Sonya Blade is a video game character from the Mortal Kombat series. Debuting in the original Mortal Kombat game from 1992, she was a late addition to the game as developers decided deep into the development cycle that the game needed a female character. In the series canon she is an officer of the United States Special Forces and later of a specialized U.S. government agency. Her goal in most of the games is to pursue and capture Kano, as well as eliminate his criminal syndicate, the Black Dragon. In later games she is joined in this effort by her comrade Jax.
One of the original seven player characters of the Mortal Kombat franchise, Sonya has featured in almost all of the games since her inception. She has also appeared in alternate MK media such as the two live-action films; the animated series Mortal Kombat: Defenders of the Realm and the web series Mortal Kombat: Legacy; and print media such as the 1995 Mortal Kombat novel and the Malibu comic series, in addition to some official merchandise.Sonya Blade is one of the main heroes of the MK series. She hails from Austin, Texas, and is a second-generation United States Special Forces officer, following in the footsteps of her father, Major Herman Blade (other family members include Sonya's mother, Erica, and deceased twin brother, Daniel).[9] Her impulsiveness is catalyzed by her superior and good friend Major Jackson "Jax" Briggs. Sonya has a long-standing enmity with the thug Kano, who stands for everything Sonya despises.
In the original Mortal Kombat, Sonya and her team were pursuing Kano, the leader of the Black Dragon international crime organization. After he jumped aboard an old junk in order to escape capture, Sonya and her comrades followed him to a remote island where Shang Tsung's Mortal Kombat tournament was underway. Upon arrival, they were ambushed by Tsung's personal guard, and Sonya was forced to compete in order to spare the lives of her companions. Shang Tsung, however, had no intention of fulfilling his end of the bargain and had her unit killed. After Shang Tsung was defeated by Liu Kang in the final battle, Sonya teamed up with Johnny Cage and Kano to fight off Goro on the bridge high above the pit. During the battle, the island started to crumble and she and Kano were taken prisoner to Outworld by Shang Tsung to appease the Outworld emperor, Shao Kahn. Sonya was able to send a signal to Jax from Outworld and, during the events of Mortal Kombat II, he traveled there to find her. Jax made contact with the other Earthrealm warriors and together they learned of Kahn's scheme to invade Earth. It is known that before being captured, Sonya and Kano were forced to put their differences aside and work together to survive in Outworld. She was later freed by Jax who arrested Kano, but as soon as they had passed through the portal to Earth, Kano escaped and fled back to Outworld.
Sonya was one of a few selected Earthrealm warriors whose souls were not taken following Kahn's invasion of Earth in Mortal Kombat 3. She encountered Kano on top of a skyscraper near his fortress and after a fight hurled him off the roof to his apparent death. In Mortal Kombat 4, after her journey into Outworld and Shao Kahn's near destruction of Earth, Sonya became a member of the U.S. government's Outworld Investigation Agency (OIA). The Black Dragon kept crossing her path, however, and its last known member (Jarek) had fled to Edenia while Sonya was chasing him. This led Sonya and Jax to team up with Raiden and Liu Kang to free that realm from the fallen Elder God Shinnok's grasp and to prevent him from coming to Earth. After Shinnok's defeat, in which Jarek had reluctantly participated to save himself, Jarek tried to kill Sonya but Jax interfered and dropped him off a cliff. After returning to Earthrealm Jax and Sonya found Cyrax malfunctioning in a desert. The two brought the cyborg back to the OIA headquarters where they were able to restore the humanity of Cyrax, who then joined the agency.
In Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance, while on an assignment in the East, Sonya received a distressing message from Jax that the OIA had been destroyed by an accomplice of Shang Tsung and Quan Chi. She was then visited by Raiden, who asked for her aid against the Deadly Alliance and instructed her to meet with the other heroes on Shang Tsung's abandoned island, where she developed a small rivalry with Frost. To earn the right to pass into Outworld, each warrior had to defeat a representation of his or her adversary; to her surprise, it was a stranger with an image of a red dragon on his back. Sonya was unable to find the missing OIA agents Cyrax and Kenshi, and was killed along with Jax, Cage, Kung Lao and Kitana in battle with the Deadly Alliance's Tarkatan forces. The Deadly Alliance's victory was short-lived, as Onaga reclaimed Outworld, as well as the amulet. With his ability to raise the dead at will, he resurrected Sonya and her fallen comrades, who then served as his slaves until their souls were freed by Liu Kang and Ermac.
In Mortal Kombat: Armageddon, Sonya returns to Earth after Onaga's defeat, with the intention of continuing her assault on both the Red and Black Dragon clans, only to be forced to focus on the newly established threat. In her absence, the Tekunin had grown large enough to disrupt Earth civilization and had violated law by engaging in illegal interdimensional alliances with unknown parties. Sonya succeeds in downing the Tekunin's flagship, helmed by their Grandmaster Sektor himself. She then sends a team led by her partner Jax in to hunt for survivors, but they mysteriously vanish and Sonya fears the possibility of Jax's death. She tracks the signal of a homing beacon placed on Taven (escaped thanks to her intervention) and eventually confronts him in Arktika to get information out of him, but is beaten.
Sonya appears as one of the warriors representing the Mortal Kombat universe in the non-canonical crossover game Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe. In the story mode, Sonya is investigating the dimensional imbalance. After defeating Catwoman, Baraka, Captain Marvel and Green Lantern, Sonya and Jax return to their base to use their own teleportation machine to try to get to the other dimension, freeing the captive Sub-Zero along the way. When she finds Jax at the hands of Green Lantern, Sonya once again challenged him but is defeated and imprisoned, but then both of them manage to escape together. When the Earthrealm's heroes and Outworld's villains join forces against the invaders from the other universe, Sonya reluctantly teams up with Kano to track a foreign energy signal, but they confronted and defeated by the Joker and Deathstroke. When both sides finally decide to meet for one last battle, Sonya once again fights Catwoman. In the end, she is knocked unconscious while Raiden and Superman proceed to fight Dark Kahn. After Dark Kahn's defeat and the separation of the universes, Sonya stands alongside her allies and enemies to see a powerless Darkseid left behind in Shao Kahn's palace.
In the storyline of Mortal Kombat (2011), an alternate-timeline retelling of the first three games, Sonya teams up with Jax in his mission to bring down the Black Dragon, succeeding in seizing many of their weapons caches. However, after their key informant, Kano, was discovered to actually be a high-powered member of the organization, Sonya and Jax focus solely on his capture following the deaths of many of their comrades in subsequent ambushes.[11][12] This leads them to the Mortal Kombat tournament on Shang Tsung's uncharted island, where Jax is captured and imprisoned, forcing Sonya to participate in the tournament in order to spare his life, during which she unwillingly becomes acquainted with pompous movie star Johnny Cage after repeatedly rejecting his advances. Sonya soon encounters Shang Tsung himself but Raiden (whose identity Sonya is unaware of at the time) intervenes before she can fight him, and she bests Raiden in combat instead. Raiden then enables Sonya to free a wounded Jax, but Shang Tsung destroys their extraction transport and presents Kano to Sonya as a challenge; she emerges victorious yet is forbidden to take him prisoner. Raiden reappears and heals Jax's injuries, which finally makes Sonya aware of both his presence and her crucial role in defending Earthrealm alongside his chosen warriors. After Liu Kang's victory over Shang Tsung in the first tournament, Sonya is abducted and held captive in Outworld before being rescued by Jax, but after his arms are obliterated in a confrontation with Ermac, she transports him back to Earthrealm for medical attention and therefore does not participate in the second tournament. Sonya and Jax reunite with the other Earth warriors as they assemble to fight Shao Kahn's takeover, but the Earthrealmers are soon massacred by Queen Sindel, which, coupled with the later death of Liu Kang, leaves Sonya and Cage among the only survivors after Kahn's demise.
Sonya returns as a playable character in Mortal Kombat X. A few years following Shao Kahn's death in the previous title, Shinnok and his forces attack Earthrealm, but Sonya, along with Johnny Cage and Kenshi, aid Raiden in imprisoning Shinnok in his own amulet. The two later track down Quan Chi, Shinnok's second in command, and manage to defeat him, restoring Jax, Sub-Zero, and Scorpion to life. Over the 20 years that follow, Johnny and Sonya marry and have a daughter, Cassie Cage, but the two later divorce, allegedly due to Sonya frequently putting work before her family.
