I completely forgot who wade was. My first thought was the guy from Kim Possible.
Maybe with the audience success of the Mario movie, and since these last couple years have shown people really like the Sonic characters, we can gradually deemphasize the humans. We don't need to abandon them completely if it helps, since there are still humans in the world of Sonic.
This is the reason why I liked Sonic the Hedgehog 2 for changing the dynamic between the humans and the Mobians. I disliked Sonic X for making the humans too generic, cartoonish and limited in action. Nobody else could do anything besides the Mobians in that series, they were so limited and dragged the series so much. The movie is superior in every way possible. And I refuse to believe that they would have Knuckles and a generic police officer teaming up for some unknown quest, maybe with more information we could understand more about this...
Apparently Knuckles is training Wade in the way of the Echidna warrior.
If we're going to focus on a human character, I'd rather have Agent Stone or Jojo (Maddie's niece).
And in the unofficially official fancomic, succeeded in destroying Sonic’s reputation in revenge for Sonic driving Robotnik insane.
Then got murdered by Super Sonic in a finale written by the actual writers of the official comic.
"The Black Rage makes us strong, because we must resist its temptations every day of our lives or be forever damned!"

So it is. I also have mixed feelings about it.