Knuckles the Dread: the pirate Knuckles of Sonic Prime

Knuckles the Dread is the pirate counterpart of Knuckles the Echidna in the Netflix series Sonic Prime, where he rules over the waters of the No Place shatterspace. Introduced in “It Takes One to No Place” on 15 December 2022, he runs through 13 of the series' 23 episodes.

Who is Knuckles the Dread, the pirate captain of No Place?

Knuckles the Dread exists only in Sonic Prime, the animated series produced for Netflix by Man of Action Entertainment, WildBrain Studios and Marza Animation Planet, Sega's animation studio. In it he holds the role of pirate captain and is the alternative version of Knuckles the Echidna specific to the No Place shatterspace, a world entirely covered by water.

An echidna with red fur, purple eyes and a gold tooth, wearing a black and gold pirate hat, he owes his appearance to character designer Nicholas Kole, who publicly confirmed the authorship of this design on 15 December 2022 and who also produced the concept art for his ship. His crew calls him “Captain” or simply “Dread”; the French name recorded by the French-language Sonic wiki is Knuckles la Terreur, a label consistent with the French dub but one that does not come from an official Netflix document, unlike the English name used by Sega in its games.

He comes on the scene in “It Takes One to No Place”, the seventh episode of season 1, released on 15 December 2022, directed by Erik Wiese and written by Omar Spahi — French title on record: “Pas seul au monde”. That same episode introduces No Place, the galleon Angel's Voyage and its crew in full. Out of the 23 episodes that make up the series, the pirate echidna occupies thirteen.

Where does he come from? The Paradox Prism and the five shards

It all starts with the first episode: Sonic's Spin Dash breaks the Paradox Prism and shatters reality into five shards of different colors — red, green, yellow, blue and purple. Each shard gives rise to its own “shatterspace”, that is to say a distortion of Green Hill: New Yoke City, Boscage Maze, No Place, The Grim and Ghost Hill.

This mechanism belongs to Sonic Prime alone and overlaps with none of the parallel universes the franchise has explored elsewhere: the Shatterverse is neither the multiverse of the comics, nor an alternative timeline, nor a crossover between games. It is a consequence internal to the series' own story, born of the destruction of the Prism, and Dread is therefore not “a Knuckles from another Zone”.

No Place is the version of Green Hill that the blue shard drowned under an endless ocean, where mountain peaks serve as islands. One feature of this world sheds light on all the rest: no counterpart of Sonic exists there, which explains the speed at which the crew adopts the hedgehog when he lands.

The local pirates have long been chasing a glow they call the Devil's Lighthouse. It is neither an island nor a creature: it is the blue shard itself, and it is Sonic who makes the connection. The shards of the Prism are, moreover, an object quite distinct from the Chaos Emeralds of the games, with which they share nothing in nature.

🧩 The Devil's Lighthouse the pirates of No Place kept chasing was only one of five shards of the shattered Prism. Putting the pieces back together on your living room table is exactly what our Sonic jigsaw puzzles are all about, one piece at a time.

The Angel's Voyage and its crew: who is who

The Angel's Voyage is a red and white wooden galleon, fitted with cannons, whose mainsail bears its captain's black emblem. It is not, however, the ship of his past glory: during a storm, Dread had refused to change course despite the pleas of his sailors, the vessel broke apart, and Jack took the crew aboard a longboat, leaving his captain behind before taking command of them.

The new crew he brings together is made up solely of novices, all of them counterparts of familiar heroes: Black Rose, the female pirate hedgehog who corresponds to Amy Rose; Sails Tails, a male fox modelled on Tails; Batten Rouge, a bat and the female version of Rouge the Bat; Catfish, the equivalent of Big the Cat; and Froggy. It is this crew, and not his former one, that accompanies Sonic in No Place.

For the old crew is still around: now under the orders of Jack, surrounded by Bunny Bones and Stormbeard, it proves hostile in season 1 before settling into a neutral position. Not confusing the two groups is essential to following the maritime plot of the series.

In season 2, Dread seizes the Kraken, the Chaos Council's ship piloted by Rusty Rose, and makes it his main vessel: the crew becomes “The Kraken's crew”. The Kraken is therefore not his original ship but a prize of war, wrested from the faction of antagonists that also includes Mr. Dr. Eggman. As for its pilot, betrayed by the Chaos Council, she then joins the crew: she is not a pirate of No Place, but a defector.

Dread's arc, season by season

The character arrives on screen as a fallen legend: once the most feared pirate in No Place, he lost ship, crew and reputation by stubbornly pressing on towards the Devil's Lighthouse, and took refuge in partying and cowardice. When his former crew attacks, he hides, and it is his sailors who appoint Sonic captain in his place.

🛏️ When his former crew, now sailing under Jack, attacks, Dread picks a hiding spot over the sword. Your own hideout looks a lot better under our Sonic duvet covers, and nobody gets to name a captain in your place.

Spurred on by the hedgehog's insistence, he takes his post back and gets his hands on the blue shard at the end of “There's No ARRGH in "Team"”, the eighth and final episode of season 1. Beware of the numbering: some reference pages wrongly give episode 7 for this instalment, whereas the official list does place it in eighth position.

Season 2 reverses the trajectory. Grown obsessed with the shard, Dread lies to his crew by claiming that Sonic has betrayed him, then orders them to attack him. This is also the period in which he makes use of the only supernatural power he is known to have: the ability to summon and hurl lightning, notably through his sabre. This electrokinesis is in no way innate; it is strictly conditional on possession of the blue shard and disappears with it; his permanent aptitudes remain physical — swordsmanship, hand-to-hand combat, gliding, climbing, strength and endurance.

Season 3 closes the arc with a gesture of handover: in “The Devil Is in the Tails”, he gives up the captaincy in favour of Black Rose, whom he now hails as “Captain Rose”, and his last appearance comes in “From the Top”, the very last episode of the series. A character hard to file away, for that matter: the English-language wiki ranks him among the heroes while the French-language wiki lists him as an antagonist, and his journey proves both of them right.

Dread, Knucks, Gnarly: telling the three echidnas apart

Sonic Prime puts three counterparts of Knuckles on screen, one per shatterspace visited. Renegade Knucks, nicknamed “Knucks”, comes from New Yoke City and is an activist in the Resistance; he enters the story as early as “Shattered”, the first episode of season 1.

Gnarly Knuckles, known as “Gnarly”, belongs for his part to the Boscage Maze and to the Scavengers, and appears in “Unwelcome to the Jungle”, the fourth episode of season 1. One detail sets them apart: both Dread and Knucks learn the Spin Dash through contact with Sonic, whereas Gnarly is the only one of the three never to have learned it.

One last pitfall remains: none of these three echidnas is the Knuckles the Echidna of the games, who stays behind in Green Hill in the first episode and is a character in his own right. The series has fun with this in “Double Trouble”, where Dread runs into Renegade Knucks and throws him a “Shiver me timbers! Ye be me!”; the two hardly appreciate each other, but end up fighting side by side.

Knuckles Plush

Sonic Plush - Knuckles

A plush in the image of Knuckles the Echidna, the guardian from the games, and not of the pirate captain of No Place: a way of keeping to hand the model of which Dread is only a counterpart.

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Where to find him: episodes, voices and games

His thirteen appearances fall into three blocks, given here in overall numbering: episodes 7 and 8 of season 1, released on 15 December 2022; episodes 11 to 15 of season 2, available since 13 July 2023; then episodes 18 to 23 of season 3, out on 11 January 2024. He is, on the other hand, absent from episodes 16 and 17.

On the dubbing side, the captain is played by Vincent Tong in English, Nobutoshi Canna in Japanese and Sébastien Desjours in French. The first two lend their voices to all three Knuckles counterparts in the series, but not to the main Knuckles, entrusted to Adam Nurada. In the French version, Sébastien Desjours dubs both Dread and Gnarly; the French performer for Renegade Knucks, for his part, is not documented.

Contrary to a widespread idea, the character has not stayed confined to Netflix. He appears in no main console platform game, but he is playable in several side titles: Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds, where he features in the Sonic Prime Character Pack alongside Nine and Rusty Rose, accessible through the Digital Deluxe Edition or the Season Pass — there he is silent, of the Power type and without a signature machine —, as well as Sonic Forces: Speed Battle, Sonic Dash, Sonic Prime Dash, Sonic Dash+ and Sonic Speed Simulator. These appearances are cross-media nods and say nothing about the place of Sonic Prime in the chronology of the games.

🎧 Dread stays silent in Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds, so if you want to hear his voice, the Sonic Prime episodes are the place to go. The earbuds that bring it to your ears, meanwhile, tuck away in our Sonic AirPods cases, right at the bottom of your pocket.

On the printed side, IDW is publishing a graphic novel adaptation of the series: volume 1, released on 13 May 2025, covers episodes 1 and 2, and volume 2, out on 2 December 2025, episodes 3 to 5. Since Dread only comes on the scene in the seventh episode, he has therefore not yet been published in a volume, and he does not for all that belong to the main continuity of the IDW comics.

Summary

Frequently asked questions

• In which episode of Sonic Prime does Knuckles the Dread appear?
  In “It Takes One to No Place”, season 1 episode 7, released on Netflix on 15 December 2022 (French title on record: “Pas seul au monde”). He comes back in 13 episodes in total out of the series' 23, right through to “From the Top”, the very last episode of season 3.
• Is he the same character as Knuckles the Echidna?
  No. He is his counterpart in the No Place shatterspace, born of the shattering of the Paradox Prism: an ocean world where the echidna has become a pirate captain. The series has two other counterparts, Renegade Knucks in New Yoke City and Gnarly Knuckles in the Boscage Maze, and the Knuckles of the games remains a distinct character.
• What are his ship and his crew called?
  His galleon is the Angel's Voyage, red and white, with his black emblem on the mainsail. His crew brings together Black Rose (Amy), Sails Tails (Tails), Batten Rouge (Rouge), Catfish (Big) and Froggy. In season 2, he steals the Kraken from the Chaos Council and recruits Rusty Rose; in season 3, he hands the captaincy over to Black Rose.
• Is Knuckles the Dread playable in a game?
  Yes, but only in side games: Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds (through the Digital Deluxe Edition or the Season Pass, a silent character of the Power type), Sonic Forces: Speed Battle, Sonic Dash, Sonic Prime Dash, Sonic Dash+ and Sonic Speed Simulator. He appears in no main console platform game.
• Where does his lightning power come from?
  From the blue shard of the Paradox Prism, the one the pirates nicknamed the “Devil's Lighthouse” and which he recovers at the end of season 1. This power is not innate: it disappears as soon as he loses the shard. His permanent abilities are swordsmanship, hand-to-hand combat, gliding and climbing.