Evdevs

“Vanitas is what Sora would be like if he was evil.” Nope, Vanitas is an entirely separate person from Sora with his own lived experiences and motivations. “no need to see Sora become evil.” This I disagree with even more so. I have long pondered the potential for Sora’s character development to progress down a darker path, but not in a way that is being discussed here. I’ll begin by saying that my biggest gripe with KH3 is that while Sora has continued to age, he still acts like he’s twelve. This is most likely because of the E rating. If Sora is to grow older then he should become more adult and the game should mature along side him. Only then could an “evil” Sora (the way I imagine him) be possible. In the titles so far we never really encounter death. The adversaries that Sora faces he only “defeats.” But he never kills them. At best they “fade into darkness,” but seem to always reappear later on. Again it’s because of the E rating. Another corny trope of the series is when Sora lets foes simply just run away. I can’t tell you how frustrating it was to watch Pete or some other baddie just say “I’ve had enough of you punks” and run away only to come back and annoy you some more later. Imagine if Sora decided that the fate of the worlds was too important to allow the dark forces to run amok in this manner. Perhaps our old friend Pete reappears for the unteenth time with some heartless buddies and tries to do you harm. Sora, Donald and Goofy defeat his underlings and Pete gives the ol’ “See ya later, pipsqueaks” line before turning around to hightail it back to Maleficent for more ass-kissing. But Sora is fed up. He refuses to let Pete run away. He freezes Pete in a block of ice with a blizzard spell. Pete looks genuinely horrified as Sora runs at him with the keyblade raised. Donald and Goofy shout at Sora to stop in their desperate, cartoonish voices. But Sora does not want to stop. He is tired of fighting the same battles over and over. He wants to finish it this time. He strikes Pete’s frozen form with the keyblade, shattering him into a million sparkling pieces. This is the turning point for Sora. He decides the only way to defeat the dark forces is to purge them completely. As Sora and his friends have learned about Organization 13, the Nobodies who make up this rag-tag freakshow have no hearts and this can “exist” only if there are real people currently remembering them, or at least remembering the people they were before they turned into heartless and nobodies. If there is no one to remember the organization’s members, then they cease to exist. This is where Sora makes the darkest choice. He decides that to end Organization 13 for good he must purge the worlds of all who remember them, and finally to destroy himself so that not a single memory of Organization 13 will remain. This is where things get really dark. Donald and Goofy of course would refuse to help. But do you remember drive forms in KH2? To enter higher forms, Sora would consume Donald, Goofy or both of them in order to become more powerful. This coincides perfectly with Sora’s classic catchphrase: “My friends are my power.” Sounds nice, but imagine it in the context of Donald and Goofy not wanting any part of Sora’s new quest. I picture it as a poster with Sora in a dark or corrupted version of Master form and Donald and Goofy at either side, their life-force being drained into Sora as he uses them against their will to buff himself. Donald and Goofy look miserable and withered. The poster reads: “My friends are my power.” For Sora to become this evil, there would need to be proper motivation. An easy one to imagine is Kairi just being straight up killed. Not banished to the dark realm, not turned into a comatose heartless husk thing, just dead. Sora is consumed by grief and hatred and ultimately loses himself and the person he was. It falls then on Riku and the other keyblade wielders to defeat Sora. This would create the perfect Mexican standoff between Organization 13, the lightbearers, and the new evil Sora.