#eclipse cannon

Maria Was Actually Shot Theory:

I believe Maria actually does get shot and Shadow blocks out the memory with an explosion.

Here me out:

While Shadow is charging the Eclipse Cannon he flashbacks to the memory of GUN invading the military base and chasing himself, Maria and Gerald down. They run to the room with the explosive tanks, Commander Walters tries to stop the GUN soldiers from firing but they fire anyway, miss, and the shattered tank explodes and Maria dies.

We're left thinking this is what actually happened. Afterall, the next scene shows Gerald in handcuffs clutching Shadow's quill which leads you to believe Gerald was there beside them when it all happens.

But this scene is full of holes:

How did the explosion only kill Maria and not Gerald, as old as he was? Shadow is the Ultimate Lifeform and can withstand such explosions, but Gerald surviving it makes absolutely no sense. They were all standing side by side. In fact Gerald was actually standing a few steps ahead of Shadow and Maria and he was the one closest to the tanks. If anyone, he should have been the one to die first. Given his age and position it makes little sense for him to have survived the explosion.

Unless, of course, he was never there.

In the very beginning of the film when Shadow is still in stasis in the capsule his memory of the event is a little different. Shadow and Maria are the ones holding hands and running down the very long and very familiar hallway together. Gerald is absent altogether, and we know because the camera pans behind Shadow and Maria and in front of them and Gerald is not visible in either angle. Compare this to the other memory, when Shadow and Maria are running together Gerald is directly behind them. In this first memory we should have seen him behind them as we did the second, but he's simply not there. Even if the argument is that he was kept hidden until his reveal later in the movie they still should have shown enough of him so the viewer knows he's present. That doesn't happen, he's completely absent.

The scene continues showing a glimpse of the GUN soldiers chasing behind the two, guns raised. Maria accidentally lets go of Shadow's hand and falls slightly behind. The memory fades to black but we see Shadow visibly relive the trauma in his sleep as he furrows his brows and his heart beats rapidly until he temporarily flatlines.

We don't get to see the end of his memory, but we can see that the beginning of it doesn't match up well with the Eclipse Cannon memory. What it does match up well with is the flashback Shadow had back in very beginning of Shadow 05.

Aside from the The Ark being replaced by a military base in the movie, this chase sequence is 1:1 even down to Maria letting go of Shadow's hand.

If Shadow is reliving this very scene, then it explains the different trauma response he has with the Stasis Memory versus the Eclipse Cannon Memory. When Shadow recalls the memory in Stasis, he quite literally flatlines. When Shadow recalls the Eclipse Cannon Memory it outrages him and causes him clear pain. Both are bad responses but his heart temporarily stopping is significantly worse. The trauma from the Stasis memory is worse because it is the true memory: the memory of Maria getting shot down in the long hallway. The memory of the explosion is just what Shadow conjured up to mentally cope with watching his friend get violently shot down.

To understand why this conflation would even happen you need to understand two things about Shadow: he suffers from amnesia and has a habit of misremembering things, and he suffers from PTSD.

Shadow has had PTSD for a long while in this series, the earliest examples coming from Shadow the Hedgehog 05 up until Dark Beginnings and even Sonic Movie 3. His heart racing uncontrollably, his pained grunts as his chest heaves, his eyes dilating, he closes his eyes just from flashing back to the memory. Shadow has PTSD and the pain sometimes causes him to avoid memories of the past.

Naturally both memories are extremely traumatic, but which is worse? Watching a bullet pierce through your best friend and adoptive sibling's chest with your own eyes? Or a blinding explosion that knocks everyone out and when you wake up it's already over? It's clear to see which memory would be a tiny bit more bearable for Shadow to relive.

Also note in both SA2 and Shadow 05, when Shadow relives the memory of Maria getting shot directly in front of him the memory always cuts off. As if he can't view any more. He has never been able to bear reliving the memory of her getting shot. He always blocks the memory out.

Now couple that in with Shadow's bouts of amnesia and memory issues. In the games, Shadow only gets amnesia after he crashes back to Earth in SA2's ending however in SA2 Shadow misremembered Maria's wish of making people on Earth happy as a wish for revenge. Therefore, it's not just a matter of him crashing and getting amnesia- Shadow has a habit of misremembering things.

Even with Sonic 3 Shadow tells Maria that he doesn't remember or know anything about where he came from, pre-crash to Earth. So we have already established in-movie universe that Shadow has memory issues.

Also, consider the fact that in the explosion memory Shadow is clutching his head which would indicate a head injury and also potentially imply memory issues.

Ah, but I'm arguing that the explosion never happened, right?

No, I'm arguing that the explosion didn't kill Maria. In fact I argue that the explosion did happen and more than likely caused the head injury that led to Shadow misremembering everything in the first place. That on top of his trauma.

Either the injury to Shadow's head caused him to misremember Maria's real death, or the trauma he experiences reliving her death caused him to replace the bullet shooting through her with a blinding explosion that was easier to handle mentally.

Regardless of which memory is true or if both are true but have been conjoined together through misrememberance, the truth remains that Movie Shadow has 2 very different memories living inside his mind. And I'd like to think the writers didn't mess up these scenes, and included the first memory as a homage to us older fans to give us the possibility of them retaining the game canon in any way they can, through any workaround they can make as they work around the PG rating. And what more clever way would they get around not having Maria get shot by having Shadow mentally block out the trauma of that memory as he always has?