Ian Flynn just proved Infinite was never the real problem with Sonic Forces

The moment Infinite finally clicked for me

The first time I saw Infinite in Sonic Forces, I genuinely thought Sonic Team was trolling. Masked jackal, red cube hell magic, monologues straight out of a 13-year-old’s DeviantArt profile – it felt like someone dared the devs to make an OC so edgy it looped back around to parody. And as someone who’s been playing Sonic since the Mega Drive days and reading the Archie comics in the ’90s, I was ready to love the chaos. I wanted Infinite to go full anime supervillain.

Instead, he turned into a punchline. Not because the idea was bad, but because the game never had the guts to do anything with him. Infinite strutted in like the final boss of the franchise and exited like a mid-season henchman. For years, he’s been shorthand for everything wrong with modern Sonic storytelling: loud, overdesigned, and hollow.

Then The Chaotix Files (the 35th anniversary noir-style mystery project, tied in with Sonic Chaotix Casefiles) quietly dropped the mask – literally and figuratively. The thief the Chaotix had been chasing? Infinite. And under Ian Flynn’s pen, for the first time since 2017, Infinite actually felt like the threat the marketing promised. That was the moment it hit me: Infinite was never the real problem. The writing was.

And if anyone was going to prove that, it was always going to be Ian Flynn.

Infinite in Sonic Forces: all edge, no follow-through

I played Sonic Forces at launch, partly out of loyalty, partly out of morbid curiosity. The pitch on paper was wild: Eggman finally wins, the world is conquered, Sonic is tortured for months, and Infinite uses the Phantom Ruby to warp reality, creating a gauntlet of “what if” nightmare scenarios. That should’ve been the perfect setup for a reality-bending villain.

But once you’re actually in the game, Infinite is mostly an aesthetic. He talks a big game about endless fear and hopelessness, but the story never lets him truly own that space. His powers are reduced to generic glowing red clones and slightly trippy levels. The Phantom Ruby – a reality-warping artifact – might as well be a red Chaos Emerald for all the story cares about its implications.

Even his backstory is tossed out like an afterthought: mercenary, beat by Shadow once, had his ego shattered, picked up by Eggman, now he’s a nihilist with a mask and a god complex. Then, just as you’re waiting for the big final confrontation that justifies all the theater, Eggman casually replaces him. Infinite gets unceremoniously kicked to the curb before the credits roll. The “ultimate mercenary” exits stage left like a temp worker who missed the staff meeting.

And that’s the tragedy: there is a great villain buried in that mess. A mercenary whose entire sense of self is propped up by illusions, using literal reality-warping to cover his own insecurity? That’s thematically potent. The problem is Forces wanted the vibes of that character without putting in the work to make him coherent.

Ian Flynn: Sonic’s unofficial lore janitor

I’ve been following Ian Flynn’s work since his early days on the Archie Sonic the Hedgehog comics, starting with issue #160 back in 2006. That run was my lifeline during a period when the games themselves were flailing. Where the mainline titles were wobbling between “so bad it’s fascinating” and “experiment nobody asked for,” Archie under Flynn felt like someone had finally decided to treat this world as a place that deserved continuity and emotional stakes.

Flynn didn’t just inherit chaos; he thrived on it. He took the continuity nightmare left behind by previous writers, patched it together into something resembling a timeline, and then used that mess as fuel for legitimately great arcs: reality resets like the Super Genesis Wave, political fallout, deep dives into secondary characters that should’ve been forgettable.

When Archie’s run died and Sega pivoted to IDW, Flynn didn’t just survive the transition, he effectively became the franchise’s narrative backbone. He’s written the IDW comics, contributed to Sonic Frontiers as a story architect, helped with the animated scenes in Sonic Origins, and consulted on lore. At this point, when Sega says “we’re doing something story-driven with Sonic,” odds are high Flynn’s in the room or quietly rewriting the room’s bad first draft.

His specialty isn’t just writing “good Sonic stories,” it’s salvage. Weird side characters, misfired ideas, contradictory canon – Flynn’s whole career is proof that this universe isn’t beyond saving. It’s just been waiting for someone who both understands the madness and isn’t afraid to lean into it.

The Chaotix Files finally lets Infinite be the monster he was sold as

Which brings everything back to The Chaotix Files and its associated audio drama, Sonic Chaotix Casefiles. As a concept, it’s already the kind of weird I live for: Vector, Espio, and Charmy running a gumshoe agency, narrating cases like old radio noir while chasing a phantom thief swiping power-amplifying artifacts. It leans straight into the absurdity of the Chaotix and plays it dead serious, which is exactly how this franchise works at its best.

Over the episodes and pages, clues pile up. Strange distortions, impossible sightings, conflicting accounts – the kind of stuff that would be chalked up to “Sonic logic” in lesser hands. Here, it all points somewhere. When Infinite is finally revealed as the culprit, it doesn’t feel like a cheap cameo; it feels inevitable. Of course the guy with reality-bending illusion powers is behind a case built on contradictions.

Flynn’s version of Infinite immediately feels more dangerous without a single line of lore retcon. The core is still the same: overpowered mercenary, Phantom Ruby, theatrical nihilist. But instead of just throwing clones at the heroes, he uses illusions as psychological warfare. The Chaotix aren’t just fighting a guy with flashy cubes; they’re forced to doubt their senses, their memories, even their loyalties.

That’s the piece Forces never committed to. Illusion powers in a story mean the villain doesn’t just threaten the body, they go after perception. Under Flynn, Infinite stops being a loud special effect and becomes an invasive presence. He stalks scenes as a red specter, a rumor, a contradiction, until the reveal lands not as “oh hey, that guy,” but as “of course it was him, who else could twist reality this way?”

Leaning into the edginess instead of apologising for it

One thing I respect deeply about Flynn’s Infinite is that he doesn’t treat the character like something to be quietly fixed behind the scenes. He doesn’t file off the edges or pretend Forces didn’t happen. He embraces the edginess and weaponises it.

Infinite is still self-serious to an almost embarrassing degree. He still talks like a JRPG boss in a game that usually cracks jokes about chili dogs. But in The Chaotix Files, that contrast is part of the fun. Vector’s gruff noir narration, Charmy’s goofiness, Espio’s stoicism – all of that bounces off Infinite’s melodrama in a way that highlights just how unhinged he really is.

Instead of the player laughing at Infinite because the story undermines him, the writing invites the audience to laugh at the sheer commitment to his bit while still acknowledging the threat. He is ridiculous and terrifying at the same time. That’s a razor-thin line, and it’s exactly where Sonic villains should live.

Most attempts to “fix” a divisive character smother what made them interesting in the first place. Flynn does the opposite. He dials up the psychological horror inherent in illusion powers, lets Infinite stand on his own instead of hiding behind Eggman, and then keeps every drop of theatrical angst intact. It feels less like a retcon and more like the full version of a song Forces only played a rough demo of.

This isn’t a fluke: Flynn has been rescuing Sonic nonsense for years

What Infinite gets in The Chaotix Files isn’t some isolated miracle; it’s part of a pattern. Flynn has been quietly doing this sort of character reclamation across multiple continuities.

In Archie, he took obscure or mishandled characters and grounded them. Side cast members who existed as punchlines suddenly had backstories and motivations that made sense. He made ridiculous concepts like a city of Echidnas at the bottom of the ocean (Meropis) feel like they belonged in this world rather than a lore wiki fever dream.

In the IDW comics, he was handed a mandate from Sega to treat Sonic Forces as the new baseline for canon. That meant working with characters like Zavok and the Deadly Six – another set of villains that a lot of fans had already written off as clunky. Instead of pretending they didn’t exist, Flynn reframed them: not just generic monsters, but ideological foils, brutal forces of chaos you absolutely don’t want controlling any kind of power.

Sonic Frontiers is another good example. It isn’t perfect, but the way it fleshes out ancient civilizations, gives Sage and Eggman an actual emotional arc, and retrofits pieces of older lore into something approaching a cohesive mythos has Flynn’s fingerprints all over it. He doesn’t throw away the messy parts of Sonic history; he layers new meaning on top of them.

Infinite is just the latest – and most obvious – proof of concept. This is a character the fandom largely relegated to meme status. By all rights, he should have been quietly shelved and replaced by the next half-baked villain. Instead, Flynn drags him back into the spotlight and says, “No, actually, this guy can work. You just have to take the right parts seriously and point them at the right targets.”

Why this matters for Sonic’s future, not just Infinite’s

The easy reaction is to shrug and say, “Cool, Infinite’s less of a joke now.” But this goes deeper than a single character redemption. It’s a proof that Sonic’s most embarrassing baggage isn’t fatal. A lot of old-school fans checked out of the series because years of tonal whiplash, half-finished ideas, and lore contradictions made the whole thing feel unsalvageable.

What Flynn demonstrates, again and again, is that this universe is too weird and too rich to write off. A villain like Infinite is exactly the sort of thing that should thrive in Sonic’s world: a delusional, overpowered merc in love with his own theatrics, using illusions to wage psychological warfare on cartoon animals who also happen to be freedom fighters. That’s not a mistake; that’s the brand.

By reclaiming Infinite without erasing what came before, Flynn sets a template for how Sonic Team and Sega should treat the rest of their messier legacy. Don’t hide from Shadow’s gun-toting phase; contextualise it. Don’t pretend the weird human stuff from Sonic 06 never happened; remix it into something that actually makes thematic sense. Don’t dump every divisive experiment in a memory hole the moment Twitter laughs at it.

Infinite’s glow-up in The Chaotix Files is Sega finally doing something right: trusting the guy who’s proven, across comics, games, and tie-ins, that he understands how to turn Sonic nonsense into Sonic magic. That’s what gives me hope as a fan who’s been burned more times than I can count.

Where I draw the line as a Sonic fan

I’ve stuck with this franchise through Sonic 3D Blast, Shadow the Hedgehog, Sonic 06, the Werehog debates, and the unholy era where it felt like every game was designed by a different team that refused to talk to the others. I’ve watched Sega lurch from tone to tone, from “Saturday morning cartoon” to “tragic romance with a human princess” to “meta parody” to “ancient alien gods” with barely a breath between pivots.

There was a point where I honestly considered tapping out for good. Not because Sonic was silly – it’s always been silly – but because it started to feel like nobody in charge actually liked the world they were working with. The stories felt ashamed of themselves, desperate to chase whatever was trending instead of owning the chaos that made Sonic special.

Flynn’s work, including what he’s doing with Infinite now, is the antidote to that. He writes like someone who grew up in this mess, who knows the memes, who understands why fans still argue about Elise’s kiss or Gerald Robotnik or Blaze’s multiverse status. Instead of apologising for Sonic’s history, he treats it as a toybox. Some toys are broken. Some are cursed. He plays with them anyway and somehow makes it look intentional.

Seeing Infinite go from Forces’ wasted potential to an actually menacing, entertaining villain in The Chaotix Files doesn’t magically fix the franchise. Sonic will absolutely stumble again; Sega will absolutely greenlight some baffling choice in the next decade. But as long as people like Ian Flynn are allowed to sweep in afterwards, pick through the wreckage, and sculpt something coherent out of it, I’m not walking away.

Infinite’s revival isn’t just a fun cameo; it’s a statement. Sonic’s past mistakes aren’t dead ends. With the right writer, they’re raw material. And if Sega has any sense at all, they’ll keep handing that raw material to the one guy who keeps proving he can turn gloriously stupid ideas into villains worth fearing again.