As Sonic travels through the Boscage Maze, he starts to uncover more about what exactly happened between Thorn Rose and the scavengers, while also realizing a heavy mistake he made in the past. And in order to get the green Paradox Shard, Sonic has to help fix the fractured past between everyone.
Tropes:
- Did Not Think This Through:
- Thorn uses the Prism shard to restore the forest, but is so driven to banish her former friends that she blocks any opening in the canopy she can find. Sonic tricks her into punching a hole in the canopy to make her see that, by blocking out all of the light, she is doing more harm than good.
- Sonic's trick is itself an example, as he smashes Thorn's hammer in half and sends the head flying. Only afterwards does he realise that the head contained the shard, which he needs to get back home, and he's just sent it flying across the jungle. Luckily, Birdie helps him out by spotting it from the sky.
- Easily Forgiven: Thorn Rose is very quickly forgiven by Sonic and the scavengers after all the trouble she caused them. This is helped by their own acknowledgement that, while she went about it too harshly, she only snapped like she did because the Scavengers were on a path to completely deplete the forest of its resources and ignored most of her initial attempts to get them to stop.
- Environmental Symbolism: A rather unsubtle example. With the power of the Prism shard, Thorn makes the jungle's canopy thick enough to completely block out the sun and plunge the ground into darkness, reflecting her own (well-intentioned) villainy. Both Sonic and (post-Heel Realization) Thorn herself remark that with the forest so dark, she has lost her way, and it takes destroying part of the canopy and letting the light back in to make her realise how wrong she had been.
- Jerkass Realization: Back in his dimension, Sonic was... less than impressed with Amy's gift of a palm tree, not understanding its sentimental value. Seeing Thorn's dedication to protecting the Great Green makes him eventually see how precious their time together around that one tree really was.
- The Joy of First Flight: Mangey's reaction to flying with his tails is confused grunts, followed by joyful chuckling.
- Karma Houdini: Thorn Rose gets no punishment for attacking Sonic and almost dooming the scavengers to starve to death. It helps that she's realised she went way too far, and that the Scavengers acknowledge their hand in her snap.
- My God, What Have I Done?: Thorn finally realizes that by blocking the canopy to shut out the Scavengers, she has also blocked out the light that gives the plants below life, including the Great Green she swore to protect.
- Mythology Gag: Sonic uses claws to dig into the ground to find a green shard, much like Knuckles in The Sonic Adventure games.
- Amy had a previous, much smaller Flicky as a companion in Sonic Adventure
- Poor Communication Kills: The source of conflict between Thorn Rose and the scavengers. She became disillusioned with how they were destroying nature in their attempts to survive, and while she tried to get them to stop, her warnings were usually forgotten on deaf ears until she went crazy and attacked them. Afterwards, instead of properly explaining herself, Thorn aggressively took on the role of a monster and ignored their pleas of starvation. Both sides acknowledge that the whole mess could’ve been avoided if they had just been more willing to hear the other side out.
- Punctuated! For! Emphasis!: Thorn, after she pursues Sonic back to the Great Green.Thorn: Get. Away. From my. Tree!
- Self-Serving Memory: A flashback from the Scavengers' point of view shows that Thorn apparently attacked her former friends out of nowhere simply due to dropping a few berries they were picking for food. A later flashback from Thorn's perspective explains the Scavengers were taking way more berries than they needed and being unnecessarily destructive, with Thorn's warnings falling on deaf ears, leaving her no choice but to attack.
- We Used to Be Friends: This episode elaborates on what Thorn had mentioned in the previous episode about her and the Scavengers being friends once. Indeed, both she and Prim say the trope name verbatim before having a Good-Times Montage about the friendship and (in their minds) how it ended.
