defenses.
• Psych Up: Mewtwo copies stat changes of its opponent.
• Safeguard: This is a barrier type of attack that protects the user’s party from all status condition inducement for five turns.
• Miracle Eye: Mewtwo bypasses accuracy checks to have moves always hit, and also causes the opponent to be hit by Psychic-type attacks, even if they’re a Dark-Type and normally immune. In Pokken Tournament, this move gets even more insane, making Mewtwo’s attack lock in on opponents, being able to turn their projectiles into psychic shields for protection and damage and even being able to expand his light pillars while controlling them. Even when the projectiles are already gone, using this move allows Mewtwo to reset them back and alter them.
• Guard Swap: Mewtwo changes his Defense and Special Defense and replaces it with his foe’s.
• Power Swap: Same as Guard Swap but with Attack and Special Attack.
• Me First: Mewtwo would cut ahead of his foe and copy and use their intended move but more powerful than normal. This move will fail if the opponent uses a non-damaging move, or if Mewtwo is out-prioritied.
• Laser Focus: Mewtwo will concentrate intensely, and his attack next turn will result in a critical hit.
• Life Dew: The user uses mysterious water, healing itself and their allies by 25% of their maximum HP.
• Confuse Ray: As the name suggests, this attack is a ray that causes the target to become Confused.
• Teleport: Mewtwo’s way of getting around and his easy way out of the battle should it become rough for him to handle.
• Telekinesis: Mewtwo makes his foe float with its psychic power, making them easier to hit for three turns.
• Agility: Mewtwo relaxes and lengthens his body in order to move faster, raising its Speed.
• Calm Mind: Raises the user’s special attack and special defense by a single stage.

Moves Learnt by Technical Machine:

• Toxic: Has a 90 percent chance to badly poison the target.
• Mimic: Mewtwo copies the most recently used move from the opponent, able to perform it perfectly. Should be noted Mewtwo specifically learns the gen 1 version of the move, where he can pick which move specifically to copy.
• Double Team: Increases Mewtwo’s evasiveness by one stage, or creates shadow clones of itself.
• Reflect: A barrier that increases physical defenses of Mewtwo’s side by 50 percent for 5 turns. This move can also be used as your standard forcefield.
• Rest: Mewtwo falls asleep, restoring all of its health and removing all status conditions.
• Thunder Wave: An instant and quick way to inflict Paralysis through a specialized wave of electricity.
• Rain Dance: Creates rain, boosting water type moves and reducing the effectiveness of fire moves.
• Sunny Day: Creates a harsh sunlight, boosting Fire-type moves, Solar Beam, and lowering the effectiveness of Water-Type moves.
• Sandstorm: A move where Mewtwo summons a sandstorm. It’ll do minor chip damage overtime to all non Rock, Ground, or Steel type Pokemon… which includes Mewtwo.
• Metronome: Waggles a finger and simulates its brain into randomly unleashing nearly any move that exists. From godlike moves like Judgement and Photon Geyser to uh…Memento. Random bullshit, GO!
• Curse: Lowers Mewtwo’s Speed, but raises its Physical Attack and Physical Defense. This move works differently if the user is a Ghost type. Mewtwo isn’t a Ghost type so it doesn’t matter.
• Substitute: Mewtwo sacrifices a fourth of its HP in order to create a decoy doll that will take hits for Mewtwo. Pokemon like Red’s Pika and Poli have used the move to create illusory duplicates.
• Protect: A move with priority, it creates a protective barrier for one turn. It can be broken through with the ability Unseen Fist/Piercing Drill.
• Endure: When this move is used, Mewtwo for the entire duration of the turn will survive any attack on 1 HP. This includes multi hit moves like Double Kick or Triple Axel, doubling up on Mewtwo, and delayed damage like from Future Sight or Doom Desire. The only exception to this is status damage (ie: burn damage or leech seed damage).
• Swagger: The user enrages and confuses the target. However, this also sharply raises the target’s Attack stat.
• Sleep Talk: Allows the user to use a move at random despite being afflicted with sleep.
• Detect: Allows the user to evade any attacks that turn. In contests it also prevents the user from being startled.
• Nightmare: The user inflicts a sleeping target with bad dreams, which take out a quarter of their health after each turn.
• Taunt: The user sends the target into a rage, causing them to only be able to use attacking moves for three turns. W ragebait chat.
• Hail: Summons snow for several turns. Has the added benefit of boosting the accuracy of specific ice moves such as Blizzard.
• Bulk Up: Boosts the user’s attack and defense by a single stage through tensing up their muscles.
• Light Screen: A move that manifests a protective extra shield around Mewtwo for a period of time, reducing the damage of incoming ranged attacks by half.
• Torment: By well, tormenting the opponent, Mewtwo can prevent them from using the same move twice in a row for a period of time.
• Skill Swap: Mewtwo swaps their passive ability with the target. What would Shadow’s be in this case? Uh, who knows, best not to think about it.
• Snatch: If Mewtwo wants what the opponent’s got to offer, he can use this move to steal their status move for himself.
• Heal Pulse: The user releases a wave of healing aura to heal the target. Now normally that sounds horrid for a 1 on 1 fight to the death but Pokemon have shown the ability to target themselves with the move.
• Will-O-Wisp: The user inflicts the target with the “Burn” status via a ghostly flaming projectile.
• Embargo: “Screw held items” Mewtwo said, disabling the effect of the opponent’s held items in battle. Not just held items, the move is so potent it keeps the trainer from using items on the opponent.
• Recycle: If Mewtwo wants to chow down on a copy of a berry he’s used in battle, he can use this move to manifest said copy.
• Flash: SOLAAAAAR FLAREEEEEEEE (A bright flash of light is unleashed that lowers the foe’s accuracy)
• Psych Up: A move that copies any stat increases made by the opponent (note, this doesn’t count the increase from form changes such as Mega Evolution) with none of the downsides (for example it wouldn’t suffer from the speed drop from Curse or the health cut of Belly Drum).
• Trick Room: Mewtwo casts an effect on the entire battlefield, causing the speeds of everyone inside to be swapped. Like many other moves, this can also be used as a barrier, as the Rogue Mega Meowstic uses this move to barricade itself while it charges a huge psychic nuke.
• Confide: When used, lowers the opponent’s special attack by one stage.
• Speed Swap: When utilized, Mewtwo can swap his current speed stat with the target.
• Wonder Room: A battlefield effecting move that causes all participating combatants to have their physical and special defense stats swapped for a short period of time.
• Magic Room: A battlefield effecting move that prevents the effects of held items from activating for a period of time (note, it doesn’t prevent things like Mega Stones from activating Mega Evolution).
• Magic Coat: A reflective barrier that reverses special effects back at the opponent.
• Psychic Terrain: Manifests Psychic Terrain for a few turns, an area effecting change that boosts the power of Psychic types moves and turns off all moves with high speed priority effects.
• Nasty Plot: The user has a nefariously bad thought, granting them a Special Attack boost by 2 stages.
• Scary Face: AW GOD THAT’S HORRIFYING (and also lowers hit target Speed by two stages).
• Imprison: A strange move that prevents all other Pokemon on the field from using any moves the user themselves know. Shadow’s Pokemon movepool includes epic moves like _ _, so this is sure to rock his socks off.
• Helping Hand: Empowering allies by using this move makes their next attack do 1.5 times more damage. Yeah get his ah Mewthree.
• Spite: Causes the opponent’s last used move to decrease in power points.
• Gravity: By enhancing, yeah, this move grounds levitating and flying targets to the ground. A secondary effect is that every move on the field is significantly more accurate.
• Ally Switch: Mewtwo switches places with an ally. Given this is a 1v1 I uh…I guess Mewtwo can switch places with its clones.
• Heal Block: To prevent recovery, this move prohibits all usage of health recovering moves and items for a period of time.
• Role Play: Mewtwo is able to copy the opponent’s ability with this move. Again, Shadow’s ability is uh, something, I think.
• Trick: Mewtwo swaps its primary held item with the target’s.

Psychic (Poké Assist)

A variation of the move Psychic found in Pokemon Ranger. When used as a Poké Assist, the psychic Pokemon lifts up opposing Pokemon and leaves them suspended in air and vulnerable for capture.

Mewtwo Impact

Mewtwo’s Pokeassist move. Mewtwo summons a bunch of psychic pillars in front of itself, continuously striking the target and giving them the status effect “paused”. The stronger version of this move encircles the target with four pillars.

Psydisaster

Mega Mewtwo X’s Burst Move in Pokken. Mewtwo moves the opponent and himself into a dimension of darkness, trapping the opponent in a bubble in the process. Mewtwo then charges forward at the immobile enemy at full power.

Infinite Psyburn

Mewtwo’s strongest attack in Pokemon Unite. Mewtwo rains down psychic energy onto every opponent on the field. It temporarily immobilizes any enemy hit by it as well as lowering their durability. The decreased stat is physical if X and special if Y.

TCG Moves

_{(oh hey it’s that one Mewtwo render people use for all their thumbnails-)}

Yep, we didn’t forget about the trading card game and Mewtwo has numerous cards all with special abilities to them. We want to make it clear, we do not know if the episode will include these or not, but Pokemon cards can directly interact with the main games with the e-Reader, so maybe (the verdict will address if these would play a major factor or not). To be comprehensive, we’re including them in this blog, so:

• Barrier: With the cost of one energy, all effects of attacks, including damage, are prevented.
• Psycrush: Mewtwo uses this psychic attack to deal damage depending on the amount of energy the opponent has.
• Complete Recovery: Discarding all the energy they have, Mewtwo is fully recovered from damage and is recovered from statuses like Poison and Confused.
• Psycho Blast: This blast will get rid of one energy from the opponent.
• Energy Burst: This attack deals damage depending on the amount of energy both Mewtwo and his opponent have.
• Psychic Erase: Mewtwo can choose an attack from the opponent and prevent them from using it for a turn.
• Recover: Discarding an energy gets rid of 6 damage counters from Mewtwo.
• Hypnoblast: Along with dealing damage, the opponent is now forcefully fallen asleep.
• Psybolt: Mewtwo can paralyze opponents with this attack.
• Psyjack: Another ability that prevents an opponent from doing a specific attack for one turn.
• Psy-Erase: Lets Mewtwo look at the opponent’s arsenal/hand and discard them if it’s a basic Pokemon or evolution card.
• Reflect Shield: If an attack does damage, Mewtwo can prevent the damage from happening and deal 20 damage back to them.
• Reflective Barrier: If Mewtwo is damaged by an attack (even if they were to be KOed), the exact same damage is reflected back at the opponent.
• Damage Change: This switches all damage on Mewtwo to the opponent.
• Darkness Switch: Discarding an energy will allow Mewtwo to switch all the damage they have suffered and transfer it to his opponent.
• Psybarrier: Prevent all effects of attacks, including damage, done to Mewtwo by your opponent (that isn’t an Evolved Pokémon.)
• Photon Wave: If an opponent is hit by this attack, any damage done by them is reduced.
• Shatter Shot: This basically does more damage depending on the amount of energy Mewtwo has.
• Reigning Pulse: Forces confusion on the opponent.
• Psychic Nova-GX: This attack prevents all damage done to Mewtwo for the opponent’s next turn.
• Psycrush-GX: This forcefully makes the opponent get rid of all the energy they have.
• Photon Barrier: This ability lets Mewtwo prevent all effects of attacks from an opponent done to him (though it should be noted actual damage will still go through)

Resistances

As a Pokemon, Mewtwo has obvious resistances to fellow Psychic types, as well as the Fighting type. However, there’s more than just the type chart to look at:

• Fighting and Psychic Type Moves: Natural move resistances that come with Mewtwo’s typing.
• Transmutation: Mewtwo has shown resistance to some form of transmutations on different occasions. After clashing with Mew, which resulted in Ash having to get in between them in an attempt to get them to stop, he was turned to stone while Mewtwo and Mew were fine afterwards, and also didn’t get petrified after successfully interrupting Sird’s sending out of Darkrai as last resort to catch Deoxys while Pokedex Holders weren’t as lucky as they were caught in the proxy of the attack which turns them into an stone statues. (They got fine eventually.)
• Extreme Heat: There are several Pokemon that have ridiculous high temperature statements and Pokemon like Mewtwo can go near them without issue. Camerupt stores up 18,000 degrees of magma inside its humps, Magcargo does the same with the heat it generates that vaporizes water on contact and the highest Pokemon has been known to go so far is Mega Heatran generating 1.8 million degrees of heat if it goes all out.
• Absolute Zero: Sheer Cold is a move stated to be absolute zero and in Legends ZA, Pokemon just take normal damage from it instead of being instantly knocked out. For more cold resistance, trainers like Paxton and Harmony can take freezing gale attacks without freezing and Fire-type moves can thaw out frozen Pokemon.
• Paralysis/Poison/Burn/Confusion/Sleep: While it’s in its form “Mewtwo the Unrivaled”, Mewtwo can purge itself of these status effects without issue and moves like Safeguard prevent them from landing in the first place.
• Stat debuffs: While in their Unrivaled form, they’re able to purge themselves from any debuff. Moves like Mist also makes it so that their stats can’t get lowered.
• Electricity: Pokemon like Mewtwo can survive electric attacks from Pikachu and Raichu that can reach the power of 100,000 to a whooping 50 million volts.
• Acid: Pokemon can survive the aptly named Acid move without corroding or melting away which uses harsh acid.
• Spatial Manipulation: This is a weirdly surprising consistent resistance, the most notable one is of course Palkia’s spatial rend, which is confirmed to tear the space with the foe. They are the storm that is approaching as they can do a Judgement Cut like animation, but trainers and Pokemon are fine aside from taking damage. In Pokken Tournament, Darkrai can slice apart rifts in space too and other Pokemon just take normal damage.
• Time Manipulation (Debatable): Pokemon can survive Dialga’s Roar of Time, which has been stated several times to be able to distort time. May and Latias (and Mewtwo if you traded them over from XY) can also enter Dialga’s realm which is stated to be a place where time has stopped and so quiet that sounds get stopped (so this is not a timeless void scenario)
• Soul Manipulation: I mean, surprisingly??? Moltres of the Galar region consumes and destroys the souls of its victims with its aura and Pokemon can survive those attacks without their spirits being destroyed obviously.
• Mind Manipulation: Are we really not surprised here? Yes, Mewtwo can resist any form of mind manipulation. That is unless if you have an powerful tech or ancient relic to bypass this. Like the time Howard used an neural link headband to transfer his conscious into Mewtwo in Detective Pikachu and
• Battle Field Removal: Mewtwo’s dimensional teleportation lets it come back from being dimensionally displaced.

Forms

Mewtwo the Unrivaled

Mewtwo absorbed Terastal Energy from the Great Crater of Paldea to take this form, naturally becoming Tera Psychic. In this state, all of Mewtwo’s Psychic type moves gain a 2x boost, as opposed to the 1.5x of STAB. As a 7 Star Raid Pokemon, Mewtwo’s HP is multiplied by 50. Mewtwo can purge itself of any debuff or non-volatile status, turn off the abilities of the enemy Pokemon, and reset any boost its opponents gives itself. It’s immune to many effects, like OHKO moves (be it damaging like Sheer Cold or effects like Destiny Bond), item altering moves like Trick, type changing moves like Soak or Forest’s Curse, etc. However, the most important is the Tera Shield (that crystally health bar shown above). Non Tera moves do WAAAY less damage (according to Dendra) to the Tera Pokemon. If we look behind the scenes, we can see that normal moves do a whopping .2x damage to a Tera Shield. And simply throwing it up cures it of any status effect, and renders it immune to any status move, volatile or otherwise.

Mega Mewtwo X

Using the Mewtwonite X stone, Mewtwo can achieve Mega Evolution! In this state, its psychic power has strengthened its body physically. So much so that it’s even capable of sprinting 100 meters in only two seconds. It’s no slouch at still using its psychic powers in this state, but Mega Mewtwo X focuses way more on power. It even has a grip strength of one ton, so don’t let it grab you! For some reason in this form they can also stretch their limbs.

Mega Mewtwo Y

Don’t let the smaller size fool you, when drawing out the power within the Mewtwonite Y stone, Mewtwo can achieve the Mega Mewtwo Y transformation. Its muscles aren’t quite as strong in this state, but its mental abilities make up for this in full. Get this: all Mewtwo has to do is just form a thought, and it can smash a skyscraper to bits, incredible! This is one Pokemon you don’t wanna upset!

Feats

Overall

• One of the strongest Pokémon to ever exist
• Saved hundreds of cloned Pokémon and helps give them better lives
• Understood the meaning of life, cool!
• Saved Tim and Detective Pikachu who happened to be his dad (it was a weird movie)
• Befriended trainers like Red, Gold, Blaine, and others after being caught and formed strong bonds with them…
• …Or perhaps became a total evil asshole and works for Giovanni in Rainbow Rocket
• Able to match Mew, despite being a clone
• Defeated Ash, Gary Oak, Deoxys, Blue, most of Red’s team, Giovanni, and several Genesect
• One of Hatsune Miku’s Pokémon

Power

• Creates a large explosion from orbit using his burst attack. (1.01 petatons of TNT) (Shadow Mewtwo)
• As Mega Mewtwo Y, can “smash a Skyscraper to smithereens” with nothing but a thought.
• Creates a massive storm with just the wave of his hand.
• Completely destroys a Team Rocket base while breaking out of his restrictive armor. (Base)
• Defeated Red’s Articuno in a single attack. (Base)
• Mr. Fuji believed Mewtwo to be powerful enough that Mega Evolution would be needed to stand a chance of victory. (Base)
• Managed to warp an entire lake. (Base)
• Lifts a bus with their psychic powers
• Took on both Lucario and Cinderace and overpowered them
• Mable theorizes Mewtwo could power the Ultimate Weapon

Speed

• Manages to keep up with several Genesect, including while in their Extremespeed forms.
• Can teleport into orbit in an instant
• Should be superior in speed to Pokemon like Metagross, who can think faster than a supercomputer
• Teleported away from a Technoblast, which is described as being a beam of light.
• Their psychic energy spread across an island really fast
• Mega Mewtwo X can move 100 meters in only 2 seconds
• Blocked a Thunderbolt from Magneton
• Flies so hard and swiftly, the Team Rocket armor breaks off midflight
• Blocks Pikachu’s Quick Attack and Cinderace’s Blaze Kick with ease

Durability

• Survived being tortured by Giovanni
• Took a blast from Red’s Mega Charizard X
• Effortlessly blocked and survived attacks from Ash’s Pikachu and Lucario & Goh’s Cinderace
• Survived getting sent flying through a skyscraper by a Volt Tackle.
• Shakes off Blizzard from Red’s Articuno
• Was blasted by Mew to leave a crater but just shakes it off
• Got blasted by electricity but is fine

Scaling

Miscellaneous Trainers
& Pokémon

Mewtwo, being the strongest psychic type Pokemon there is, should have no trouble scaling to the feats and abilities of other psychic types. And, being a legendary, should comfortably scale above any physical feat that a non legendary has committed.

• Galarian Rapidash’s psycho cut can punch a hole right through thick metal sheet
• Ash’s Pikachu dispersed a huge storm over Mountain Tensei (139.1 Megatons of TNT)
• Rhyhorn has the power to shatter mountains (751 Kilotons – 6.47 Megatons of TNT)
• Shokan Slayer Machamp can seismic toss you into orbit (133.43 Kilotons of TNT)
• A lot of Gyarados made the Lake of Rage which was a crater (323.94 Kilotons of TNT each)
• Tyranitar makes mountains “crumble” with their earthquakes (750.86 Kilotons – 51.8 Megatons of TNT)
• Abomasnow caused a huge snowstorm all over Dendemille Town to Route 17 in Kalos (764.88 Megatons of TNT)
• Sawk can cleave the ocean with A KARATE CHOP (1.48 Gigatons of TNT)
• Gardevoir has the power to make black holes (and Professor Oak straight up calls it one) (5.69 Yottatons – 0.51 FOE)
• Metagross can think faster than a supercomputer.
  • The fastest known supercomputer can make two quintillion calculations a second.

Other Legendary Pokémon

The strongest Pokémon of tomorrow, it shouldn’t come as any surprise that the strongest in history still is in the big leagues. Mewtwo is treated as a superboss Pokémon in games like Gold and Silver, X and Y, and Legends ZA. This is important because the protagonists of those games have also battled powerful legendaries like Ho-Oh, Lugia, Xerneas, Yvetal, Zygarde, Primal Groudon, Primal Kyogre, and Mega Rayquaza. Makes sense, he was the original superboss Pokémon even when facing Red of all people, one of the strongest trainers ever even in his younger years.

The strongest legendaries like Mewtwo are generally treated as comparable anyways, with them being in the same tiers in Ultraspace wormhole and Dynamax den battles. The anime continuity also depicts this, with several going toe to toe in Pokémon the Movie: Hoopa and the Clash of Ages. Lugia could fight Unbound Hoopa, who could go up against legendaries like Reshiram and Zekrom, with Hoopa also summoning legendaries like Giratina and Kyurem, who were matched by legendaries like Mega Rayquaza and the Mega Lati twins, you get the idea. The strongest of the strong are all depicted as being in the same ball park, and Mewtwo is the original strongest of the strong.

• According to the Pokédex, Regigigas might have pulled continents and also could have created the continent of Hisui with rope. (1.663 – 7.282 Teratons of TNT)
• Volcanion BLEW UP a mountain range (47.25 Gigatons of TNT)
• Reshiram can scorch the world (aka the earth) with it’s flames (2.91 – 3.77 Exatons of TNT)
• Groudon can raise the lands and expand continents (216.31 Petatons of TNT)
• Mega Rayquaza destroyed a meteor in the Delta Episode (75 Teratons of TNT)
• In the anime, the Megalith was going to surface wipe the planet, but thankfully Zygarde 100% destroys it (183.24 Petatons of TNT)
• In the manga, Deoxys’ meteor would have destroyed the planet if not stopped (896.53 Zettatons of TNT)
• Necrozma can light up all of Ultra Space (Multi-Solar System – Universal+) (16.8 Trillion – 2.42 Quadrillion times FTL, possibly infinite)
• Solgaleo/Lunala helps return the light from Ultra Megalopolis to the main universe in Alola after they are freed from Necrozma (3.71 – 9.27 Billion times FTL)
• Lunala can fly through Ultra Space at a fast speed (1 Billion times FTL)
• Solgaleo has the power to light up the universe/world. World likely means universe in context as Solgaleo is described to live in another world (which is Ultra Space) when it’s an interdimensional being (and Cosmog has similar entries). Solgaleo can also fuse with Necrozma who is also from Ultra Space that can give or steal light from other worlds in Ultra Space as well. (34.93 teraFOE)

Creation Trio

It shouldn’t come as any surprise that the strongest in history is still in the big leagues, again. No seriously, it really shouldn’t. Sinnoh’s Creation Trio boast some of the most impressive feats in the franchise (which is why they’re getting their own section), but when you actually look at the full picture, they’re not treated as their own tier compared to other strong legendary Pokémon. They’re in the same Ultra Space wormholes and Dynamax dens as their fellow legends, and the trainers that are comparable to them like Cynthia aren’t some big deal in the Battle Tree and PWT (in comparison to the other champion level trainers Mewtwo should scale to, to be clear). Mewtwo was also on Rainbow Rocket Giovanni’s team, above Cyrus who has his own Creation Trio member, so there is a clear scaling chain regardless. You could reasonably say this is an alternate Mewtwo and therefore is unusable, but it does support the idea that the Creation Trio aren’t magically out of someone like Mewtwo’s reach.

The one main time in Pokémon media we’ve seen them go against other legendaries was the previously mentioned Hoopa movie, where Mega Rayquaza held the lead against Giratina. Considering Mewtwo being a big deal amongst other legendaries (especially since he’s a legendary with a Mega Evolution after all), it’s only weird to separate the Creation Trio from someone like them if you hyper focus on the feats they have. The one Sinnoh legend that shouldn’t be scaled to is Arceus, which, duh. Arceus is always treated as its own special being even amongst other legendaries, always being able to handle the full Creation Trio at once like in Pokémon: Arceus and the Jewel of Life. To conclude, Mewtwo should scale to Sinnoh’s Creation Trio for the same reasons they scale to any other Pokémon box art legendary. The Creation Trio are strong, but there’s no actual reason they should be stronger (than the other big legendaries like Mewtwo).

• With Dialga’s birth, time began to flow ceaselessly like a great river. Dialga can directly control and manipulate the flow of time (and applies it offensively with Roar of Time). They’re responsible for the very concept of time. (Multiversal (Potentially +), see cosmology) (Possibly Infinite Speed)
• Meanwhile, Palkia controls and manipulates space itself and created multiple dimensions of space that will all reach the same space. (Multiversal, see cosmology)
• Depending whether you play Diamond or Pearl, Palkia and Dialga release a shockwave of sorts to distort space and time. (Universal) (104.8 Quadrillions times FTL but do note it’s unclear about the whole scope, so the speed part of this is more debatable)
• They also make a galaxy in a short amount of time (Galaxy holy shit) (416.67 billion times FTL)
• Palkia and Dialga also started making a universe in the anime because of Cyrus’ instruction
• When waking up, Arceus was able to send out shockwaves that travelled from the main universe. To be clear, we are NOT scaling Mewtwo to Arceus’ overall power, BUT the Creation Trio have intercepted Arceus’ much more serious attacks which logically should be faster than his casual wake up. Arceus has even used their shockwaves as attacks before and Giratina properly reacts and avoids it. (404.1 Quadrillion – 4.1 Quintillion times FTL)
• Giratina sustained a rift in Legends Arceus that was going to destroy all of space-time. (Low Multiversal to possibly Multiversal)

Cosmology

Dread it, run from it, it arrives all the same.

Pokemon has had many forms of media throughout the years, but we’ll mainly stick with the mainline games and anime to talk about his vast cosmology. Keep in mind, despite some similarities, these two are different continuities, so what applies to one may not necessarily apply to the other. We’ll try to keep this as sufficient but digestible as possible.

Games

_{(This’ll be important in a bit, you’ll see why)}

In the beginning, there was nothing or a churning turmoil of chaos, until one day, Arceus released an egg that contained the Pokemon of Myth (or as fans call them, the Creation Trio): Dialga, Palkia and Giratina. Time began to spin and space started to expand as these creatures made the Pokemon multiverse. With them exists a large number of parallel worlds. This is actually the existence of the classic cartridge theory, basically that a game sold is a universe in the grander multiverse. There’s a lot of supporting evidence such as when trading between game copies is described as travelling across space and time, and the Spiky Eared Pichu can’t be traded it’s already been through too much space-time travel, but it’s especially apparent with Black & White’s Entralink, which can connect to other game’s version of Unova, which is described as another player’s world. There’s over 350 million sold games therefore over 350 million universes at least. This is supported even more in Masters EX, where the existence of “classic” Red where he comes from a parallel universe, different from the “main” one. Serena and Calem theorize they’re from a different Kalos than Harmony and Urbain, as the former two have never heard of the ZA Royale or Wild Zones. The events of Legends Z-A seems to have taken place in a different world where both Yveltal and Xerneas were captured by Team Flare. In X and Y, only one of the duo has taken place, and the Ultimate Weapon looks like a combination of the two versions.

The Dream Tree

Furthermore, there’s the Dream World, the dimension where everyone’s dreams coalesce, and the Interdream Zone, a world in between dreams and reality. We’ve known dreams were but another reality since R/S/E, but it wasn’t developed until the Unovan games. Where the players can catch Pokemon, grow berries, and get hidden abilities inside their Pokemon’s dreams and bring them to the waking world, to the Etralink mentioned above. The Dream World is shared between Pokemon, so it’s not one Dream World per Pokemon. And there’s also the Interdream Zone. The world is identical to our real one (being an augmented reality game). And it apparently extends across time and space, and even the Distortion World. These parallel worlds are relevant enough for Burnet to have her research into them help her with her research into Ultra Space.

That’s not the limit of Pokemon’s multiverse, however, as scientists like Professor Sada and Turo have described there are innumerable possibilities between space and time and how they’re not connected to a continuous past or future (because spoiler warning, the Professor is dead in the main game but alive here). This is basically describing the classic many worlds interpretation (MWI for short) which is supported extremely well as the existence of Omega Ruby/Alpha Sapphire described another world of Hoenn where the Ultimate Weapon did not fire over 3000 years ago and Mega Evolution never existed (clearly referring to the original games). There’s also the existence of Rainbow Rocket in Ultra Sun & Moon which has villains from explicitly alternate worlds where they actually succeeded in their goals and were never stopped. Junichi Masuda himself has described time and space as infinite, making it clear Pokemon has an infinite multiversal cosmology.

And finally comes Ultra Space that’s been stated numerous times to be a whole dimension. This dimension houses numerous Ultra Wormholes that connect to countless other worlds. It’s mainly known for where the Ultra Beasts lurk, but it has many, many other worlds/universes. It bare minimum houses at least 62 universes (just mainly counting the legendaries that can be caught there), but it also contains the cartridge theory universes mentioned earlier. This is shown when in Sun & Moon, you can go to the other box Legendary’s world to get a Cosmog via Ultra Wormhole. There’s also Anabel appearing in Alola through an Ultra Wormhole, where she recalls being in charge of a tower, clearly referencing her time in Emerald and there’s more evidence such as another Ultra Wormhole appearing in the Sword & Shield games. It also contains alternate timelines such as the previously mentioned Rainbow Rocket, who come from Ultra Wormholes from timelines they succeeded in their goals. This makes Ultra Space connected to and encompassing all the worlds and timeline within Pokemon’s vast multiverse.

Anime

You’re probably familiar with this from Ash vs Yugi’s blog but just to go through it quickly, there’s the main universe that Ash and his friends reside in, but there’s also Giratina’s reverse/distortion world which supports it. Palkia and Dialga’s dimensions both reside in this macrocosm that Palkia controls/stabilizes (which is all of space).

However, there’s still more to cover as there’s also something known as the Reflection Cave, where there are many portals that act worlds opposite to the main cast. According to Clemont, there are “as many alternate worlds as there are mirrors”. We see a brief glimpse of towards the end of the dedicated episode just how many vast mirrors there are. How many mirrors there are exactly in the cave is not known, but there’s reason to suggest a rather vast number.

And of course there’s the anime version of Ultra Space. Like the games, in order to traverse this dimension, you must do so via the Ultra Wormholes. These wormholes distort time and space when opened, which causes one world to connect to another. In Legends, the Pokemon known as Necrozma came from Ultra Space and unleashed light into Alola, as well as being the “brightest thing in the world.” An example of a world is Poipole’s world. The real important thing of course is Dia’s statement, which he himself explains there are parallel worlds in Ultra Space that branch out from choices. To quote him more specifically:

“Suppose you reach a crossroads. Call this path A, and this B. You’d like to take both paths, but you can’t go both ways at once. But if you could, these paths would be parallel worlds. The paths would split up further after that, and even further still later on, giving birth to more and more parallel worlds.”

This makes it clear Ultra Space works on Many Worlds Interpretation, where every choice, a new universe will emerge from the other choice and create more and more, being very similar to how the game’s work.

Weaknesses

Mewtwo is obviously mighty, but not at all unstoppable. As a Psychic type, Bug, Dark, and Ghost type moves are twice as effective against him. While Mega Mewtwo X’s Psychic-Fighting typing removes those Ghost and Bug weaknesses, Mewtwo does gain weaknesses to Flying and Fairy type attacks. While Mewtwo also has multiple ways to amplify and heal itself, said methods have eventual usage limits, and obviously aren’t going to be accessible were Mewtwo to be knocked out.

Verdicts

Shadow

Stats

Attack Potency

At first, you’d think Shadow would have an initial advantage over Mewtwo—which is not insane to think. Base Shadow can scale to feats that are far beyond the planetary range, black hole feats that can get star to solar system ranges of power, and even scaling to Sonic defeating Erazor Djinn grants Shadow half-universal levels of power. In Sonic Prime, Sonic withstood the explosion of the Paradox Prism in his face, which shattered the entire universe, so that’s another level of power Shadow can be compared to. In contrast, Mewtwo would be scaling to planetary level feats of legendary Pokémon—both in the games and the anime. Arguably, even a single Gardevoir can reach star levels of power thanks to the black holes it generates. Given how Mewtwo is portrayed as powerful as great legendaries like Solgaleo, he can debatably reach massively solar system levels of power, but that’s obviously below base Shadow’s level. But it isn’t as simple as this, right?

Definitely not. Mewtwo has multiple avenues to scale to the gods of Pokémon: the Creation Trio. And, thanks to that, base Shadow is completely outmatched by their universe and timeline destroying power. There’s no sugarcoating it, there’s no scaling chain saving base Shadow from even the lowest interpretation of Creation Trio’s attack potency, but, luckily for Shadow, this isn’t his best either. That’s where his forms—Doom Shadow and Super Shadow—come in. Scaling to characters like Solaris, Egg Wizard and Time Eater, for example, also puts him in a power of at least universal level. But that’s not going deep with both. They can reach far higher if you scale them to their respective cosmologies, which vary in size and scope depending on what interpretations you buy for either. It’s a very heated topic, but we’ll try to split it in four ways: low-ends, mid-ends, high-ends and extreme high-ends, to see who ultimately has the advantage when you try all possible interpretations. This will be comparing their overall cosmologies first; after it, we’ll discuss if Mewtwo and Shadow can scale to the full scope of their cosmologies. Without further ado, let’s see how they compare.

Cosmology Low-Ends

We’ll be starting with the more conservative ends for both franchise’s respective cosmologies, while both series have arguments that can far eclipse the ones argued in this subsection, and will be in fact expanded upon in following subsections, we believe it best to start with lower ends for these characters as they are the most commonly agreed upon. To start, Sonic’s Multiverse should compose of anywhere between 15 – 19 Universes, if one wants further elaboration on how/why this end is reached, then check the dedicated Cosmology section. As for Pokemon’s Multiverse, it should be composed of up to at least 60 Universes using the unique areas present for each individual Legendary Pokemon that can be found in Ultra Space. On paper, this would seem like a clean sweep for Mewtwo, however we believe this argument to be flawed due to the complicated nature of Ultra Space.

While on paper one could argue that Ultra Space encompasses the entire cosmology, not much present within the games actually supports this idea and instead leans more-so into the idea of Ultra Space being its own distinct universe that serves as a bridge to other universes rather than encompassing the entire cosmology. It should be noted, that like most cosmology arguments, this can be based on one’s own interpretation, however we believe the lack of statements supporting the idea of encompassing along with Ultra Space more-so being treated as a space occupied with countless different wormholes that transport you to other universes rather than Ultra Space having to encompass the entire Multiverse in and of itself. Without Ultra Space, Mewtwo should instead only scale to vaguely somewhere in the realm of 4x Universal.

When comparing their cosmological low-ends, AP goes to Shadow.

Cosmology Mid-Ends

In the Mid-Ends we have a larger finite number of universes coming from both Cartridge Theory and Speed Simulator. Speed Simulator in lore clarifies that every player who joins the game comes from a different universe, and that number keeps rising! Unfortunately the exact number cannot be determined as Roblox doesn’t provide that information, however, we can still get a number used here from the highest concurrent player count which is 300,000x uni. Pretty impressive all things considered. However, Pokemon’s cartridge theory eclipses it as it comes at a roughly large number of 350,000,000x uni. No matter how you look at it here, Mewtwo takes the edge in Mid-Ends.

Cosmology High-Ends

When it comes to comparing their respective high-ends, both series have numerous statements that can support the idea of an infinite Multiverse. When it comes to the Sonic franchise, Tails’ statements in Tailstube, a statement found on Sonic Racing: Crossworlds’ website, Maginaryworld being stated to encompass an infinite number of dream worlds, and Sonic: Speed Simulator being stated to have an endlessly growing player count with each individual player representing a universe all support the idea of the Sonic series having an infinite Multiverse. When it comes to Pokemon, things are quite similar, Professor Sada/Turo have claimed there is “innumerable possibilities between time and space” and similar to Sonic: Speed Simulator, the idea behind Cartridge Theory would support the idea of infinite worlds, as each copy of a Pokemon game sold would lend itself to then becoming an entirely new universe.

No matter which way you slice it, we believe both series to have practically identical arguments for Multi+, making it so that the high-ends for Shadow and Mewtwo is a tie.

Cosmology Extreme High-Ends

For the highest takes for cosmology, we look at White Space. As clarified earlier, White Space is a bulkspace encompassing the infinitely wider Sonic multiverse. It is described as a hub between time periods and a realm between dimensions. With it even containing timelines that have been wiped from existence like the 06 timeline. It even has descriptions regarding it as a ceaseless expanse and endless. With all this information in mind, White Space can be considered a 5-D realm. As mentioned before, Ultra Space doesn’t encompass the entirety of the Pokemon multiverse, as it is simply a nexus point that contains gateways and wormholes to universes instead. Therefore Ultra Space would not be considered 5-D. So for the Extreme High-ends, Shadow takes it.

Overall

When it comes to comparing the differing ends of their respective cosmologies, while Mewtwo does take the mid-ends via Cartridge Theory, we believe Shadow to overall take more categories in this regard due to tying in high-ends and being stronger when it comes to low-ends and extreme high-ends. However, this is just when comparing their overall cosmologies, the much bigger question to be posed is…

Scaling

Now that we know where their cosmologies reach, who actually scales? There’s a lot of cosmology threatening feats for both Shadow and Mewtwo, and, beyond just analyzing how wide their multiverses are, we have to determine if they can even scale to said scope in the first place. We’ll go over Shadow’s scaling chains first, and then discuss Mewtwo’s.

Solaris

This one is pretty simple, and pretty blatant. When Mephiles and Iblis fused, they spread their light across the universe and beyond and turned into the all-powerful Solaris. Eggman notes both in English and Japanese that he was gonna destroy all existing timelines, and time itself for that matter—turning everything into nothing. Timelines and other dimensions, as Eggman mentions in English that his power is enough to eat dimensions for lunch, and in Japanese that his body had absorbed multiple dimensions already by fusing. The Encyclospeedia even has statements that all of space-time was in danger, and that he was threatening all of time.

“Can Solaris destroy all of the cosmology at once, or is he only destroying universe by universe?”

The latter comes from Eggman’s “eats dimensions for lunch” quote, implying that he’s eating universes one by one. That’s not what he means, though. Eating dimensions for lunch is illustrating Solaris’ power, and obviously, it wouldn’t make sense if he was threatening all timelines and dimensions if he wasn’t stopped. Plus, the fact that he’s a super-dimensional being would mean that he exists above the cosmology, so him being capable of destroying all of the Sonic cosmology would ultimately make sense.

Time Eater

When it comes to Time Eater, the entity has repeatedly been stated to have erased all of space and time, and by virtue of White Space existing, it stands to reason that this would’ve included the various universes that make up Sonic’s overall cosmology as otherwise the cast likely wouldn’t even be in White Space in the first place. While some have proposed the idea of Time Eater only affecting one timeline, the inclusion of Crisis City, which is described as an alternate timeline, as well as various statements stating that the Time Eater “distorts different dimensions and time planes” and that White Space is “the central hub for restoring shattered timelines.” All in all, there’s simply too much evidence that supports the idea of the Time Eater wiping the entire cosmology, and Shadow should obviously scale considering he’s Sonic’s equal.

Black Doom

Black Doom was encompassing all of White Space and preventing it from healing via his power, with Ian Flynn clarifying that Black Doom was threatening all of creation during the events of Shadow Generations. The manga adaptation, Black Jet Shadow the Hedgehog, would also clarify that White Space would begin to disappear upon Black Doom’s defeat. While one could argue that we don’t see Black Doom’s corruption of White Space during Sonic’s events, there’s no real reason to assume it would be in the first place as Black Doom’s control over White Space is clarified countless times, on top of the fact that one would have to argue Rouge is flying massive distances in absurdly short times to go back and forth between Sonic and Shadow.

Singular Creation Trio

An argument proposed for the Creation Trio scaling to the entire cosmology is the idea that there is one singular Creation Trio that sustains Pokemon’s entire Multiverse. We believe that this idea is flawed and directly opposed by the games in numerous ways. Most glaringly, the games Ultra Sun/Ultra Moon directly oppose such an idea, as Dialga/Palkia are able to be found within Ultra Space despite Cyrus owning his own Dialga/Palkia as of the events of Rainbow Rocket. On its own, this wouldn’t be a dealbreaker, as one could argue that beating Cyrus would simply free that member of the Creation Trio leading to us being able to catch it later. The issue arises however in the fact that Dialga/Palkia can be found before the events of Rainbow Rocket, and you can even fight Cyrus’ own Dialga/Palkia with your own Dialga/Palkia. It should also be noted that Cyrus wields the same member of the Creation Trio that is findable in Ultra Space in one’s own version of the game, so for example Cyrus wields Dialga in Ultra Sun, who is only catchable in Ultra Sun.

To compound things further, the Arceus event in HeartGold/SoulSilver directly shows us the process of Arceus creating a member of the Creation Trio, and considering that universe would already contain its own Dialga/Palkia/Giratina, it stands to reason that this event is meant to convey to us that there isn’t exclusively 1 Creation Trio in total but rather multiple that Arceus creates. Cartridge Theory further supports this, as each individual copy of each individual Pokemon game would necessitate countless different versions of the Creation Trio for the Generation 4 games in particular, as the climaxes of these games would be narratively impossible if there was only one Creation Trio. Finally, the newest event in Pokemon Masters EX celebrating the arrival of Origin Palkia and Dialga introduces what is seemingly a 2nd Palkia to the island of Pasio, as the only other time Palkia had been seen previously is when under the control of Cyrus who is nowhere to be seen in this event and would have no reason to release Palkia nor is shown to release Palkia at any time.

All in all, we believe that the games have continuously gone against the idea of there being a single Creation Trio, and that in general for the idea to be bought one must either go against the idea of Cartridge Theory altogether or argue for severe narrative impossibilities within games where the Creation Trio are extremely important. Due to this, we don’t believe this is a valid avenue for Mewtwo to scale to the entire cosmology with.

Dialga

Dialga is the God of Time within Pokemon, and because of that, one could theoretically argue that even if there is only one singular Dialga that they could affect or embody time across the entire Multiverse therefore leading to them scaling to the entire cosmology and Mewtwo would then scale by proxy. However, we believe this argument to be flawed for a few reasons. To start, nothing suggests the idea that Dialga’s influence over time extends beyond the universe it is in control of, as games such as Legends: Arceus have made it clear that Dialga and Palkia are both needed respectively to make up the universe. Furthermore, Pokedex entries in games such as Pearl/Platinum/Legends: Arceus feed into the idea of Dialga’s control over time being contained to a singular universe, with statements such as “time began moving when Dialga was born”, “time flows when Dialga’s heart beats”, and “the birth of Dialga is what caused the vast river of time to begin flowing in our world.” The latter especially feeds into this idea, as it specifically uses the wording of “our world” and the idea of a “river of time” would imply a singular stream of time that comes forth from Dialga’s birth rather than multiple rivers/branches.

With all this in mind, we believe that Dialga’s control over time should only apply to the singular universe it occupies rather than the entire cosmology, negating this as a valid avenue for Mewtwo to scale to the entire cosmology.

Palkia

An argument similar to Dialga’s but with some more meat on its bone, Palkia’s status as Pokemon’s God of Space could lead to one interpreting it as being responsible for Pokemon’s entire Multiverse, especially when one factors in the statement that “Palkia, the one born of the sea, creates multiple dimensions of space. Whether one is alive or not, they will reach the same space — all thanks to Palkia.” However, this argument has many similar pitfalls to Dialga’s, namely that like Dialga, Palkia’s control over space is continuously referred to in a singular sense rather than that of the entire Multiverse. However, one could bring up that statement about Palkia right? While on the surface this would be a nail in the coffin, that would be far from the truth, as this statement shouldn’t really apply to the common VS definition of dimensions nor is it even stating that Palkia causes all dimensions to reach the same space in the first place.

When it comes to the former, it is extremely likely that it is simply referring to the 3 dimensions of space that make up our universe, which would be in-line with the fact that both Palkia and Dialga are necessary to create a new universe and or sustain an existing one, as Palkia would embody the 3 dimensions of space while Dialga embodies the dimension of time. As for the latter, it’s pretty blatantly referring to the idea that Palkia’s creation of space makes it so that everyone, whether they are alive or dead, exist within and head to the same destination. If one thinks of it in the context of religious text and it becomes pretty obvious this isn’t referring to the idea of Palkia making all dimensions converge.

All in all, just like its sibling, we believe Palkia’s arguments of scaling to the broader Multiverse to be flawed, therefore negating another avenue for Mewtwo to scale to the entire cosmology.

Giratina’s Rift

During the events of Legends: Arceus, Giratina would create a space-time rift that is stated to be a portal to “innumerable other dimensions” by Cogita. On paper, this would seem like slam dunk evidence of Multi+ scaling, however the cracks begin to form when one looks at the original Japanese version of the text. In that version, while the kanji could be used to signify innumerable, it’s just as likely to be used to mean multiple or several, with one translation instead having Cogita say “The rift in time and space is a hole that connects to multiple dimensions of time and space…”

It should be noted that this is still an incredibly strong feat, and the main avenue for which Mewtwo can be scaled up to 4x Universal, as the rift would be affecting Dialga’s realm, Palkia’s realm, and the Distortion World on top of our own universe. However, this is obviously a far cry from what innumerable would suggest, and even if that was bought, Shadow can match those Multi+ ends with his own as we went over already. All in all, while we think the feat is valid, we aren’t particularly sold on it getting as high as one might expect, and even if one did argue it that high, Shadow would be able to match or even surpass it with his own ends.

Sustaining Ultra Space

An argument made for the idea of the Creation Trio and by extension Mewtwo scaling to the entire cosmology is that of the previously mentioned Ultra Space, a universe that is capable of connecting all other universes to one another via Ultra Wormholes. Due to Ultra Space being something that must be actively sustained by Palkia, considering it is the God of Space after all, one could argue that Palkia should therefore scale to Ultra Space and everything it embodies within itself which should theoretically include the entire cosmology.

The issue arises in the fact that, as mentioned above, we don’t believe Ultra Space encompasses the entire cosmology but is more-so a sort of bridge universe between other universes. Nothing suggests Ultra Space encompasses literally everything, and considering that travel to and from other universes via Ultra Space is done via Ultra Wormholes, it would again more-so just imply that it serves as a bridgepoint between the countless different universes that exist within Pokemon, rather than it itself being larger than Pokemon’s entire Multiverse. Even if Ultra Space was encompassing it rather than merely being connected to it, the existence of multiple Creation Trio’s would mean that an infinite number of Palkia’s is sustaining Ultra Space rather than just one, making the scaling chain incredibly iffy. All in all, we believe this argument to be flawed.

Anime Scaling (AP)

While the Pokemon anime has its own cosmology comparable to that of the games’, at least when it comes to non-finite ends, there’s not much reason to assume Mewtwo scales within the anime. An important distinction to be made when compositing, is that feats from one continuity do not carry over to the next if that version of the character in that continuity doesn’t scale. Unlike the games, Mewtwo isn’t portrayed in any canonical material as being equivalent to the Creation Trio. While one could point to their fights with Ash as late as Journeys, someone who has fought with the Creation Trio, Ash’s fights with the Creation Trio in the canon Pokemon anime material also even as late as Journeys would have things go incredibly poorly. Furthermore, Mewtwo in the anime never once crosses paths with the Creation Trio, and their boast of being “created to be the world’s strongest Pokemon” (Infinite Bros?) therefore shouldn’t have as much merit as if they had actually fought.

All in all, Mewtwo simply lacks substantial enough arguments to scale to the Creation Trio when it comes to canon anime material, and their lack of appearances in even something like the Hoopa movie further compound this issue.

Speed

While we may have Mewtwo beat by Shadow in strength, could the Ultimate Pokemon match Shadow’s wide variety of extremely high speed feats such as the Paradox Prism’s shattering being prevented by Shadow’s Chaos Control, which can get up to 1 Quintillion x FTL, or Black Doom encompassing all of White Space which can also get all the way up to 1 Quintillion x FTL? To be blunt, can Mewtwo match or surpass Shadow in some kind of…Speed Battle…say that again?

Ultra Space Travel

First and foremost, this section will be incredibly short as none of us on Shadow’s side of the aisle think this feat has any issues. Solgaleo/Lunala are clearly travelling countless light years, literally counted in-game as light years, across Ultra Space in incredibly short amounts of time. To travel that much distance in that short of time would require speeds of up to 1 Billion x FTL. This would be…rough, as it would mean Shadow’s finite ends can reach up to 1 Billion x faster then Mewtwo. However, there’s still more ground to cover, so let’s continue.

Dialga and Palkia Creating a Galaxy

To be blunt, we don’t believe this feat should get anywhere near the numbers it gets for the simple reason of the galaxy being created being incredibly tiny to a point it doesn’t even the surrounding area Dialga/Palkia are inhabiting on Spear Pillar. Even if bought, it would still be noticeably slower then even lower calculations for the Shadow feats already mentioned.

Dialga and Palkia’s Distortion

This feat comes soon after Cyrus’ awakening of Dialga/Palkia, with the game’s respective Legendary sending out large shockwaves and distorting the universe’s time/space over time to wash everything away and create Cyrus’ perfect world. The issues that arise with this feat are the complete lack of timeframe and the assumptions that need to be made to assume it is affecting the entire universe instantly when we are only shown Sinnoh. Furthermore, Cyrus’ wording would imply this is an overtime event, as the player character doesn’t instantly lose as soon as Dialga/Palkia are awakened. All in all, we believe this feat to be flawed, and just like the feat above it, even if bought, Shadow’s own ends still beat it out.

Necrozma

Necrozma, in the manga, was stated to be able to absorb the light of all of Ultra Space. Depending on the interpretations you go with, it can get very impressive, but there’s a few issues with this feat. First, there’s no timeframe, which hurts the feat a lot. Even if you are generous and put a timeframe of like, a day at best, it wouldn’t be more impressive than your average Quad C Sonic feat. Other ends would have to be way more generous which at this point we can’t really assume because it has no basis.

But the biggest problem with Mewtwo scaling to this feat is that… Mewtwo can’t even scale to it at all. It took 100% Zygarde to match Necrozma, and Mewtwo got stomped by Zygarde in 50% in both of his Megas. Arguing Mewtwo would scale to Necrozma because he can in the games would be applying cross continuity scaling, which is obviously very silly.

Anime Scaling (Speed)

For the same reasons listed above for why Mewtwo doesn’t scale to the anime’s version of the Creation Trio in strength, we don’t believe they should scale in speed. While one could argue that Mewtwo should scale to Ash, who reacted to attacks from the Creation Trio, this can create pretty circular scaling chains with the same idea being able to easily apply to Shadow considering Sonic was able to react to attacks from the Titans, who are able to keep pace with and fight against Super Sonic. But this is obviously kinda silly, cuz narratively Super and Base Sonic aren’t meant to be the same speeds. And reasonably, Ash isn’t meant to be comparable to the Creation Trio moving universes or the speed of shockwaves going across universes.

Arceus Shockwave

The most prominent and fastest speed feat pushed for Pokemon would be Arceus’ shockwave in the Jewel of Life movie. And this feat…on the surface, is fine. You could nitpick that we technically don’t see it cover the whole universe on screen, but that’s a bit silly and could be applied to any feat. The feat by itself has no actual real noticeable issues…

…Except for, y’know…scaling anyone to it. At all. There isn’t really a scaling chain for anyone to the Arceus shockwave, at all. For that, we’ll need to talk about how shockwave feats scale to physicals at all.

Generally speaking, shockwave feats would not scale to the physicals of the combatant doing them, as it’s not something caused by them. You could argue tandem movement, but this is pretty obviously jank and they aren’t intended to scale to these. Generally, you’d need a Universal Energy System of some sort to argue scaling, to prove that the energy of these are connected to your physicals and thus could be scaleable. This is the reason for the Bleach shockwave feats, for instance, being bought, as the shockwaves are made of and directly controlled by the Reishi of the people in question, which is directly connected to their physical stats. There is…nothing suggesting this sort of thing exists for Pokemon, at all. Arceus has energy, but it’s not as though there’s some universal energy system that exists between all of Arceus’ attacks or anything, that’s just not a thing, and no one directly reacts to the shockwave at all or is involved with it. It’s just…a shockwave, that happened.

Similarly, while it’s been argued Palkia and Dialga moved their realms in reaction to this, we don’t see this on screen at all and it’s directly said the shockwaves cause the realms to come into contact with each other, not anything by Palkia or Dialga. It’s been argued that Arceus’ serious attacks should be faster, but there’s no real reason to think they would be other than vibes, which considering how much faster this feat is then any other feat in the franchise, is a bit troubling. It’s also been argued Giratina dodged a shockwave caused by Arceus in this move, but if you watch the footage this…literally is not what happened, it’s just Arceus uno reversing an attack back at Palkia and Giratina flying in the background out of frame before the attack even happened. It’d be pretty generous to assume this was dodging the attack.

So, overall, while the feat itself is legitimate, there’s just kinda no way to scale anyone to it without stretching a lot. And even if you scaled the Anime Creation Trio to the feat in question, Mewtwo doesn’t actually scale to the Anime Creation Trio – in the anime, they have never interacted once, so it’d be pretty odd to argue Mewtwo scales to it regardless. But, this is all up to interpretation! You could definitely buy this feat, and it’s fairly subjective and dependent on your standards. It’d vary depending on end, but if you used the high end, it’d be roughly equal to Shadow’s high ends in finite speed, so wouldn’t that make speed a tie?

…Well, there’s one issue with that. Finite speed. Infinite speed is a whole different ballpark. Pokemon has no real arguments for infinite speed that hold up, at all. The best you could maybe argue is Necrozma pulling the light from Ultra Space, but that’s from a continuity where an infinite cosmology isn’t established, and Mewtwo also doesn’t scale to that feat anyways, so it’s a crapshoot arguing it.

Sonic’s arguments, on the other hand, are far simpler. Solaris’ light that he directly uses to attack the hedgehogs in the fight was able to wipe out the entire timeline in ‘06. Not just the universe, the timeline. This would require his light to transcend time itself, making dodging it inherently immeasurable speed, as it ignores time in the speed formula. In addition to that, with infinite ends for the cosmology, Solaris being able to wipe the whole thing would necessitate him to be infinite speed, as he’d require an infinite amount of time to destroy everything unless he could react or move at infinite speeds. Not to mention Time Eater could move through time and Black Doom is affecting an infinite cosmology with his powers. If you wanna push even further, Prism-amped Sonic was performing an immeasurable speed feat too, and we know that Super forms should obviously upscale. As a result, even if you buy the Arceus shockwaves, Shadow having arguments for non-finite speeds would surpass it regardless.

Overall

At the end of the day, while this was a very, VERY, long section of the verdict, we believe we’ve successfully painted a picture that above all clarifies one idea, that being: Shadow easily scales to his entire cosmology, while Mewtwo struggles to. To expand more, we believe that Shadow most of the time should be outright stronger than the Ultimate Pokemon, and is undeniably blitzing no matter the ends. All in all, stats go to the Ultimate Lifeform, Shadow the Hedgehog.

Arsenal & Abilities

Obviously, stats is just the tip of the iceberg. There’s much more to cover, and this is where we start arsenal and abilities. Both ultimate lifeforms possess many powerful skills to bring into the fight, but it is pretty easy to tell one thing for certain: as crazy as Shadow’s powers are, Mewtwo just has so many attacks! I mean, just look at it: more than 100 unique abilities in the games is super impressive, which makes sense considering how he is one of the strongest Pokémon of all. Elemental powers with a multitude of applications, battlefield control, psychic abilities, and way more esoteric powers become way more notable than Shadow’s chaos powers and items in quantity. Just from that, it is pretty easy to tell that Mewtwo holds a notable edge in versatility…

…but it’s not as simple as that, is it? Of course not. Wild as it may be, Mewtwo’s crazy arsenal ultimately doesn’t matter as much as you’d think. A lot of them are basic damaging moves or have simple applications that Shadow can easily dodge, resist, protect from or overcome with either his own strength or abilities. Obviously, though, this isn’t about all of Mewtwo’s moves and powers. There’s still tons of useful factors that, if Shadow isn’t careful or can’t counter, could screw up his chances of winning completely. So the question becomes if Shadow has what it takes to face all of the Genetic Pokémon’s sheer amount of abilities. To try to get the full scope and not leave anything behind, we’ll be analyzing Mewtwo’s most notable techniques and see if throughout Shadow’s powerset, arsenal and resistances, he can strike back against Mewtwo’s order. No time for games, let’s dive straight into it.

Shadow VS Mewtwo’s Versatility

Mewtwo’s Cells

In the manga, Mewtwo has some very potent and deadly cells. Blaine states that Mewtwo’s cells mixed with his, and it would slowly kill him over time. This seems good, but there’s obvious flaws. The first one being that… Well, Mewtwo doesn’t offensively attack anyone with their cells. This happened to Blaine because he used his own DNA to complete the making of Mewtwo due to not having insufficient Mew cells. Even if, somehow, Mewtwo could infect Shadow with its cells, this is actually nothing new for the Ultimate Lifeform. His creation alone makes him immune to all diseases, which includes ones comparable to Mewtwo’s cellular destruction. If this is somehow not enough to convince you, Shadow was initially immune to the effects of the Metal Virus—even stating that it doesn’t work on him. The only reason it worked on him in the first place is because the Metal Virus started doing the impossible and adapted to Shadow’s biology to infect him. Obviously, Mewtwo’s cells aren’t nearly as potent as the Metal Virus, so it’s moot to say something like this would work on Shadow. There’s also the fact that Shadow is comparable to Sonic burning the Virus with speed and Super Sonic and Super Silver burning the Metal Virus with their aura’s heat. So, yeah, don’t expect Mewtwo to kill Shadow with cancer or something.

Pressure

Pressure is one of Mewtwo’s Abilities that forces their opponent to use double the amount PP for any moves they want to use. The common argument with this is that it can be used to shorten the duration of any Shadow transformation such as his Super state, as it would make spend double the amount of energy into his attacks, potentially decreasing his Super form time limit even further. However, there’s a few things to consider first. Super forms like Super Shadow consistently run on Ring energy rather than natural stamina. Sure, there’s examples like Sonic Unleashed and IDW, but those are inconsistent and have context, respectively—Unleashed didn’t even have the Super form sustained by Rings in the first place, and Super Sonic and Super Silver had utilized energy from the Warp Topaz, which was unstable when combined with Chaos Energy (a thing that Doctor Starline points out). With that being said, a Super form possesses infinite energy thanks to the Chaos Emeralds within the time limit; more than enough to counter Pressure, since it wouldn’t be affecting the Rings.

But let’s say you don’t go with these and say Pressure could still play an effect. Luckily, Shadow happens to have the correct gear to neutralize its effects. With the Economizer, Shadow reduces the PP cost by 1—a direct counter to Pressure. There’s also the Replenisher, which restores PP by each turn, which further helps Shadow against this ability. Chao such as Choo and Hayda also let Shadow constantly regenerate PP throughout a fight, reducing the effectiveness of Pressure. And of course, there are various consumables like the POW Drink and Refresher Wave to restore good amounts of it at once. This is not even considering that just getting Rings can restore his energy and stamina, like seen with Silver in Rivals. Overall, Pressure is not gonna work.

Mind & Memory Control

Mewtwo’s ability to completely overtake one’s mind and memories is one of its most deadly tricks. You’ve seen it everywhere, as it was basically Mewtwo’s primary win condition in the original episode. But luckily for Shadow, he had the means to resist this power. Shadow overcomes Doom’s mind control and Doom stops trying to control him because it was clearly not working on him. Shadow also resists Doom’s attempts to control him with Doom Powers and uses them for himself. Some will try to argue that breaking out of Doom’s mind control isn’t impressive because it’s a hivemind… but that doesn’t mean anything because it’s still mind control at the end of the day. Doom is still in control of an entire alien race and has direct access to Shadow’s mind at all times. If anything, that would make it harder for Shadow to break out of. Additionally, Shadow resisted Ifrit, who can similarly control minds.

But let’s assume Shadow breaking out of Doom’s mind control isn’t enough to resist Mewtwo’s level of mind control though. After all, he’s a pretty powerful psychic. Thankfully for Shadow, the Chaos Emeralds have plenty of examples of neutralizing mind control and restoring lost memories. The Chaos Emeralds have not only absorbed and neutralized the powers of a brainwashing laser, but they could protect Sonic and Tails’ memories from being altered by Eggman’s Otherworldification too. With all seven emeralds, Super Sonic’s aura could neutralize Eggman’s Otherworldification as well. In Shadow 05, Shadow states that collecting the emeralds restores his memories, and in Sonic Chronicles, a Chaos Emerald could shield Shadow from Thelxe’s mind control too. So not only is Shadow on his own capable of breaking out of mind control, the emeralds also grant him extra layers of protection on top of it. Many of these instances tend to involve one or two emeralds. Having all seven emeralds would further amplify his resistance.

One could try to argue that Mewtwo’s mind control is too “layered” for Shadow to resist, given that it could affect characters like Ash, who has resisted mind control before, but I wouldn’t recommend doing that. Not only is it a pretty slippery slope to argue layered hax for a series that can care less about consistency like these two, but if you were to argue layers for Pokemon, the same would have to be done for Sonic. Sonic was immune to both the Overmind’s mind control, which is pretty layered in itself, and Dark Gaia’s possession, which also controls the mind. The Phantom Ruby had no problem controlling Sonic’s mind. The anomaly that rewrote everyone’s memories was triggered by Eggman’s Otherworldification, which utilized an amplified Phantom Ruby. Despite all that, one Chaos Emerald alone was enough to shield Sonic and Tails from having their memories altered, and all 7 emeralds could neutralize it all together.

Even if Mewtwo was able to successfully wipe Shadow’s mind though, it still wouldn’t make much of a difference. Shadow has no memories of anything in Sonic Heroes or Shadow 05. He says himself that all he remembers is his name and a girl named Maria. Despite having no memories though, Shadow is still a master at Chaos Control. Despite having no memories, Shadow can still fight off hordes of Egg Pawns and fight Sonic to a standstill. Shadow has proven time and time again that, even without his memories, it doesn’t take away his mastery over Chaos Control or his ability to fight back in general, likely due to Gerald’s programming.

Mind Reading + Telepathy

Free information on Shadow by reading his mind is a great tool for Mewtwo to learn about Shadow’s powers and can utilize it to their advantages, should it work. Fortunately, Shadow has the means to stop this.

One Chaos Emerald was used to shield Shadow from being mind tapped by the Overmind on Beta Colony. Mind tapped might be a bit vague, but the Japanese localization refers to it as an invasion of the mind. While the field around Beta Colony is admittedly weaker than the one on Alpha Colony, the field around Beta Colony was still potent enough for the Overmind to detect the thoughts of everyone in that field, which the emerald shielded Shadow from. This was also done with just one emerald. Having all 7 would amplify this resistance even further. On top of this, Shadow has resisted and defeated Doom, who can read minds, and Super Sonic has defeated The End, who can also read minds. Super forms can also neutralize the powers of the Phantom Ruby in the Otherworld Comedy, which can technically read minds as well—seen in the Forces prequel comic with Eggman. If reading minds was enough to defeat Shadow, Doom and the End wouldn’t be caught off guard by anything Super Shadow or Super Sonic can do, but to each their own

Future Sight

It is fair to say that Chaos energy is unpredictable, even to those with the ability to control fate and see into the future. Solaris for example is an omnipresent deity. Not only is he directly stated multiple times to have the power to control both fate and history, but he also exists in the past, present, and future simultaneously. By default, that means he literally can see the future at all times. We even see the Eyes of Solaris pop up in stages like Crisis City, which takes place in the future. Despite this though, Solaris was defeated by Sonic, Shadow, and Silver when they were drawing out the full power of the Chaos Emeralds.

Something similar happens in Sonic Frontiers as well. The End has the power to manipulate fate and causality. It’s reiterated multiple times throughout the game. Despite this though, The End lost to Super Sonic in the game’s original ending. The End even said Sonic was transcending law and time during the fight. Because of this, we believe that Future Sight shouldn’t be a big factor in this match.

Given how consistently Super forms can defy events fated to happen, as well as beat a god who could see the future at all times, we think it’s fair to say that Future Sight not be that much of a game changer in the long run. It’s not like seeing the future is an ability Solaris has to activate either. He’s always in that state.

Of course, if none of this is enough to convince you, Mewtwo can’t see what’s happening during a time stop because everything Shadow does would occur in zero seconds from his perspective. From Mewtwo’s perspective, Shadow Chaos Controlling would just look like this. Now, it is possible that Mewtwo’s overall intelligence would let him connect the dots, but it’s also possible that their conclusion can tell something different, given it could also just be Shadow moving at high-speed of using an Emerald to warp

Telekinesis

Mewtwo’s telekinesis could in theory be used to hold Shadow in place and grant the Genetic Pokémon a free pass to defeat the Ultimate Life Form while he’s a sitting duck, but luckily for Shadow, he already has more than enough experience against this. The psychic hedgehog Silver similarly does battle through his mighty psychokinesis, and Shadow has been able to break out of his hold multiple times, most notably while in an explicitly weakened state. Silver’s telekinesis is extremely impressive, with showings like stopping the Death Egg and halting a blast from the Eclipse Cannon demonstrating an incredible level of strength (showings way stronger than Mewtwo’s TK has ever shown), making Shadow’s ability to break free even more notable in comparison. It is unlikely that Mewtwo possesses the telekinetic might to keep Shadow still for long, especially once he enters his stronger forms, who, in games like Speed Battle, are immune to psychokinesis entirely.

Protect & Barriers

While Protect as a move seems incredibly useful in protecting Mewtwo from Shadow’s attacks, it is not without its constraints. It should be noted that Protect itself does not work on every single move in Pokemon and there are abilities that can bypass it to attack the user. This is relevant because Shadow’s Chaos Spears have showcased the property of being able to bypass barriers and shields. We see this in Shadow Generations where it can bypass barriers, and we also have this further cemented in Sonic Chronicles where the move is directly stated to bypass armor. Furthermore, Chaos Spear was able to bypass Super Neo Metal Sonic’s invulnerability in the comics, and Ian Flynn commented that the reason for that is because Chaos Spear contains Chaos Energy. If Mewtwo uses Protect as a move then Chaos Spear should be able to bypass it and attack Mewtwo directly. As an additional note, Protect as a move is mentioned to have its chances of success lowered after each consecutive use, so this is not a move that Mewtwo can reliably use over and over.

It goes even beyond Protect, too. We all know that Mewtwo utilizes many types of barriers, offensively and defensively. He can put it up for protection or to increase his defense; he can also use it offensively in some instances and extend it to large sizes. All of that is getting negated by Chaos Spear’s properties, and when paired up with way more powerful applications—in raw output and quantity—like Spear of Light and Doom Spears, Mewtwo loses some of his best defensive options against the Ultimate Lifeform.

Transmutation

Turning Shadow into stone to render him incapable of continuing the fight would be a great win condition for Mewtwo, should it work. For Shadow, he’s been unaffected by Team Chaotix’s Chaos Recital, which turns all enemies into Rings. In addition, the Chaos Emeralds have the capability to completely halt the Metal Virus in its entirety, which converts the organic tissue of someone and transforms them into robots. A single Emerald has also been shown to undo crystallization and if we’re comparing him to his blue rival, Sonic has shown the capability to break out of petrification, which just so happens to be what Mewtwo’s capable of doing. Shadow has plenty of ways around transmutation, preventing an easy wincon for the big two.

Soul Manipulation

From the Detective Pikachu movies, Mewtwo was able to manipulate the souls of both humans and Pokémon. This is a pretty potent ability, and it could potentially be a bad thing for Shadow… but it has a few things to consider. Mewtwo’s soul manipulation requires specific steps to be usable, which the movie elaborates quite a lot. When Howard Clifford (the main villain of the movie) was inside of Mewtwo’s body, he notes that Mewtwo’s power over souls [transferring the souls of humans into the body of a Pokémon] are only capable of happening if the Pokémon is in a crazed state. And by “crazed state”, they mean when the Pokémon are affected by serum “R”; a chemical produced from Mewtwo himself that makes them enraged and cause total loss of free will. This matters a lot, because this is ultimately why Howard has to mass spray the serum to transfer the souls of everyone over the city—which implies it wouldn’t be possible without it.

Now, there’s the obvious elephant in the room and it’s when Mewtwo takes Harry Goodman’s soul and puts it on the Pikachu easily, without the need of the serum. Wouldn’t that contradict the need of one? Not really, no. Because in this instance, Pikachu is the one offering his body to Harry. To simply put, the serum is a way to manipulate souls without Mewtwo needing the Pokémon to ask for consent, given it makes them lose their free will, and for Pikachu, he is giving consent and using his free will to let Mewtwo save Harry. It’s consistent with the movie’s entire premise. Besides, the soul manipulation is fusing human souls with Pokémon, and there’s no Pokémon to fuse Shadow with here, is there? Overall, it’s not really not that easy, and it shouldn’t work on Shadow.

But let’s say you do buy it anyway. Can Shadow resist it? Yes, actually. Shadow was capable of resisting Black Doom trying to take his soul in Shadow Generations. While you can go into specifics about soul absorption and whatnot, Doom ultimately still is trying to take Shadow’s soul out of his body, supported by Gerald stating that Doom would take Shadow’s body for himself, which does help the case. Think it’s not enough? Don’t worry, there’s still more. Cyber corruption in Sonic Frontiers pretty blatantly separates the soul from the body, as you can see with Amy, Knuckles and Tails. If it wasn’t for Sonic’s constant endurance against cyber corruption, his soul would get separated from his body just as easily. In fact, this does end up happening to him at a point in the game; leaving him completely immobile and trapped in Cyber Space, which Tails also states that it was Sonic’s soul. This is important, because Super Sonic completely halts the effects of cyber corruption, which would include the immediate soul separation. Again, it was just because of Sonic’s constant resistance that he didn’t get his soul sealed in Cyber Space, so the effects would be instant without resisting, and Super forms can completely stop this from happening. It’s not like it’s inconsistent with Chaos Emeralds manipulating souls and even bringing Sonic’s soul back in ‘06. Ultimately, Shadow has enough to keep his soul from being ripped out of him by Mewtwo even if you argue he can do it without the limitations.

Recover & Regeneration

Mewtwo’s healing options are definitely one of the most impressive things he can do compared to Shadow. Shadow Heal is a strong attack to have and Super forms regenerating Rings when not fighting is good, but it’s not compared to Recover’s capability of healing a portion of Mewtwo’s HP instantly. Not only that, but the manga had Mewtwo use Recover to survive from getting impaled, and he could also use Recover to regenerate himself from getting shot or burned. While Shadow has numerous ways to recover HP like items and Rings, Mewtwo always having a healing and regenerative move that’s innate from his powers is gonna be better than Shadow’s options… on paper.

Recover is good, but it has its limitations, and it’s not that broken regenerative factor you might think it is. Let’s take a look at Mewtwo’s instance with Deoxys for example. When Mewtwo was impaled, he instantly fell to the ground. The attack left him completely vulnerable, which makes Deoxys have yet another opportunity to strike him with a powerful Psycho Boost. Mewtwo starts getting even more bodied, and the intervention of Red rushing down at Giovanni and using his energy shield to cover Mewtwo was what made Red shout for Mewtwo to use Recover, which he still struggled a bit. Evidently, Mewtwo getting impaled is not something he can regenerate from instantly, and it took him a good amount of time and extra protection from Red to pull it off. Even with the “getting shot” instance, it took him several seconds to Recover from the bullet.

This is not even mentioning that Recover obviously cannot be spammed. Mewtwo obviously can’t spam moves in the games due to the limited amount of PP in his moves. This is supported by the anime, in which there’s a lot of examples that Pokémon can’t just spam their moves. Grotle could use Synthesis so many times, Meditite exhausts itself after repeatedly using moves like Detect and Confusion, and Sableye tired itself from using Power Gem too much. If anything, Mewtwo has a pretty clear showing of this in Origins. It shows that if Mewtwo gets enough of a beatdown and gets tired to the point he can’t keep fighting, he can’t pull a Recover successfully. You might argue against this given the inconsistent portrayal of Mewtwo, but it proves a point. Additionally, it’s not like this is anything new to Shadow—who can damage the regeneration of someone like Solaris. Shadow Heal is not as strong, but at least it can be spammed. So ultimately, while still a great tool in Mewtwo’s kit, it likely wouldn’t make a huge factor as long as the fight is going.

Power Nullification Options

An impressive display of Mewtwo’s psychic powers was in the first movie, when Mew challenged Mewtwo by saying that true power of Pokémon comes from the heart, and that if his clones were superior, they’d have to show it by not using any powers. Which is why Mewtwo “uses his psychic powers to block the special abilities” of his clones. The issue is that this is actually a mistranslation. In the original japanese version, Mewtwo doesn’t actually use his powers to nullify the abilities of his clones; he simply makes them fight without using anything to prove himself to Mew. Believe it or not, this is actually very consistent within Pokémon media: in the official novelization of the first movie, Mewtwo uses his psychic powers to control the Pokémon to not use skills, not suppress or block. And in the manga adaptation of the movie, Mewtwo also chooses to let his clones just, fight without powers to prove himself superior. It’s very consistent that “power nullification” is just not what Mewtwo did in this instance, so there’s no reason to imply Shadow would ever be threatened by something like that…

…except there is one option. The move Disable. Disable, as the name implies, disables usage of the last used move from the opponent. While there are a variety of moves that could be disabled, the big one is always going to be Chaos Control. Preventing Shadow from using his one move wonder that does all sorts of abilities would spell doom for the hedgehog if it works, but we have reason to believe that even this wouldn’t do anything. Throughout Shadow Generations, there are special parts of a level referred to as a Doom Zone. These Doom Zones prevent Shadow from ever utilizing Chaos Control in any capacity. The rest of the level he’s free to use it but the moment he sets foot in one of them, Chaos Control is disabled. The final zone, Radical Highway, is also treated as one giant Doom Zone where Shadow is unable to use Chaos Control in any capacity, down to the final fight against Neo Devil Doom. At the fight’s big climax, Doom decides to use Chaos Control to halt Shadow completely and use the opportunity to finish him off. Shadow’s response is to use Chaos Control to cancel out Doom’s, which works and he’s able to end Neo Devil Doom once and for all. It is true that Chaos Control can cancel out another Chaos Control, as seen with the Metal Overlord fight from earlier but the key point to make is that Shadow performed this while inside of the Doom Zone. He was inside of a zone that disabled the move in its entirety and yet he was still ultimately able to pull it off in the end during the final fight. With all this information, we believe that not even Mewtwo’s Disable would be able to stop Shadow control of his powers.

Power Swap

Power Swap is an interesting ability that switches the power between the user and their opponent….sort of. In the games Power Swap only changes the stat boost level changes, it explicitly does not work on mega evolutions that can be caused by mega stones.. Why is this relevant? Because mega evolutions can be argued to be similar to the super forms in Sonic. The super form isn’t just a regular stat booster like Swords Dance, it’s a transformation that completely changes the user, akin to how mega evolutions are. Characters like Trip and Chaos illustrate this clearly, where Trip transforms into a dragon and Chaos evolves every time he uses an emerald. You can be extremely nitpicky and say Mega energy comes from inside which is different from Super forms, but similarly you can argue that the Chaos Emeralds boost the user’s natural Chaos energy in the body. Ultimately, they’ll just end up comparable in one way or another: they can both power-up machines, too. It would come off as really weird to just say Super Shadow is just the same as your average Pokémon stat buffing move for a multitude of reasons.

It should be noted that one Pokémon in specific, Magearna, is an example of a Pokemon who can mega evolve even though the stone it uses is artificial and not 1:1 like other Mega Stones, which helps support the idea that the Chaos Emeralds granting a Super form would work similarly even if they aren’t exactly like mega stones. Heck, that’s the entire thing for characters like Gemerl and Metal Sonic. Additionally, even ignoring all of these comparisons, Power Swap doesn’t work on items that boost stats, so there’s no reason to assume the Chaos Emeralds aren’t even with this logic, unless you start being very nitpicky. In that sense, Power Swap would not work on Super Shadow.

Trick Room & Speed Swap

Trick Room and Speed Swap are both moves that delve into manipulating the speed of both fighters in order to give its user the advantage. Trick Room makes it so slower opponents can act first instead and Speed Swap swaps the speeds of both combatants, working on even Mega Evolutions—so not even Super Shadow shenanigans would be relevant here. Lucky for Shadow, though, there’s a similar ability he can resist in the form of the Chao-nado from Speed Battle, which also replicates the effects of Speed Swap by making the opponent slower and the user faster as a result. This is important to note as Super Shadow is completely unaffected by the effects of Chao-nado, meaning Speed Swap wouldn’t do anything. Something good to point out is that Chaos Emeralds have been capable of restoring lost speed, too: Sonic Labyrinth exists. So even if Mewtwo manages to pull a Speed Swap, the Emeralds would restore Shadow’s speed.

As for Trick Room, it has a set range and there’s nothing to assume that Shadow just can’t teleport out of it, warp space-time with Chaos Control or break it entirely with something like Chaos Blast—which, in media like the anime, has shown to be capable of being breakable with enough power. One may argue that Spatial Rend doesn’t nullify Trick Room, so there’s no floor to say Shadow’s space-time warping abilities would work either, but that’s because Spatial Rend never targets Trick Room itself; only the Pokémon inside. Of course, these two moves are only beneficial if you think Mewtwo is slower by a considerable amount for it to actually be detrimental to Shadow. And being slower in a fight like this would not be an ideal scenario.

Stat Buffs & Debuffs

Mewtwo has a ton of moves that are able to buff their stats. Amnesia grants higher special defenses, Agility increases speed, Bulk Up increases the attack and defense, Calm Mind raises the special attack and special defense, Double Team increases the evasiveness etc. Simply put, Mewtwo has multiple different ways to increase their stats. However, Shadow also has different methods to increase his stats. Spindash and Boost are both moves that increase Shadow’s speed, and Chaos Control is an incredibly powerful move that can boost up Shadow’s speed. On the power side of things, Chaos Boost increases Shadow’s power, and his Dark and Hero forms amp his power and speed as well. Overall, both carry a decent number of stat buffs, with Shadow’s Dark and Hero forms alongside Chaos Control being incredibly useful. It should be noted that although Mewtwo’s speed boosts would roughly be around 4x, that is nothing compared to Shadow boosting himself up to blitz people similar to him in speed and also amping up to escape a universe shattering event in a second. This is base Shadow too! So imagine just how much of an insane boost he would get in his Super form.

Looking at the debuff side, Mewtwo has a wide variety of moves that can lower an opponent’s stats. Rock Smash has a chance to lower defense, Low-Sweep, Icy Wind, Scary Face, and Rock Tomb etc. lower speed, Mud-Slap and Flash lower accuracy, Earth Power has a chance to lower special defense, Confide lowers the opponent’s special attack. Infinite Psyburn lowers durability if hit. And as a further note Mewtwo can cleanse itself from any debuffs using Mist. However, Shadow has a strong item called the Immunity Idol, it protects Shadow from being weakened or vulnerable, and from having his accuracy manipulated. Furthermore, the Chaos Emeralds undo any effects that slow or alter the speed of the user. Shadow should resist attempts that lower his stats against Mewtwo.

Status Effects

With a large set of moves for Mewtwo to utilize, they can always hamper Shadow with a variety of status effects in order to reduce Shadow’s ability to fight at peak performance: Poison, Paralysis, Burn, Frozen, Sleep, and Confusion. Again, Mewtwo has multiple moves that can cause these effects, so it’s important to check if he has counters to any of them. Chronicles gear does offer him some good options: consumables like the Antidote and Cure All Spray are good for clearing out any bad symptoms, but the Immunity Idol prevents them from ever being applied to Shadow, saving him from most status effects—with the exception of Burn, Paralysis and Frozen.

But what if somehow Shadow didn’t have access to the Immunity Idol? Lucky for him, he still happens to have an answer to many of these.

• Sleep: Shadow himself was completely unaffected by the paralyzing gas of Black Doom that is also capable of rendering people unconscious, and the Chaos Emeralds can always just bring his consciousness back the same way it did for Sonic.
• Paralysis: Black Doom’s paralyzing gas also causes… paralysis. Which Shadow can resist. Speed Battle also offers Super Shadow many protection against being paralyzed.
• Poison: He’s endured many kinds of poisons and toxins such as those present in Chemical Plant Zone, the contaminated waters of Prison Island and the toxins of the Black Arms.
• Confusion: Speed Battle offers protection against similar abilities in the game that can cause confusion and control reversal.

That only leaves Freeze and Burn as the only 2 left. Super forms like Sonic’s are completely fine walking through lava and having it dumped onto them and they produce enough heat to completely vaporize the Metal Virus off of them. Also while maybe not a direct 1:1 comparison, Fire-type Pokemon cannot be burned and some of them are already hot to the touch, just like a Super form meaning there’s little reason for Burn to do anything notable. That only really leaves Freezing as the only status effect that really works on Shadow, something that even the mighty Super forms has faltered against but would only be a small inconvenience for Shadow at most as it hasn’t really been to an extent that it’d fully stop him in his tracks, but you can argue otherwise given Super forms are fine in extremely cold zones, space, and are immune to freezing attacks in Speed Battle.

You could argue that the temperatures of the fire and the ice are too hot and too cold for Super Shadow to withstand given Pokédex shenanigans, but at the same time, a hot enough Fire-type can resist the effects of Burn, and that definitely applies to Super forms. With Speed Battle, those just become irrelevant, if you wanna count it.

Items Manipulation

Mewtwo possesses numerous ways to take away opponents’ held items. Knock Off lets them drop the items of opponents, Embargo makes them shut down the usage of an item entirely, Magic Room prevents enemies from using an item for a time, Trick swaps items, and so on. With this in mind, surely Mewtwo could snatch the Chaos Emeralds, Rings, or other items in Shadow’s arsenal to let him win, right? Well, no, not exactly.

To start off, none of these work if an opponent has a transformation item, like Groudon’s Red Orb and Kyogre’s Blue Orb—which lets them transform into their Primal forms. Similarly, if the item is a Mega Stone, they don’t work either. Shadow is very clearly absorbing the Emeralds and taking their power for himself, much like the Orbs, so it’s not like Mewtwo can’t use any of these moves on Super Shadow and take the Chaos Emeralds for himself. (bro is NOT as goated as Knuckles the Echidna…!!)

But let’s just say that you can ignore this and assume that Mewtwo can, in fact, steal the Chaos Emeralds. Think it would matter? Well, think again. The Chaos Emeralds have shown to respond to their user’s will even from a distance, and power them up anyways. Matter of fact, Gemerl took the Chaos Emeralds from Sonic to power-up, but Sonic was still capable of calling the Emeralds back and transforming into Super Sonic.

But what about Rings and other items? They’re still fair game, aren’t they? Also no—Shadow still has ways to protect his arsenal. In CrossWorlds, there’s items like Shield that can protect Shadow from Dark Chao, who swaps your item for a completely different one, and Slime, which makes you drop your items. You may argue against this logic and say in the CrossWorlds animation short, the power-ups a racer can use are installed in their vehicles, but that’s actually inconsistent within the game itself, where they actually hold their items manually and use them. Even the cinematic animation shows this, too. Even without Shield, Super Sonic is completely immune to the effects of any power-up in the game—basically being an infinite Shield against getting his items swapped or dropped. Games like Speed Battle support this too, where several abilities within that game can steal your quantity of Rings, drop your items, steal your items, or even make you unable to use them. In the game, Super forms like Super Shadow are completely immune to this, so not even the more potent skills like Embargo and Magic Room would play a meaningful effect. Shadow’s arsenal is safe and sound.

TCG

A unique avenue for Mewtwo and having extra abilities that could aid them in this fight. Would they work? Let’s break the three main ones down.

Psybarrier and Photon Barrier: Both the Photon Barrier and the Psybarrier share the trait of negating additional effects from attacks, with the Psybarrier even being capable of negating all damage. These could provide a nearly unbeatable advantage against Shadow, preventing him from landing important hits throughout the fight, but the Ultimate Life Form has ways to overcome this trial. Firstly, it is highly unlikely that these barriers could prevent Shadow from utilizing Chaos Control, as they only negate the special properties of attacks, which Chaos Control is not. In addition, Shadow’s chaos energy has been said to be capable of bypassing special defenses, as the Chaos Spear can pierce through shields in Chronicles, and Shadow’s lance was able to bypass Super Neo Metal Sonic’s invulnerability. With these in mind, it’s completely feasible for Shadow’s chaos-based moves to completely bypass Mewtwo’s barriers and strike them regardless.

Damage Change: Damage Change does not simply transfer all the damage Mewtwo takes onto Shadow. It swaps the accumulated damage BOTH have taken throughout the fight. That may sound useful at first, until you realize this means that Mewtwo would have to endure everything he hit Shadow with until this move is activated. This is not a good idea, especially if you truly believe both are close in stats. If Mewtwo is not careful, the accumulated damage of attacking Shadow will more than likely be greater than the amount of damage he can actually take, and this can lead to Mewtwo knocking himself out or putting himself at death’s door, which can actually happen in the card game. It does way more harm than good. Shadow at least has rings that can take the hit for him, as well as an invulnerable super form. Speaking of rings, having enough Rings has shielded base form level characters like Sonic from attacks that could knock Super Sonic 2 out of his Super Sonic 2 form, so it should be more than enough to shield Shadow from Mewtwo’s Damage Change.

Misc. Mewtwo Abilities

Technology Manipulation: Compared to other psychics, Mewtwo can potentially interrupt technology, but nothing that would hurt Shadow, as his Air Shoes resisted the Scepter of Darkness messing with technology. Additionally, EMP Shield does not work on Super Shadow (either the normal version or the Extreme Gear one) and his items (Extreme Gear Shadow has tech items) in Speed Battle.

Psychic Noise: Mewtwo can use Psychic Noise to stop healing, but Shadow Heal is from Chaos Control, and we know from Shadow Generations that Shadow can use Chaos Control when it was disabled.

Attack Reflection: With his telekinesis and other moves, Mewtwo can reflect attacks, which would be useful against Shadow if used moves like Chaos Spears. One might argue they damage Super forms out of the state like Super Neo Metal, but that’s because Super Neo Metal’s form was unstable, unlike Super Shadow. Besides, he tanked multiple attacks from Solaris without losing the form. Additionally, Shadow can reflect projectiles with Doom Surf and Doom Wings, cancelling out.

Metronome: Mewtwo uses Explosion AND FUCKING DIES

Summary

While Mewtwo certainly has an almost incalculable amount of abilities at their disposal, Shadow simply has too many ways around them for us to believe they make as much of a difference as they might on paper. While there are certainly scenarios where these abilities could cinch a win for Mewtwo, we believe that Shadow would overall be able to come out on top when faced with Mewtwo’s sheer versatility.

Mewtwo VS Chaos Control

It would be an understatement to say that Chaos Control is likely the single most impactful ability on either side of the aisle when it comes to this debate, as a Time Stop is undeniably one of the most beneficial powers a character can have if the other side lacks it or struggles with resisting it, which at first glance one would assume applies to Mewtwo. However, there have been a plethora of arguments made in favor of Mewtwo resisting Chaos Control, but we on Team Shadow believe these arguments to be flawed and so we shall break down each individual counterargument into multiple different subsections.

Picross’ Time Freeze

Starting with what we believe to be the most flawed of these counters, in the game Pokemon Picross, Mewtwo’s ability is known as “Freeze Time”. Via this, Mewtwo is capable of stopping the game’s timer from counting down for 10 entire minutes, with base Mewtwo being able to use this once before entering a cooldown period and Mega Mewtwo Y being able to use it up to 3 times before entering a cooldown period. There’s one very critical flaw with this argument, though, that being Pokemon Picross is a puzzle game.

While puzzle games on their own can generally be considered fine to use provided they have enough evidence for canonicity, not only is Pokemon Picross simply just a spin-off of the Picross series, it’s incredibly difficult to argue an ability from these puzzle games should transfer over as due to the limitations of Picross’ mechanics, these abilities are thrown onto plenty of different characters as a generally strong incentive to pick them/summon them/unlock them/etc. For an example within Pokemon Picross itself, the literal God of Time that is Dialga does not have access to a Time Stop and or Time Slow, while Pokemon ranging from Mime Jr. to Blitzle have access to the aforementioned abilities. To pull an example from a different puzzle game, the discontinued JoJo’s Pitter-Patter-Pop! has both a Ghiaccio unit and Polnareff unit which are capable of stopping time, something only otherwise given to characters with time-based abilities like DIO/Jotaro/Giorno/Diavolo.

For very obvious reasons, neither of those characters have ever been argued to have the ability to stop time in VS discussions, because at the end of the day as already stated, abilities like stopping/slowing time are given out constantly to characters with absolutely 0 showings of such abilities not because the developers actually intend one to think they can stop time, but rather just because within the confines of a puzzle game, something like stopping the timer would come off as incredibly powerful and a strong incentive to use whoever has that ability. For these reasons, we believe this counterargument to be false.

Shadow Mewtwo

Within Pokken Tournament, a scene occurs before Mewtwo, in their Shadow form (say that again…?) halts the movement of a realm it created and resides in before absorbing the energy within it to Mega Evolve. On its own, one could possibly argue this is a case of time manipulation, however we believe it to more-so just be emphasizing Mewtwo’s control over the realm and that the area’s movement stopping isn’t to do with a timestop but rather an after-effect of Mewtwo absorbing all the energy within the realm. The lack of emphasis on something like this in relation to time, as well as how vague the scene itself is in terms of interpretation, leads us to believe this counter to be false—especially given humans watched the scene happen in real time, which would’ve been impossible if time was truly stopped and reversed. The biggest hole in it though is ultimately that it is a Shadow Mewtwo exclusive thing (we can literally see the Shadow Synergy Stone glowing and flashing on screen before they do this), and it also something they only do inside of his realm, if you really wanna argue it’s a time stop. So, no, this isn’t a great argument either.

“Tanking” Roar of Time

The signature move of Dialga, Roar of Time is described as a move that “blasts the target with power that distorts even time”, with the move’s visualization in the games usually being a giant blue laser that causes a sort of time-y feeling explosion. Considering the move’s description, one could argue that Pokemon comparable to Dialga could theoretically have a resistance to abilities related to time manipulation, as they would be able to survive the move and then keep on fighting. The issue arises however when one considers how the move has been portrayed in various pieces of side material such as the Pokemon Diamond and Pearl Adventure! manga or even in the games when it comes to Legends: Arceus.

When it comes to the former, the main character Hareta would eventually come into conflict with that continuity’s version of Cyrus, who is wielding Dialga. During their fight, Cyrus would use Roar of Time on Hareta, making it so time was stopped for him all while his Regigigas was beaten by Cyrus. Cyrus would later use even more of Dialga’s time-based abilities, such as stopping time around itself to prevent attacks from reaching or speeding up time to dispel the rain. When it comes to the latter, if one uses Roar of Time’s Strong Style variant, the screen will turn somewhat monochrome for a second upon making contact and delay the HP bar’s deletion, implying Dialga is stopping time to an extent for the Pokemon it hits with the move. Due to this, as well as Rei/Akari being vulnerable to Dialga stopping time in its Legends: Arceus Origin form fight, it stands to reason that simply being hit with Roar of Time does not equate to resisting it and if anything would imply the opposite, as it would mean Dialga does successfully stop the time of whoever is hit by the attack.

Combine the traits listed above for Legends: Arceus with the manga establishing Dialga’s usage of time manipulation with the move can vary wildly in regards to how it affects time and who/what it affects the time of, and we believe that Mewtwo theoretically being capable of surviving a Roar of Time does not equate to a resistance to Chaos Control.

Taunt

Within the Pokemon games, the move Taunt is a status move capable of preventing the opponent from using their own status moves for a few turns by enraging them. While translating abilities like Chaos Control into the mechanics of Pokemon can seem complicated, it’s fairly obvious Chaos Control would fall under the category of status moves and thus be rendered null by Taunt. Open and shut, right? Well…kind of. It should be emphasized that Taunt relies on, well, emotional aggravation to prevent the usage of status moves, and that theoretically as long as one has good enough showings against emotional manipulation, the VS Debating kind not the more serious kind, they should be capable of resisting or outright nulling it.

Luckily, Shadow has the tools to do this. The most potent example is that of his Doom form, something meant to invoke Shadow’s violent tendencies to such a degree that he’d lose control of himself, yet in spite of that he was able to not only control the form but use it to kill Black Doom himself. Furthermore, the Chaos Emeralds have been noted plenty of times to emit positive energy and are capable of calming one’s negative emotions, meaning even if Shadow did fall victim to Taunt, the Emeralds theoretically would be able to calm him down enough to a point where he can use the ability again. While one could argue that Taunt has worked on Pokemon like Mega Salamence, who has statements of having an incredibly brutal disposition yet is still able to be wielded in-game, this argument is admittedly weird as…Mega Salamence is explicitly described to be so violent that it “may even turn against its own Trainer” with this occurrence apparently happening at least somewhat enough to give it the nickname of “blood-soaked crescent”.

You can argue that this same Dex entry would then imply that Mega Mence in-game is capable of resisting these urges, but even then a Dex entry in Ultra Sun describes it as falling victim to the stress it feels over its prized wings becoming mutated, leading it to rampage. Its Sun entry further backs this idea up, as Salamence is described as “slicing anything in its path in two while continuing to fly without interruption” which considering the wording likely doesn’t exclude its Trainer. More than likely one could simply chalk this up to gameplay and story segregation, as I doubt GameFreak wanted Salamence’s biggest fan to get sliced in-half in Sun/Moon for the crime of Mega Evolving it. As for another counterargument this time in relation to Taunt working on Pokemon that emit positive energy/soothing emotions such as Sylveon and Togepi, while this could counteract the Chaos Emeralds’ soothing effects on Shadow, it obviously wouldn’t make much of a difference if Shadow himself still just isn’t getting ragebaited by Mewtwo.

Finally, even if Taunt did work, it shutting off Chaos Control can be argued to be a case of game mechanics superseding how it’d work in an actual fight outside of the confines of an RPG, as Shadow has been shown to be more than capable of using plenty of his signature abilities while in a state of rage, which would obviously be a problem considering Taunt’s ability to shut down things like Chaos Control rely on making Shadow so enraged that he is exclusively going to attack Mewtwo directly. All in all, while we believe Taunt is unlikely to work in the first place, even if it did it’s entirely likely Shadow would simply still be capable of using things like Chaos Control due to its cancelling properties relying on baiting out a certain mindset rather than just straight up nullifying that ability.

Mimic

The move Mimic allows for, as one can likely infer, the ability to copy the move of an opponent. Right away, it should be clarified ahead of time that Mimic worked incredibly differently in the Generation 1 games Red/Blue/Yellow which is the only Generation where Mewtwo can learn the move. In Generation 1, during battles against the CPU, whether that be other Trainers/Wild Pokemon, the game would display the opponent’s entire moveset and allow the player to pick which move in particular they’d like to copy. However, when playing against another player via link battles, the effect would instead change to copy one of the opponent’s moves at random. Right away, even if one believes Mewtwo should have to access to this wildly different version of Mimic in particular, we feel it makes far more sense to use the version seen in fights against other players rather than fights against the CPU, especially when one considers that the Pokemon Stadium games would apply this change to NPC fights as well.

However, considering the inconsistencies of Generation 1 as well as Mimic’s radical overhaul in the following Generation, we believe Mewtwo should be held to the standards of Mimic in the modern games rather than the game it learned the move in. In all games following Generation 1, Mimic specifically copies the last move used by a target, which then proposes an issue, that being there’s no reason to assume Mimic would copy Chaos Control rather than whatever Shadow did within Chaos Control. Sure, one could argue Mewtwo would simply perceive what happened as Shadow activating Chaos Control and then immediately cutting to Mewtwo being damaged, but as far as we can tell Mimic is not dependent on the user’s perception of events but rather whatever actions occurred. Therefore, it stands to reason that Mimic would copy something like Chaos Spear or even just one of Shadow’s barrages within the stopped time, which then poses a further problem as Mimic is unable to copy another move until the user is switched out or faints. Even putting aside Chaos Control itself, if Mewtwo were to use Mimic incorrectly even once, it would permanently block them from ever being able to copy it afterwards.

One could theoretically argue that thanks to Mewtwo’s ability to see the future as well as their absurd IQ, that they would simply activate Mimic the moment Shadow uses Chaos Control, granting them the ability as well as allowing them to now interact with or possibly even override Shadow’s own Chaos Control. This however is where the problem of Cause & Effect comes into play, as Mimic’s activation would be stopped by Chaos Control, meaning the Effect is either interrupted due to Shadow’s actions within the stopped time damaging Mewtwo to a point the move fails, akin to say flinching in the Pokemon games proper, or causes Mimic to copy whatever Shadow did within Chaos Control itself as stated previously. Even if one wants to argue Mewtwo successfully copying Chaos Control, Shadow himself has been shown to be able to overwrite/counteract the Chaos Control of others with his own such as Metal Overlord or Black Doom, both of whom should have far more proficiency then Mewtwo would, especially since the Chaos Emeralds would amp Shadow’s Chaos Control even further, something Mewtwo obviously doesn’t have access to.

To summarize, while there’s definitely a few scenarios where Mewtwo does copy Chaos Control with Mimic successfully, there’s infinitely more where he copies either the wrong move due to its mechanics in Generation 1, the wrong move due to Shadow’s actions within Chaos Control counting instead of Chaos Control itself, or is simply broken out of the activation of Mimic due to being severely damaged by Shadow during Chaos Control. Even if Mewtwo did copy it successfully, it’s likely that Shadow’s proficiency with the ability and multiple showings of overriding Chaos Control with his own would simply overpower any of Mewtwo’s attempts at using such an ability.

ORAS’ “Time Stopped” Realm

The last and most notable of these arguments is located in the games Pokemon Omega Ruby/Alpha Sapphire, specifically that of Alpha Sapphire. Within the postgame of Alpha Sapphire, while flying around on Latias, one is able to come across a rift sitting over Dewford Town that contains everyone’s 2nd favorite member of the Creation Trio, Dialga. Where this rift becomes important to this debate is the text before entering it, describing the area around the rift as “A huge gap in the sky. The area surrounding the gap is very quiet, as if time had somehow stopped…” On its own, one could argue this is an extremely blatant showing of time stop resistance, as Brendan/May and Latias are capable of flying around the rift and entering it without any issue. However, there’s a multitude of issues with this argument in our eyes that we’ll try to break down as best we can.

To start, one can easily just argue it as flowery (hey guys!) language, as the area is simply described as being quiet to such an extent that it could be compared to time being stopped. However, one can counter this by comparing it to Palkia’s rift, which is far more literal and describes it as “The space surrounding the gap is distorted, as if it had somehow been twisted.” Although, one can then argue that Palkia’s description is referring to the rift itself, while Dialga’s mentions the area around it in such a way that is still closer to something like a simile then say “the area surrounding the gap is frozen in time” or something to that extent. Even if one were to take this at face value though, Shadow’s Chaos Control has been shown working just fine in places such as White Space, an area that is described as being frozen in time by both Sonic Channel as well as Orbot & Cubot. While one could point to Eggman’s statement about there being no time in White Space, this statement is made while Eggman is in an area referred to as the “End of Time” in the Sonic Encylospeedia which we feel should be pretty self-explanatory, this is on top of the fact that one can possibly argue that the ALL-POWERFUL NARRATOR of Sonic Channel would supersede Eggman.

On top of all this however, this resistance is very weird to argue when one takes Dialga’s previously mentioned boss fight from Legends: Arceus into account as Rei/Akari are entirely vulnerable to it stopping time, as are all of their Pokemon

This means one can easily argue that even if this was a proper resistance, it isn’t one shared across all of Pokemon, and would be exclusive to Brendan/May and Latias. All in all, while this is definitely the most compelling argument Mewtwo has to resist Chaos Control outright, we believe there’s just too many holes one can poke in the argument for the resistance to be considered valid, especially when even if the resistance is taken at face value, Chaos Control can be argued to work anyways.

Summary

To summarize, we on Team Shadow believe that Mewtwo shouldn’t be able to resist Chaos Control outright, and that any options they do have of shutting it down temporarily like Taunt or copying the move for themselves via Mimic are either unlikely to work outright or not make much of a difference to Shadow. No matter which way you spin it, and there were certainly a lot of threads to spin, Mewtwo in our eyes does fall victim to Chaos Control, granting Shadow an undeniably powerful advantage over the Ultimate Pokemon.

Mewtwo VS Shadow’s Other Wincons

With all that in mind for how Shadow stacks up against Mewtwo’s versatility, it’s time for the Jet-Black Hedgehog to strike back with some wincons of his own. One of these is the ability to instantly KO the opponent with things like the Ichikoro Gauge and the Spartoi Chao. To Mewtwo’s credit, putting up a defensive barrier would be able to block out an attack that has been enhanced by the Ichikoro Gauge. The Spartoi Chao is an entirely different conversation though as it gives Shadow’s regular attacks a chance to instantly KO opponents, with the max chance being at 10%. It doesn’t sound like much on paper but when combined with the power of Chaos Control, it suddenly becomes a bigger issue. With Chaos Control’s ability to stop time, Shadow will have plenty of time to deliver as many hits as he possibly can, ensuring the effect of Spartoi can proc and KO Mewtwo for the count… but only if this was about regular Mewtwo.

Mewtwo happens to have a perfect counter to even this thanks to its Mewtwo the Unrivaled transformation making it immune to OHKOs. So if they enter this state, the mentioned Ichikoro and Spartoi no longer become viable choices but thankfully, these aren’t Shadow’s only wincons.

Once again, Chaos Control proves to be a powerful ability for Shadow as it is shown to be able to seal its opponents away, just like he did to Mephiles by sealing him into the Scepter of Darkness. He has a multitude of items that would let him pull this off, like his weapons in Shadow 05. Sealing Mewtwo in one of his vacuum pods would be enough, as Pokémon like Mewtwo never broke out of a seal as potent as Chaos Control’s, that can even seal people in other dimensions.

The Indigo Wisp is another useful win condition for Shadow as the Asteroid power would continuously let him assimilate his surroundings, including other enemies and break them down into pieces, something Mewtwo hasn’t had to deal with before. Even if it initially isn’t that impressive, the more it assimilates, the farther its reach gets meaning it is only a matter of time before the Genetic Pokemon finds itself in serious trouble.

In general, Chaos Control’s time manipulating abilities are a great boon in this fight as well. Not just in being able to stop time altogether, but to also slow down time as well. While we certainly wouldn’t bank on Shadow just stopping Mewtwo in time forever, being able to hold them in place or even slow down their movement altogether opens up many possibilities for Shadow to wear Mewtwo down while significantly reducing the chances of him getting blasted by some of Mewtwo’s more dangerous attacks, especially when Shadow’s Chaos Control was able to stop time for a whopping 90 seconds, more than enough time to get in tons of free hits and that’s not even considering that Shadow can extend the duration his Chaos Control lasts. Hero Shadow also has a great focus on Chaos Control while also benefitting from invulnerability, giving him an extra edge that will have Mewtwo saying ow.

Invulnerability

One thing that hurts Mewtwo a lot is the fact that, at the end of the day, even if you argue they match Super of Doom Shadow in power and durability, these forms are still completely invulnerable to physical damage. This is important, because most of Mewtwo’s methods rely on beating Shadow really hard for him to be defeated, but when you are basically immune to damage and several effects, Mewtwo’s options of taking Shadow down decrease further and further.

Even if you would argue some of his attacks have too much going for it, like fire and ice attacks being too hot/cold, or his psychic blasts and other moves having insane damage output… it will ultimately all not hurt Super Shadow’s body. Invulnerability is just that overpowered.

Revives

I mean, yeah, no sugarcoating here, Shadow has plenty of ways to revive himself thanks to Sonic Chronicles (LMAO). Shadow can revive thanks to the Ovus Chao in Sonic Chronicles and it can do this up to three times, and similarly, the Angel Amulet can bring Shadow back to life. If Mewtwo still ends up killing Shadow, he’s the only one that can come back to life.

Now, one might argue that he would revive in his base form defenseless, but we know that the Chaos Emeralds respond to the users will even at a distance, and in games like Sonic Frontiers, you can go straight into a Super form without needing Rings. Being capable of reviving in this battle is incredibly useful.

Chaos Blast

Another one of Shadow’s big moves. It’s a mighty omnidirectional blast that attacks everywhere surrounding him and he has learned to be able to use this move repeatedly in quick succession. The range of this move is even strong enough to completely take out the Death Egg and he’s even been shown to weaponize it into a beam attack that can also weaken anyone who is blasted by it, making them do less damage as a result. Even more impressive, since this is a technique that his Dark Shadow state focuses on, it has benefits such as invulnerability and infinite ammo meaning that Shadow will be able to juggernaut through enemy attacks and be able to dish out his own damage in spades. Mewtwo has never regenerated from something so potent.

Overall

Tertiary Factors

This should be obvious, but tertiary factors matter a lot in a match like this as well – and there’s a lot to cover. So, let’s begin.

Skill

Both Pokemon and Sonic have characters with similar skill statements of knowing all martial arts – Zik, Zavok, and Emerl vs. Machamp matches fairly well. However, it should be noted that while we know for a fact Shadow can match Emerl very early in his story, there is no actual showing of Mewtwo matching Machamp in pure martial skill. It should also be noted that Shadow, again, matched Emerl a few months after being uh, born. He’s obviously grown a lot more skilled since then, especially since it’s been noted in the Twitter Takeovers that he trains his skill every single day. Mewtwo, even if you do believe they compare to Machamp in martial skill, simply does not compare. Sure, Mewtwo has been said to have their combat abilities ‘raised to the maximum level’. But, isn’t that similar to the idea of mastermind every martial art to begin with, a league that Shadow has outright beaten and surpassed? Even then, Shadow has way more direct showings of direct skill than Mewtwo has ever shown throughout the franchise. As a result, skill is definitely an advantage for Shadow.

Experience

Experience may first, like how many usually describe it, seem to be a useless factor – after all, how useful is fighting more people? Well, this is because what actually matters is relevant experience – i.e., experience against things that would be relevant against your opponent. Why is this being brought up here? Simple. Shadow’s relevant experience against opponents like Mewtwo is much greater than Mewtwo’s experience against opponents like Shadow.

Telekinetic psychics? Shadow has bodied Silver, who has outright stronger telekinesis then Mewtwo. People being able to control and read minds? Shadow has fought Black Doom a plethora of times, who’s able to do exactly that several times over. Opponents who can duplicate themself? He’s fought Mephiles, who can do the exact same thing. Opponents with a ton of AoE lasers that they can spam at him? I mean, that’s just the Solaris fight all over again! You get the point – Shadow has a lot of relevant experience against Mewtwo’s signature methods of fighting. To contrast this, Mewtwo doesn’t have a ton of experience against the way Shadow fights – they’ve never fought a time manipulator before, nor have they fought a speedster who fights like Shadow does. While Mewtwo’s deeper bag of experience may seem helpful at first, it doesn’t actually aid him in fighting the Ultimate Lifeform, while Shadow has experienced and beaten several opponents who fight similarly to some of Mewtwo’s greatest tricks. As a result, the point here goes to Shadow.

Intelligence

…I mean, yeah, this isn’t really a question. Shadow is smart, this much should be clear considering his manipulation of Eggman in Adventure 2,., but Mewtwo’s just a lot smarter in terms of raw intellect, and has a ton of statements to back it up. Point to Mewtwo.

Stamina

Super forms are widely regarded as having poor stamina, and to an extent this is right, but supporting material makes this a lot less concrete. Sonic X has Super Shadow and Super Sonic last for a full episode, over 20 minutes worth. This is also supported by the amount of rings you can collect in the likes of ‘06, Frontiers, and Speed Simulator letting you stay Super for tens of minutes, with Speed Sim in particular allowing for much longer options. However, tens of minutes should be more than enough time to compare to Mewtwo, who’s stamina showings aren’t exactly the most amazing, either. In their fights with Red and Deoxys, Mewtwo ran out of stamina in around…tens of minutes, similar to Super Shadow. And while yes, you could argue Mewtwo stamina scales to Groudon and Kyogre, there’s…no real reason to. Yes, their battle ability was ‘raised to the maximum’, but there’s no reason to believe this means their stamina at all, and to be honest, Mewtwo’s own showings should reasonably be prioritized instead of other Pokemon’s showings. They should reasonably be tied in stamina.

AoE & Range

In terms of AoE and range, both are pretty matched. Most of their normal attacks are simply big projectiles, neither of which are super impressive. On the other hand, their biggest attacks can vary – with Shadow’s Chaos Blast being able to cover the Death Egg, which is really really big, and Mewtwo being able to lift islands and make island sized storms with his psychic abilities. Both of these are pretty evenly matched, to the point we don’t really think either are outdoing the other in terms of AoE and range. We’ll call this one a tie as well.

Strategy

While Mewtwo may be smarter than Shadow normally, this wouldn’t necessarily give him the win in this category. Instead, let’s look at their characterization. And namely, their big win cards. Mewtwo has a lot of abilities, and Shadow’s Chaos Controls is very potent – so, to determine who would win in strategy, it’s important to note how many of these abilities they would actually use. Shadow uses Chaos Control in pretty much every notable fight he’s in – between his fights with Sonic, his fight with Silver, all his fights in Shadow Generations, and in most of the boss fights in Shadow should he get Hero Shadow, he regularly spams it. Now, then, what about Mewtwo’s ability list? How many of these have they used in a fight before?

In terms of more esoteric options, it comes up dry – Mewtwo has never used any of Mimic, Power Swap, Speed Swap, Trick Room, or Disable in a fight before. Same for the likes of Future Sight, too. While they do have these, these aren’t tricks they regularly utilize, they just have them as options. Options like soul manipulation, mind erasure, and mind reading are options Mewtwo has used before as well, but they don’t truly resort to them in fights that regularly either. Similarly, they’ve never tried to weaponize their cells against people in a fight, either.

…You’re beginning to see a pattern here, I assume, right? While Mewtwo is very versatile, and it’s unreasonable to say they wouldn’t use any of these abilities, they certainly are not the starting options Mewtwo would fall back on. More often than not, Mewtwo will fight with overwhelming force as their primary first option more than anything else. On paper, this is not a bad strategy – but Shadow’s more consistent strategy wins out here, as his most dominating option – Chaos Control – is one that he regularly utilizes in fights to mess up his opponent, and with Mewtwo’s limited counters to it that all require setup and planning? This would make it hard for Mewtwo to strategize at all, with Shadow blitzing all around them and landing hits they cannot see coming. It’s fair to say that in consistency with their best options, and their strategy being generally superior to the other, Shadow takes the edge.

Summary

This is definitely not a total sweep of a category, to be clear. Mewtwo does have a greater mind, and their stamina and range is pretty well matched. However, in terms of the better mindset for the fight? Shadow simply has what he needs in spades. He’s simply far more skilled in martial combat and trains himself far more regularly then Mewtwo has ever had to. In addition, Mewtwo has never fought someone like Shadow, while Shadow has fought plenty of people with similar abilities to Mewtwo’s most useful options. And, as a nail in the coffin, while Mewtwo’s versatility is tremendous, Shadow has shown a more consistent willingness to use his most overwhelming combat options regularly, which means that in a fight where it may come down to those options, he is simply far more ready to make use of it, which would actively impede Mewtwo’s ability to strategize. It’s important to emphasize that the amount of time Chaos Control lasts for and the fact Mewtwo would have to use specific abilities to even be able to perceive it, let alone attempt to counter it with certain options that might not even work, make this an insanely uphill battle for them to climb. Overall, Shadow the Hedgehog simply has the most important tertiary factors in this fight.

Conclusion

“I’m letting go of that destructive anger. But I will continue to fight. Fight… with your wish in my heart. Your wish for everyone to have a chance to be happy.”

Advantages:

• Stronger by most metrics
• Always much faster to the point of blitzing
• Chaos Control is a one move wonder that gives Shadow many different abilities that Mewtwo has little answers to such as sealing and time manipulation
• Resists and has answers to nearly every single ability Mewtwo has at its disposal
• Invulnerability is a serious issue for Mewtwo
• Chaos Blast is too strong and can end the fight easily
• Has revival methods with the Ovus Chao and Angel Amulet, allowing Shadow to continue fighting
• Shadow Heal can be used more often than Recover can…
• Far better showings of skill
• More relevant experience against people who fight like Mewtwo
• Strategy is way more consistent
• Hotter (-WWAL)
• Dark Type > Psychic Type, obviously

Disadvantages:

• Weaker at base and with mid-end interpretations of cosmology
• Less intelligent
• Less versatile
• …but is a less powerful healing option when compared to Recover
• Cowards run, I win
• Best track associated with him was cut from his game bruh

All in all, this was a very, very lengthy debate. Both of these characters have countless arguments that can be interpreted in countless different ways, and despite everything we’ve talked about here, this debate is so razor thin that we don’t blame anyone for being swayed to a different side. However, in our eyes, Shadow’s comparable or outright superior strength, much greater speed, massive amount of resistances, greater advantages in Tertiary Factors, and the undeniably broken ability that is Chaos Control and Mewtwo’s inability to properly handle it lead us to favor Shadow more times then not.

While Mewtwo was certainly an almost insurmountable opponent for the Ultimate Lifeform, at the end of the day the Genetic Apex was tossed aside like the many Ditto before it, as they had been decisively Shad-owned.

The winner is Shadow the Hedgehog.

Mewtwo

Stats

For Mewtwo, let’s start with stats. To get it out of the way, yes they do indeed scale to the Pokemon of Myth AKA the Creation Trio. They are part of Giovanni’s team in Rainbow Rocket who’s superior to Cyrus who has a member on his team. They’re part of the final boss’ team in Battle Revolution who also has a CT member and Mewtwo can be caught in BDSP’s postgame where Dawn and Lucas already defeated and caught Dialga and Palkia. Mewtwo is a late game superboss in HGSS where the Sinnoh Ruins event happens where Ethan/Kotone can catch a CT member of their choice and Mewtwo’s referred to as the world’s strongest Pokemon in a lot of media (even Team Flare thought Mewtwo would be strong enough to power the Ultimate weapon). The CT members are not normally depicted as so far above that other powerful legendaries can’t keep up. Side note, Mewtwo has also defeated Ash who can scale to them in the anime at least via the Hoopa movie, but there is some contention. We do feel speed should be fine though since Ash properly reacts to them at least (even Team Rocket can).

We’ll mainly focus on the games though since that’s where Mewtwo’s most solid scaling comes from. Tackling the idea that there’s multiple CT members or just one, there’s arguments for both ways. The argument for multiple isn’t quite as solid though. The Pokemon lore clearly states there was nothing beforehand until Arceus created the trio and there’s implied to be only one. The Sinjoh Ruins events could imply otherwise, but there’s context. Arceus only made a new CT member (only one, not the whole trio) to show a glimpse of its full power and the ability to make life out of nothing. The USUM example isn’t solid either; Cyrus having one and the same CT member being a catchable Pokemon in Ultra Space. Cyrus however is from an alternate future, proving that US can connect to alternate timelines and being able to catch a member in US probably just means you encountered them in an earlier point in time before they were caught. You can also only catch one CT member in Ultra Space anyway. Furthermore, the belief that there are multiple requires the idea that there’s one per universe, and Dialga and Palkia don’t live in the universe to begin with. Furthermore, the Dimensional Research Lab in Alola, the place that is actively and explicitly studying alternate dimensions and Ultra Space, to the point where Burnet says that varying Pokedex entries confirm their existence, is studying Palkia and its ability to alter parallel worlds. Which wouldn’t make sense if Palkia was limited to one world.

That being said, even if there are multiple CT members…it legit does not matter. Palkia controls all of space and is responsible for the creation of Ultra Space since the world was created from nothing. Ultra Space connects to all dimensions/universes in the Pokemon multiverse, so thus should contain as a minimum 350 million universes via Cartridge Theory. Even if you wanna argue it’s more of a transit dimension, transit space still has to exist between the several adjoining dimensions. For example, in order to travel from A to B to C, B is still between A and C, thus having a whole universe space in between. Entralink is also connected to other game universes/cartridges (even just limiting it to just BW, it’d be about 24 million universes) and Palkia has to be responsible for that too since it was created from nothing. Palkia is the creator of multiple (plural) dimensions of space and they will all reach the same space thanks to Palkia. Even just one Palkia has to be responsible for one US. So Palkia should solidly scale to all those universes, thus Mewtwo because they scale to them.

What about infinite multiversal arguments? Well Mewtwo and the Creation Trio have that too, especially with Dialga! Again, it does not matter if there’s one or multiple of them. Each Dialga is responsible for each universe’s diverging timelines which is infinite because Pokemon explicitly runs on MWI with a lot of backing from ORAS to Rainbow Rocket to Professor Sada/Turo themselves being from an alternate timeline in the DLC. They are very reliable professors who explicitly study on different timelines themselves in Scarlet and Violet. Dialga’s birth causes the concept of time to be born, directly controls it and causes the river of time to flow endlessly, being responsible for all the alternate timelines that exist even in just one universe. Masuda has directly called time in Pokemon infinite.

It’s only fair to compare Shadow’s ends who scale to Solaris. It’s said that Solaris would consume all existing timelines, but it’s not so clear cut. There’s no solid timeframe and it’s described as eating dimensions for lunch, so there is an argument Solaris likely can’t do it all at once. Still, benefit of the doubt, let’s assume they can and numerically, they can consume about 13 to 300 or so timelines (from Shadow 2005’s game). Obviously a far cry from the 300 million from cartridge theory, putting Shadow at a disadvantage.

What about infinite multiversal arguments for Shadow? For us, we simply feel that their evidence isn’t the strongest. Starting with the 35th anniversary video, it’s a little disingenuous to take this video literally. It’s clearly just a promotional video and in the same video, it tackles iconic rivalries, endless friends and many rings. It’s not supposed to be a literal lore video about Sonic’s infinite multiverse.

Next is the Crossworlds line, but it’s also just a promotional line as well from a website and not in the actual game and the worlds are…well simulations, making it not the best argument either. The strongest one is Tailstube about how Tails theorizes there could be an infinite amount of Sonics…but that’s just it. It’s a theory and not something ironclad. You could say it’s supported by the 300~ different endings in Shadow 2005, but that’s a far cry from infinite and we don’t really have proof the endings in Shadow’s game are alternative universes or just simply different scenarios (especially since the game has a “true” ending). Mewtwo’s infinite arguments are simply stronger and more reliable, which gives him an edge in strength.

But at the end of the day, say you adamantly believe the two arguments cancel out. Shadow couldn’t beat Solaris alone, requiring Sonic and Silver to beat him. Meanwhile Mewtwo and Giovanni are stronger than Cyrus and Palkia. Mewtwo would upscale the pivotal feat, while Shadow would downscale. Plus Mewtwo scales to the good stuff in base. Mega only would increase the gap.

In terms of speed, they’re more or less on par with each other. Shadow scales to Solaris’ speed, whose light spreads across the universe, getting into 77 Quadrillion times FTL. Dialga and Palkia let out a shockwave in Diamond and Pearl, that distorts time and space. The feat is consistent with the fact that both Necrozma and Solgaleo have the power to light up the universe, so it’s not a random outlier or something. Time and space are explicitly a universe in Pokemon’s context, so we believe it’s fine to say it’s affecting a whole universe and Palkia and Dialga represent space and time itself in Pokemon, so they’re exerting that much energy to get about 104.8 Quadrillion times FTL. In line with Solaris’ feat and within margin of error. Both can higher into the quintillion times FTL with Time Eater’s feat and of course the Arceus shockwaves that the god does by casually waking up with their energy.

To be clear, this is from the anime continuity where Mewtwo’s scaling options are a bit more questionable to the CT. They would mainly have to scale to them via Ash who they defeat easily, but Ash scaling to the CT is seen as questionable (aside from the Hoopa movie which is the most solid). However, Ash at the very least reacts to the creation trio just fine (a lot of scenes just wouldn’t make much sense if Ash was hugely slower than them), so scaling to their speed is fine (and perhaps you can argue the anime CT shouldn’t really be faster than the game ones). Arceus has used their shockwaves as attacks and Giratina has avoided them, which gets 4.1 Quintillion times FTL, which is on par with Time Eater’s feat of up to 6 Quintillion times FTL. Both have infinite speed arguments that would cancel out as well. Since it’s so close, it’s really best to just say they tie in speed.

Abilities

Abilities in this case is interesting because it’s basically many vs one. While Shadow has a bunch of abilities, Mewtwo has a lot more, 99% of them he can do and more. Spatial manipulation, teleportation, energy manipulation, boosting, etc, Mewtwo has like four different moves that can do that. Shadow also can’t cheese a win with spatial manipulation or BFR as Mewtwo can resist attacks from Palkia’s Spatial Rend without being chopped to pieces and shown the ability to teleport from dimensions with ease before. Mewtwo has a bunch of different ways to steal attacks for itself. As a telekinetic, any projectile can be redirected, at twice its power with Counter, or outright stolen with moves like Me First or Mimic. Heck, they can be outright turned off via Mewtwo’s Disable, which in the novelization of the first movie shut down all of every Pokemon on the field’s moves. And that’s assuming they can bypass Mewtwo’s various barriers.

Status Effects, Buffs & Debuffs

Status conditions like Paralysis and Burn are damning because of their secondary effects, namely the speed and attack drops. Frostbite as well, though that’s not as guaranteed as there’s no frostbite inflicting move. Sure, Shadow has things like the Immunity Idol to stave it off, but not only can they be shut down with Embargo, Mewtwo can just destroy them with pinpoint telekinesis. Mewtwo really just needs a thought, and a go-to strategy for Mewtwo is blowing things up with its mind. Freezing is also useful because Super Forms aren’t immune to that. Even flinching, it’s something that Super Forms are consistently falling prey to, as it’s what happens when they’re hit by something that can’t hurt them, running down the time limit. Even Toxic, while Shadow was built as a living panacea, he is vulnerable to the status effect without items in Chronicles. Once the Immunity Idol is gone, either through destroying it or rendering it inert, Mewtwo can run rampant.

Stat boosting is also a big deal as well. Boosts aren’t temporary. Any buff with Bulk Up or Calm Mind or Agility or etc. stays for the remainder of the battle, and ditto with debuffs like Scary Face. We’ve already explained the issue with the Immunity Idol, but even with it, Weakened and Vulnerable are just status effects in Sonic Chronicles, not straight up debuffs to stats which is what Mewtwo is doing with Psychic potentially lowering special defense, Scary Face and Flash doing what they do, etc. On top of that, the secondary effects of Burn and Paralysis stack on top of status debuffs. At minimum stats, when speed or attack can’t get any lower, paralysis and burn’s debuffing still lower the stat even further. Furthermore, Shadow using his own buffs means that Mewtwo’s Psyche Up takes them. Permanently at that, as Psyche Up takes the good without the bad (for example, Belly Drum requires halving the user’s HP to get +6 in attack; Psyche Up steals the boosts without having to half its health). There’s arguments for whether or not Super or Doom would be stat buffs or not, but Hero and Dark certainly count. The boosts from those would be temporary, but not only would it do nothing to any power gap, once it wears off as it doesn’t last long, Mewtwo keeps the strength boost. Ultimately a net negative.

On top of everything else, Mewtwo just has so many more ways to compound damage. Even beyond conventional stat buffs/debuffs. Want those fire moves to hit harder? Throw up Sunny Day. Water? Rain Dance, and make those Thunders and Hurricanes more accurate as well. Doubling down on psychokinetic powers, Psychic Surge is perfect for that. If that demon Indeedee is anything to go by, psyspam is all the rage these days, and prevents any potential spindash blitzing from Shadow at that. Laser Focus to guarantee a crit. Every move becomes a Plus Move if Mega. Even getting angry and getting a boost off of it helps.

Burn

Burn might be a surprising subject to see in focus here. Super Forms are well known for their resistance and seeming immunity to heat, and for generating heat of their own. Super Sonic burned off the Metal Virus as soon as it activated, and they’ve ignored plenty of heat-based threats before. What is Burn going to do, let alone any fire attack?

But from the lovable Vulpix to the legendary Groudon, Pokemon are no strangers to turning up the heat in battle, and despite the impressive resistance Super forms possess, Pokemon are simply able to outclass it and burn Shadow to ashes. Let’s start with the obvious. Super forms have been able to go through plenty of fires before, not taking any damage or suffering problems from the flames and even harmlessly flying through lava. But even non-fire types like Rhydon are known to casually bathe in molten magma upwards of 3000 degrees F, and these Pokemon are still fully able to be toasted by fire moves, and Burned. Needless to say, if Pokemon are able to put out fire hot enough to toast even the likes of Rhydon, Super Shadow’s resistance to lava is simply not good enough. Pokemon consistently beat a resistance on that level all the time, so there’s no reason to assume the fire wouldn’t be able to cut through the heat resistance here as well.

That said, there’s always another angle. Let’s cut the small stuff and jump straight to the big guns, where the maximum possibility on both sides come out to see whose heat reigns supreme. At the end of Sonic Generations, Super Sonic and Classic Super Sonic counter what seems to be a small sun warped in by the Time Eater, resisting it long enough to dispel it. Certainly impressive and worthy of absolutely ludicrous heat resistance, but there are some things to note. For starters, the Sonics only interact with the surface of this body, dispelling it rather than flying straight through. The surface of such an item would still be amazingly hot, but certainly not on the same level as the sun’s corona. And also, the “sun” is incredibly small. It’s relative in size to the Time Eater, who while big, isn’t even the size of a large skyscraper, let alone a planet or an actual star. Smaller stars generate lesser heat, with dwarf stars sometimes dipping below 5,000 degrees F. And these are full blown dwarf stars, let alone the tiny structure the Time Eater used, which would likely be even cooler as such. While probably insanely impressive, the resistance would probably only be around 5,000 degrees F at best given these factors. Conversely, the Pokemon Magcargo notoriously has a body clocking in at a whopping 18,000 degrees F! And while Mewtwo obviously is not naturally that toasty himself, his fire attacks are still capable of damaging Magcargo despite this incredible ability and resistance. That alone already makes it where Mewtwo’s fire attacks are able to harm beings with a heat resistance over 10,000 degrees superior to Shadow’s, and we’re far from the maximum yet. Mega Heatran is able to handle fires of over 1 million degrees F, and while Flash Fire stops fire attacks normally, Mewtwo’s fire attacks can still work on Heatran once that unique ability is nullified and Heatran only has its natural resistance left.

The difference is night and day. Now obviously, Pokemon aren’t always shooting off Flamethrowers thousands or even millions of degrees in temperature all the time, but the point is that they can launch fire attacks capable of overcoming such potent resistances that far outclass those a Super state has shown. Assuming Shadow is just totally immune to such fire when he has displayed no such resistance on this level would probably be an NLF, and Mewtwo is more than capable of scorching the Ultimate Lifeform even at his best. At best for Shadow, the Burn effect will absolutely take effect, chipping away at his health constantly and weakening him. But given the massive gap in firepower, it is entirely possible that Mewtwo’s fire will just fry Shadow away in a single good shot, ending the battle right then and there. Pokemon simply gets far too ludicrous with its flames, and it can dish out more than Shadow can take to beat the heat.

Freeze

We’ve covered the fire, now let’s spin things to the other side of the board and bring the temperature down on this battle! Like with fire, Pokemon have a whole list of users out there that can cool things off, and while Super Forms have some measure of a resistance to the cold, it is not a perfect immunity, nor does it stack up to the degree of chill Pokemon can bring to the table. For starters, Super States are already shown to have some measure of vulnerability to extreme cold. The Snowblowers in Press Garden Zone in Sonic Mania are outright capable of freezing Super Sonic solid, and while he is able to survive and break out after a time, it is still decisive proof that Super Shadow is not immune to the cold, and that there is a point where a cold enough move can lock the hedgehog down. Heck, it’s one of the ways Eggman slows down Super Sonic in Advance 2.

Fortunately for Mewtwo, the Pokemon should have sufficient cold for that. Just like with Magcargo and Heatran for fire, Pokemon are able to withstand absolutely absurd cold, and yet Mewtwo’s ice attacks can still damage them. Calyrex Ice Rider in particular is somehow able to emit colds that surpass absolute zero. Absolute zero clocks in -460 degrees F (-273 for Celsius), and Calyrex is able to dish out a whopping -500 degrees F (-300 for Celsius), matching absolute zero and then some. And while Mewtwo cannot freeze Calyrex Ice Rider, moves like Blizzard and Ice Beam are still able to damage the Pokemon, meaning Mewtwo has to be able to dish out cold potent enough to at least keep up with Calyrex and its resistance.

Needless to say, if Shadow can be frozen over by a snowblower in Press Garden, there is no way he is surviving an ice attack rivaling if not matching absolute zero outright. Super forms are absolutely capable of resisting the cold, but there must be a breaking point, and being able to keep up with the resistance Calyrex possesses and damage means Mewtwo absolutely has the tools to freeze Shadow solid, if not kill him with his ice attacks.

Telekinesis

Ah yes, telekinesis AKA Mewtwo’s bread and butter and likely to go for option. Telekinesis basically would potentially put the brakes on Shadow and let Mewtwo toss him around. Shadow does potentially resist it via his encounters with Silver…buuuut it’s not very strong. His encounters with Silver in Sonic 06 show him clearly affected by Silver’s psychokinesis, making this a weak showing of a resistance. Especially given that fight only goes that way in Silver’s route. When playing as Shadow, he’s as vulnerable to the “It’s no use” as the 20 year old meme says. The time when Shadow got turned into a Zombot is a bit better, but it again shows him clearly affected by it for a considerable time and even then, his “breaking out” is pretty vague and it’s possible Silver could have just let him go. The possible strongest argument is using Speed Battle for Super Shadow to be immune, but Speed Battle itself isn’t really canon and there’s nothing in mainline canon that would support the resistance. Not to mention this can just be argued with Super Forms being much stronger than base Silver. This means Mewtwo can use their telekinesis to control Shadow and the battlefield more times than not.

Mind Manipulation

While it’s true Shadow can likely resist Mewtwo dominating his mind and controlling it, he never countered his mind being read straight up. Mewtwo can look into Shadow’s entire life in seconds, getting all the information they need for the fight. The Phantom Ruby example is weak as nobody tried reading someone’s mind with it and countering it, so using that as an example of mind reading resistance isn’t the best. The Chronicles example seems promising, but “tapping” into someone’s mind is vague and it looks like in context the Overmind is dominating/controlling someone’s mind which is not a mind reading resistance. Not to mention the plot proceeds in that chapter because one of the good Voxai puts a code in Sonic’s head, which wouldn’t be possible if the Emerald prevented getting in. Even then, it seems like Sonic and crew needed the Great Emeralds specifically (AKA an amped version of the normal emeralds) which Shadow does not have specifically. Shadow and Sonic have never countered someone reading their mind straight up, meaning Mewtwo gets to read the hedgehog’s mind like an open book. Combine this with Mewtwo’s crazy intelligence, it’s going to be very useful for Mewtwo to know what’s going on.

Precognition

Mewtwo can use Future Sight to see minutes or even days into the future, letting them know Shadow’s every move before even they do! This means anything problematic like the Chaos Spears and Chaos Control Mewtwo is going to see coming from a mile away. Shadow isn’t helpless at least, Sonic characters have defeated characters like Solaris and The End who can see the future too, so it’s not the end for Shadow. That being said, neither of these characters have actively used their future seeing abilities in combat, so it’s very questionable they have some sorta anti-fate manipulation. This ultimately does not stop Mewtwo from knowing Shadow’s moves before he does, giving Mewtwo a lot of options. Even in the worst case scenario where Mewtwo somehow doesn’t have a perfect read on Shadow’s exact play-by-play strategy for the fight, the Pokemon would still get a detailed look at pretty much everything in Shadow’s arsenal and what they do, giving it the ability to plan ahead and counter. This is absurdly useful, as Shadow isn’t going to know what Mewtwo’s going to do, but Mewtwo will know everything Shadow’s going to do. Strange, isn’t it?

Soul Manipulation

In Detective Pikachu, Mewtwo has shown the crazy ability to rip someone’s soul out. While it’s argued that the characters need to be in a frenzied state, it’s said by a villain who’s a bit unhinged and even then, it’s contradicted clearly by Mewtwo taking the soul of Tim’s dad who is in no such condition. Consent also does not need to happen as Tim’s dad was unconscious and the frenzied state condition contradicts that idea regardless. Furthermore, we have seen firsthand other, weaker Pokemon with soul rip being able to do so with no stipulation, like Gengar and Dusknoir.

Shadow’s best argument is to possibly resist it, but we feel his ways of doing so simply aren’t the best. Doom powers trying to take Shadow’s mind, body and soul isn’t a soul rip and it’s clearly more about corrupting Shadow rather than forcing anything out of Shadow’s body. Black Doom in the manga was simply trying to absorb Shadow with nothing about his soul being mentioned and even then, it’s not a soul rip. The Chaos Emeralds possibly bringing Sonic’s soul back required a ritual and outside help, which is something that can’t be afforded to Shadow (also it’s pretty blatant resurrection, not soul manipulation). And finally, corruption in Cyber Space seems promising, but Sonic is resisting the actual corruption of Cyber Space itself, not the soul trapping. Just because you resist the cause, that does not mean you resist the effect. Going Super doesn’t cure Sonic of Cyber Corruption, it just halts its progress, and once Sonic does get fully corrupted, they don’t save him by having him go Super if that was how it worked. Simply put, Shadow’s soul resisting options are fairly weak, giving Mewtwo the option to tear it out, more or less sealing the win if they pull it off.

Sleep Manipulation

There’s nothing stopping Mewtwo from using Hypnosis and putting Shadow to sleep like it did Nurse Joy. The Chaos Emeralds give Sonic a second wind when knocked out, which isn’t the same, and given Super Sonic has gotten fatigued despite being in Super, it’s most likely something that triggers upon initial transformation. And Black Arms resisting the gas is because it’s their own stuff. It’s not some special resistance to paralysis and being put to sleep, it doesn’t affect them to begin with. Even if it wasn’t a default immunity, resisting a noxious toxin isn’t the same thing as being magically put to sleep. A man who built up an immunity to hemlock isn’t going to stay awake from a hypnotist. The immunity idol holds up but as said before, it can be destroyed or removed one way or another. If Mewtwo puts Shadow to sleep, either Mewtwo kills him there and then, or in the absolute worst case scenario it’s going to chew through that timer. And the worst case scenario wouldn’t even happen because if Mewtwo uses Nightmare & Dream Eater, that’s game over.

Items & Item Manipulation

A very notable difference here is that a lot of Mewtwo’s kit is naturally built in. Not in the BowsEgg way, where Eggman had a flaw of his abilities being between different mechs, Shadow has a very versatile kit (even if Mewtwo’s is deeper) and CC is amazing. What we mean is that Shadow needs his items a lot more than Mewtwo does. Useful items are a dime a dozen in Pokemon (Heavy Duty Boots, Eviolite, Assault Vest, Life Orb, Leftovers, etc.) and getting rid of them is recommended at the very least for good trainers. Mewtwo pulling a Thawne on the Time Ring and destroying said items is something that’s in character for someone to do in this series, let alone a supergenius like Mewtwo, and mind reading and precognition only compounding that. Without those items, as mentioned in the first section of abilities, resistances to basic JRPG abilities go down the drain.

Even Shadow’s secondary things like the Chao or Wisps, that’s a boon for Mewtwo. While Shadow can resist mind control, they can’t. Which would mean they’d become an ally of Mewtwo, not Shadow. And all the benefits they give Shadow they’d be given to Mewtwo instead.

There is a current argument that Super Forms resist item manipulation, through Forces Speed Battle & Crossworlds having Super Sonic be immune to all items in the game. There’s issues with those. As mentioned in the telekinesis section, Speed Battle is very non canon, likely beyond the composite this episode might allow (as a comparison, it’s why Pokemon didn’t use Mystery Dungeon, Trozeii, Rumble, or any of the various other manga like the original Pocket Monsters with the Blockhead Clefairy). Characters erased from the timeline like Mephiles are playable, as well as Lego iterations of the cast.

Crossworlds however is canon (although Super Sonic’s appearance in it isn’t, but I digress). But that takes issues in and of itself. Super Sonic being immune to most of the items can easily be written off as him being too durable to affect him. The exception is the Dark Chao, but that has context. The reason it’s treated as item hax is in that in the animated short, Rouge uses it to take a wisp powerup Shadow was about to use in his car for her own. But that’s just it: Shadow’s car. Something programmed into his vehicle, not something on his person. The Dark Chao essentially took the nitro button for itself. It would be remiss to assume that this translates to immunity to having things stolen.

Ultimately, even if both of these things were airtight on their own, the problem is still that they’re inconsistent. Super Sonic isn’t immune to very similar items in other spinoffs like Shuffle, and in the Riders games, Super Sonic can be stunned despite being fully immune in Crossworlds. More importantly, Sonic 3 opens with Knuckles knocking the Chaos Emeralds off of Sonic, and Frontiers has Sonic getting knocked out of Super. There’s also the beginning of Unleashed, which has Super Sonic painfully stripped of the Emeralds. Which given they are plot moments, it matters more than a non canon appearance. To further support the point, Egg Salamander’s black hole drains the rings from Burning Blaze, which if Crossworlds held up shouldn’t have happened. Now this isn’t saying that Mewtwo could necessarily take the Emeralds from him, but it is to show that having items taken from Super Forms, even absorbed ones, is more canon than when they don’t.

Illusions

Mewtwo trapping Shadow in illusions is something that would work. It has in the past. There’s a whole stage in Shadow 05 that exists because Black Doom created an illusory stage of the ARK attack, complete with a sidekick Maria. If Mewtwo traps Shadow in an illusion, as many other Pokemon have (Mew made Goh and friends experience the birth of the Pokemon World), he’d have Shadow dead to rights.

Mewtwo’s Cells

An interesting thing mentioned in the preview is Mewtwo’s cells and how it could possibly infect Shadow. Shadow is immune to diseases, but it’s questionable if he could counter cellular cancer which is more akin to what Mewtwo is doing. Mewtwo can survive being near Mega Heatran, who can reach 1.8 million fahrenheit, which is crazy and in the context of Adventures, using Entei’s special flames was the only way Blaine could get rid of those cells. However, Shadow can possibly counter this by turning in Super Shadow since that’s how Sonic countered the Metal Virus, but its questionable if they have the heat needed to get rid of it. Plus in canon, the cancer was healed by Entei’s healing flames, which is very similar to what Super Forms did. Regardless, Mewtwo spreading their cells like a cancer isn’t something they would go for as a wincon, so we decided not to focus on this too much.

Power Swap

Another factor to consider is the move Power Swap, a move Mewtwo possesses that trades out the changes to one’s attack stats between user and target. While Mewtwo is relative in power at absolute worst, being able to take Shadow’s boosts and the amplifications of Super Shadow from the Chaos Emeralds could be a massive boon that would basically immediately end the battle, so it is worth discussing.

The most immediately obvious counter would be that Power Swap does not work on Mega Evolved Pokemon. Super States are pretty similar, so that should cut it off right there, right? While this logic is entirely reasonable, there are differences between the two that make it unlikely that this alone can cut Mewtwo off. Mega Evolution is noted to be biological and internal in its workings. Rayquaza is able to trigger its Mega Evolution specifically due to an organ it possesses, and Mega Evolving is consistently noted to be another step in the natural and biological evolution process that all Pokemon possess. Nintendo’s official descriptions also state that it is drawing out the power within, further backing the idea that Mega Evolution works by bringing out internal power in a biological way, simply unleashing the next stage of a Pokemon’s natural abilities.

Conversely, Chaos Energy tends to work a bit differently. Sure, they possess some similarities, such as working with some form of life energy, causing mutations or evolutions, or using stones of sorts to trigger the forms, but whereas Mega Evolution uses internal energy being drawn out, Chaos Energy is external, overloading the user with massive energy to power them up. This is how characters like Tails and Doctor Eggman are able to power so many creations with Chaos Emeralds, the Emeralds are basically massively powerful batteries of the stuff to be applied to a target. This is the exact opposite of how Mega Evolution works, as one draws out the internal power, the other is used to power them directly, a difference far too significant to just handwave away.

Further proof of the difference exists in the form of the Mythical Pokemon, Magearna. Due to Magearna’s robotic nature, the Pokemon is naturally incapable of utilizing Mega Evolution. For Magearna to use this power, a synthetic, artificial Mega Stone had to be created very specifically for Magearna, showcasing that Mega Energy is not compatible with machinery. Conversely, Chaos Energy is very blatantly applicable to robots and the like, that’s a major reason another robot won his Death Battle just earlier this year! Even if one argued that most technology is created specifically to use Chaos Energy, this wouldn’t explain instances like Mecha Sonic, who has no recorded evidence of being designed like such and still attained a super state anyway. Chaos Energy is pretty consistently able to flow through machines, while Magearna was outright blocked from using Mega Evolution until a manmade workaround was developed. They are clearly not one to one, and thus Mega Evolution cannot be used as a counter to Power Swap.

Of course, one could argue that Super Shadow is more than a mere stat change, and thus inapplicable. And in fairness, there’s no denying Super Shadow gains significantly more than a boost in strength. His speed skyrockets, he gains flight, and he turns gold. A bit hard to ignore! But Power Swap is able to specifically target and just trade off the changed power, even from moves that do more than change just that. Calm Mind for instances also amplifies a user’s defensive abilities on top of offense, but that doesn’t stop Power Swap anyway. The extra abilities shouldn’t really be a problem.

Overall, the energy provided by the Chaos Emeralds should be fair game for Mewtwo to target. The Chaos Emeralds essentially function like batteries of energy for Mewtwo to swap out the resulting energy from, and while one could argue Mewtwo could maybe not deal with the absorbed Emeralds themselves in this way, all of the amplified energy they have coursed through Super Shadow should be fair game. And given Power Swap has been thorough enough to completely sap a target’s strength entirely in instances like Pokemon Horizons, it’s pretty safe to say that the ability should be able to stop Shadow in his tracks.

Survivability & Healing

Next there’s Mewtwo’s survivability. Natural regeneration is really good, recovering after flatlining. Of course, the active regeneration with moves like Life Dew and Recover helps as well. Recover being able to be spammed and able to heal Mewtwo from impalings is insane and way better than anything Shadow has, and in the games is able to restore up to 50% of Mewtwo’s maximum health on use at any time. And if Mewtwo gets really low, Mewtwo has employed the Resto Chesto strategy, using Rest to completely heal to full and using a Chesto Berry to heal off the sleep. Because Mewtwo knows Recycle, Mewtwo can restore said Chesto Berry to repeat the process. Even if Shadow managed to break through Mewtwo’s defenses entirely and literally beat him to death, that still wouldn’t be sufficient, as Mewtwo literally bounced back from the flatlining with Recover. With so many healing moves that can be used at any time Mewtwo desires, any and all progress Shadow makes can be undone at will with no real drawbacks, and given Mewtwo was able to heal from multiple simultaneous stabbings from Deoxys and Recover has restored limbs before, this extends to Chaos Spear impalement or if Shadow starts fighting in a particularly brutal fashion.

Conversely, Shadow’s own healing options are rather moot. Shadow Heal is certainly helpful, but it is incredibly slow, and additionally forces him to stand in one spot, doing nothing the entire time. Mewtwo is obviously not going to let that happen, and outside sources of healing such as Chao can similarly be dealt with and are much more limited. In short, progress Mewtwo puts on Shadow is going to be much harder for Shadow to undo, while just about anything Shadow does can be scrubbed clean at any time, as much as Mewtwo wants. Shadow has to down Mewtwo in one fell swoop and beyond just beating him to death, and likely his only reliable option for that is a direct hit from Chaos Blast, which Mewtwo has a fair number of answers for, such as teleportation and Endure. Shadow has also never used Chaos Blast during a Chaos Control before, and for all we know, he might not even be able to. Even if he could though, Endure would still save Mewtwo from getting downed, and then he can just Resto Chesto literally all of his health and energy back while Shadow is stuck with a lot of Chaos Energy vented and Chaos Control out of access for a bit. In short, pretty much anything Shadow does, Mewtwo can undo, while any work Mewtwo puts in will be dramatically harder for Shadow to erase.

This is also very important because Mewtwo’s opponent is on a very consistent time limit. Between Pressure completely crippling the counter on top of the Chaos energy burning energy even more, and Mega Mewtwo’s Plus Moves chipping past the invulnerability anyway to cut it down even more, anything that keeps Shadow from finishing the job is a detriment to the time limit. Mewtwo doesn’t need to outlast to win, but it is a very notable condition in this fight. If Shadow reverts even for a second out of Super, it’s over (it needs to be Super too, because Doom doesn’t resist Mewtwo’s transmutation). Because again, Mewtwo likes blowing things up with its mind.

Attack Reflection

Mewtwo has this in spades. Counter, Telekinesis, Magic Coat, Mirror Coat, Me First, etc. Shadow’s entire arsenal can be turned against him. The sheer battlefield control Mewtwo will have is egregious, because all of Shadow’s ranged attacks become moot the moment they’re launched, because Mewtwo can send them back at Shadow with a mere wave of its hand. While attacks like Chaos Spear can be fired off in droves, Mewtwo’s many redirecting options should still be able to redirect them all without issue, which presents a great risk for Shadow. Chaos Spears are able to directly damage Super Form users due to their Chaos Energy, and in particularly good circumstances, outright shut them off, like Shadow himself did to Neo Metal Sonic. If Shadow isn’t careful, he could become victim to his own tactic, with his own attack damaging him, and potentially, shutting off his Super Form outright and ending the battle.

Shadow would have to rely on physical moves, which thuds him against barriers. Even on a basic martial artistry level, fighting someone as strong as you (in the best case scenario) up close that’s twice your size and has an extra prehensile limb isn’t a good idea. Shadow is 3 foot 3 and Mewtwo is built like Mewtwo, at 6 foot 7 (shush). Mewtwo simply has the moves to shut Shadow’s range down and turn it into a huge risk, forcing Shadow to fight up close while the Pokemon is free to attack from any range it pleases and control the flow and pace of the battle.

Dealing With Chaos Control

The big elephant in the room is Chaos Control. Namely, its time stopping application. Mewtwo’s counters barring TCG’s Photon Barrier have asterisks (and even then using it is controversial). However, we believe Mewtwo has ways of countering it. For one, there is simply seeing it coming, especially since Mewtwo’s mind reading would clue them in on the ability itself. Mewtwo’s precognition could also warn it of the ability, giving Mewtwo time and knowledge on what the move is, and likely when it is coming. Sure, Mewtwo can’t use his precog to see directly inside the time stop, but he is absurdly intelligent, he would notice himself suddenly taking damage and easily be able to figure out exactly what Shadow did, and take action from there, such as warping away. Only one of them can sense others and it’s not Shadow, so while Mewtwo can follow Shadow wherever he goes, the inverse isn’t the same. Shadow also has a very obvious tell of saying the move as he does it. He doesn’t NEED to do it at all, as shown all throughout Shadow Generations, but he does like to do it. Because it only requires a thought to teleport, the split second would be the difference between getting out of dodge or not.

Second, Mewtwo has ways of countering it. For one, Disable. Shadow has used Chaos Control while it was nullified before, but it took a long while for him to regain access to the ability, with two stages and two boss fights happening before he got it back (and he still couldn’t use the move for a while anyway). Even when Shadow does regain the ability, it is specifically at a point where Shadow is solidly overpowering Black Doom without difficulty, which he cannot do here given Mewtwo’s superior power, so it’s questionable if what he was doing was actually a power nullification counter. But Mewtwo also has ways of taking it for itself. We know thanks to the Shadow Generations fight with Overlord and Shadow’s brief encounter with Silver in Sonic 06, two Chaos Controls cancel each other out. Mewtwo using Mimic would be able to take the move for itself, or making a clone of Shadow like it does in Puzzle League to do it would work as well. Precognition, genius intellect, and genetically engineered battle pragmatism help Mewtwo make the right decisions here. Mimic in Gen 1 also doesn’t need to literally be the last move the opponent used. Mewtwo can choose Chaos Control specifically if they want to since they learn the gen 1 variant, thus allowing Mewtwo to copy Mimic without issue.

There’s also Taunt, which prevents any moves that aren’t attacks from happening…which would apply to Chaos Control since it’s just a time stop. To be clear, Taunt is not a mind control since it’s not controlling Shadow’s mind to do something against his will (and he can still pick which attack he wants to do) and it’s not a power nullification. It’s an empathy manipulation of sorts, a rage bait if you will. You can possibly argue Shadow countering it with the Emeralds pacifying negative energy with positive energy, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it counters something like Taunt since it still required a long fight, meaning it’s not something resisted right away. It’s simply not a strong argument since Pokemon like Sylveon can induce positive vibes to pacify hostility…but they can be Taunted just fine.

And while Shadow resisted the dark influences of his Doom form, Taunt has similarly worked on Mega Salamence, who has similar influences. Mega Salamence can become so violently minded that it can turn on and kill its own trainer, gaining the name of the “Blood-Soaked Crescent,” but the trainers we play as clearly have a strong enough bond with Salamence to keep that fury pacified, or else Mega Evolving would result in the player’s untimely demise… and Salamence probably just killing everything in the area, which has obviously not happened to the main trainers before. And yet despite that, Taunt works just fine on a player’s Mega Salamence, so it should do the same to Shadow here. Heck, Super Shadow himself has been ragebaited by Super Sonic which just leads to evidence of Taunt working just fine. So Mewtwo has three solid ways of countering Chaos Control if you think the resistance arguments aren’t strong enough (which is fair enough) with Mimic, Disable and Taunt and the precognition and mind reading will clue Mewtwo in that they have to do something about it before it gets out of hand.

But even if Shadow did get the Chaos Control off, and it worked without a hitch, it might not be as much of a game over as we thought of. For one, we’ve stated that with both low and mid ends, Mewtwo has a sizable strength advantage. Because Mewtwo resists spatial manipulation and BFR, Shadow doesn’t have a way of ignoring durability against Mewtwo. So he’d be forced to use physical means, and anything that’s not punches and kicks could get disabled, as Mewtwo has shut down all abilities instead of just one at a time. Shadow doesn’t have a way past the barriers easily without Chaos Spear, so if that is shut down, Shadow has to spend time breaking those. And Mewtwo has a lot of barriers. Like actually 6 or 7 (shush again) different ones. While Chaos Spears can possibly get through Reflect and Light Screen, that doesn’t mean they can go through moves like Protect. Pokemon with Infiltrator, an ability that also ignores barriers, while can get through some barriers, still ultimately are stopped by Protect, meaning Chaos Spears aren’t just an automatic wincon. And it wouldn’t get past the Tera Shield either, as not even Urshifu’s Unseen Fist so much as inconveniences it.

But even if Shadow gets past that, he’d still need to hurt Mewtwo enough that Mewtwo can’t just heal it off in a matter of seconds. After all, Mewtwo has literally regenerated from death, and on top of that, Resto Chesto doesn’t take long as it merely takes a turn. Drain Punch’s parasitic healing helps a ton, siphoning off Shadow while healing Mewtwo. As X, Mewtwo doesn’t even need Drain Punch because its basic attacks heal as well. Heck, a variation of Recover that Mewtwo X has heals based on how much damage it took. Mewtwo could wind up stronger after a timestop beatdown. 90 second timestops are far and few between with Shadow, and Shadow has never put down an opponent in a single timestop before, and not for lack of trying. Shadow needing to recharge energy for it means that timer goes down quicker, and gives Mewtwo more time to adapt, something Mewtwo is genetically wired to do. Which goes into the next bit, Chaos Control time stop isn’t spammable. In every game it’s in, Shadow needs to charge up for some reason or another. Fill a gauge, get an item, you name it.

Furthermore, Mewtwo using Endure against Chaos Control means that Shadow cannot kill Mewtwo in the time stop. Endure prevents any attempt to KO the user during that turn, even from multi hit moves or delayed attacks, which Chaos Control absolutely would be. Mewtwo would be stuck in the Endure “status” (check the code, Endured is checked as a self-inflicted positive status similar to moves like Lucky Chant or Focus Energy) for the duration of that time stop, being frozen with Mewtwo, and since the two are comparable in power in the best of times for Shadow, he’s not overpowering or compounding it. Being at 1 HP would suck but it’s nothing that can’t be healed off. From there, Shadow is left having to recharge his best move, while Mewtwo is free to go all-in with its wide array of options to end the battle. And it’s not like Mewtwo is lacking in endurance even without Endure. In Z-A, for the Project M quest, no matter how many times the player knocks out Mewtwo, Mewtwo will get back up and continue the fight from full HP. Mable even derides you for flexing that you can KO a Legendary, proving it’s not just some game mechanic reset. Mewtwo just doesn’t go down easy.

On top of all that, Mewtwo might not even be hit. Between the Mirage Clones and the Double Team clones and Substitute clones, finding the right Mewtwo isn’t going to be easy. Coupled with accuracy lowering moves like Mud Slap and Flash, as well as the Bright Powder lowering accuracy even more, hitting Mewtwo at all would be a trial.

TCG stuff

We want to make it clear we legitimately have no idea if they’re going to be using the official trading card game for Mewtwo, so we are NOT relying on this as a verdict decider. That being said, it’d be good to go over what Mewtwo gains from it if it was allowed and a lot of options definitely open up. With card effects like Barrier, all effects of damage including their effects are nullified, meaning even trying to Mewtwo would be incredibly difficult. Complete Recover is a legit full heal and Psychic Erase and PsyJack are more power nullification options, letting Mewtwo shutdown Chaos Control for one turn.

Mewtwo is far less afraid of damage in general with some effects such as Reflect Shield which prevents any damage from happening in the first place and deals damage right back at Shadow. Heck, Reflective Barrier does the same but is far more damaging (and Mewtwo could just revive themself with Recover). Damage Change suddenly makes any damage Shadow had done to Mewtwo over the course of the battle suddenly get undone and reflected back at him and moves like Hypnoblast, Psybolt and Reigning Pulse are strong options for even more status effects.

Mewtwo suddenly gains all sorts of crazy ways to shut down his opponent but one of the stronger ones is Photon Barrier, which can stop “Time Freeze” from Dialga, which, well, freezes time, giving Mewtwo a surprisingly powerful potent time resistance. The most useful one perhaps though is Psycrush-GX, which forcefully makes the opponent get rid of all the energy they have. This is important because…suddenly, Super Shadow is in grave danger as they no longer have the energy to sustain that form. The moment Mewtwo catches Shadow outside of that form, it’s over.

Again, we have no idea if they’re going to even include the TCG, but it just paints a big picture that if they did, it would not go well for Shadow.

Tertiary Factors

In terms of pure skill, it’s really hard to really decide who takes the edge here. Shadow can match Sonic who’s mastered martial arts but also kept up and defeated Emerl who’s made up with combat data related to martial arts/weapon mastery of an entire civilization and has over 4000 years of experience. Don’t count Mewtwo out just yet though! While he’s not as willing to throw hands like Shadow is, that doesn’t mean he can’t, showing good skill of this during their time in Pokken Tournament. Mewtwo themself has kept up with skilled martial arts Pokemon like Ash’s Lucario and Machamp, the latter of which has mastered every kind of martial art. Incredibly impressive, especially since Mewtwo’s battle abilities have been raised to the ultimate level. Mewtwo has also kept up with…well, Mew, who existed and considered the ancestor of Pokemon, implying they lived for thousands of years. Mewtwo itself is also many centuries old by the time of Pokopia. It’s a tough call, it’s really best to just leave skill as a tie.

Intelligence though is a different story. Shadow has an IQ of 200 and is a skilled hand to hand combatant, but Mewtwo simply blows this out of the water. Don’t get us wrong, Shadow isn’t dumb at all, but Mewtwo’s the strongest psychic Pokemon being comparable to Alakazam, who remembers everything they ever learned, outperforms super computers AND has an IQ of 5000. Psychic Pokemon use their superior intelligence in battle all the time (heck Mewtwo can create cloning machines that can clone Pokemon in seconds…somehow). It’d be disingenuous to say Shadow has any leg up here, so Mewtwo takes Intelligence with ease. Combine that with Mewtwo’s mind reading and precognition, it’s a really tough hill for Shadow to climb.

Conclusion

“You are weak, short-lived, incomplete creatures. Yet it is for that reason you have infinite possibilities hidden within you. Your journeys have only just begun.”

Advantages:

• Stronger with finite ends and more supporting ends for infinite
• Matches in speed
• Supportive buffs/debuff moves like Calm Mind lets them keep the edge in stats and Power Swap (debatable) prevents Shadow from having any advantage
• Psyche Up steals Shadow’s buffs without any of their downsides
• Precognition as well as being able to read Shadow’s mind basically gives them a cheat sheet for the match
• Resists most of Shadow’s problematic hax
• Only one of the two with working durability negating abilities
• Chaos Control can be countered with Mimic, Taunt, Disable, etc.
• Endure guarantees Mewtwo’s survival in Chaos Control and can be immediately healed off
• Barriers, Pressure, and Recover let Mewtwo potentially stall out Super Shadow
• Soul tear should likely work against Shadow
• Dramatically better healing options that make it nearly impossible for Shadow to kill him reliably
• Mewtwo taking over Shadow’s sentient equipment makes them its allies instead
• Smarter by far
• Better RPGs
• Nonbinary icon

Disadvantages:

• Chaos Control might still work
• Chaos Spears gets around weaker barriers like Light Screen/Reflect
• A good amount of Mewtwo’s other hax are countered such as mind control
• Outclassed by Calyrex Shadow Rider (dude, let’s kill the horse)
• 0-3 to Frieza bro lock in

There is understandably a lot going on here. Both Mewtwo and Shadow have such crazy abilities and debatable power sets, finding a definitive winner isn’t easy. Shadow the Hedgehog is a great character and will give Mewtwo one of the hardest fights of their lives, but Pokemon #150 has everything they need to take down the ultimate lifeform.

With stronger arguments for power, Shadow would have a hard time even hurting Mewtwo, especially since he can’t cheese a spatial cutting victory and speed being relative at least means Shadow couldn’t just blitz Mewtwo either. Mewtwo meanwhile has game enders like soul tear, but even then they don’t need to rely on it with their stat buffs, debuffs, ability to copy any of Shadow’s positive stat changes with Psych Up, ways to get rid of Shadow’s most useful items, illusions and heck, even able to reflect Shadow’s attacks right back at them.

Shadow could certainly win this match up a couple times, but with Mewtwo’s precognition and mind reading, that’s going to be way harder than it seems, allowing Mewtwo to win more times than not. The power of Chaos Control is something that’s tricky to counter, but not impossible with Mewtwo’s various ways to survive and counter it straight up. Once Shadow is forced to exit his super forms, with Mewtwo scaling to the creation trio in their base form, he just needs one good shot to seal his victory.

Ultimately, this is a battle of attrition, and Shadow is not favored in this. Because that time limit will always be ticking. That first Chaos Control is the most useful, as Mewtwo would have the least amount of information at that point. If Shadow doesn’t win off that first interaction — if he even can — then chances fall off a cliff. Every subsequent attempt can and would be adapted to. Attacks can be healed off, barriers can be put back up, etc. The longer this goes on, the more knowledge Mewtwo has to adapt, while on the inverse, the sheer amount of Chaos Energy being burnt means that Shadow would be running on fumes before Mewtwo.

Shadow may be the ultimate life form with blistering power and speed, but Mewtwo’s own strength and agility as well as their incredible intelligence mixed with their ability to see the future and read their opponents and wide variety of an arsenal that the ultimate lifeform just simply can’t keep up with earned them the win more times than not.

Sadly, Shadow won’t be able to Live and Learn as Mewtwo Strikes Back because spooner or later, they’ll show the ultimate lifeform their doom. The winner is Mewtwo.

Final Tally

Shadow (7) – Strunton, ishi_yuki, KazeMagician, KrisWarlock, Koi, WWAL, Door

Mewtwo (9) – Pasbros, Kriemhild, Frost, AgentRedhead, Cal, MKF4, TWILTY, Spectre, Robin

Before We Go…