The creative minds behind the next live-action Sonic the Hedgehog movie just made the boldest artistic decision ever: They gave Shadow the Hedgehog his weapon back.

Directed by Jeff Fowler and distributed by Paramount Pictures, Sonic the Hedgehog 3 is the third film in a series of live-action feature films adapting the video game series created by Sega. Previous films have focused on Sonic himself or friends like Knuckles, but this time all eyes are on Sonic’s rival Shadow, voiced by Keanu Reeves. Paramount released a new trailer for the film on Monday, and the new look offered fans plenty of treats – Sonic gets to visit a Chao-themed attraction, for example. But I was obsessed with the moment Shadow picks up a gun.

The image of Shadow using a gun references a strange era in the Sonic series. In 2005, Sega released a spin-off game called Shadow the hedgehog where the development team explored a darker, edgier side to the Sonic series. Shadow appeared on the cover with a scoped weapon and the game featured third-person shooter gameplay. According to Jason Griffith, a voice actor who played Shadow in the game, the development team planned to create an M-rated game and had him record alternate lines of Shadow dropping the F-bomb, although these did not make it into the final cancellation game.

“They had me do two takes of every line, and I swear, in the version that was for the M rating, they had me say ‘fuck’ in every single line.” Griffith said in an interview with Inverse: “In With every sentence I screamed ‘Sonic, give me that damn Chaos Emerald!'”

Since then, Sega has revisited the darker side of Shadow and the series as a whole. Especially the youngest ones Sonic x Shadow Generations Game that contains gameplay from Shadow the hedgehogHe had no weapons and certainly didn’t swear. When asked why Shadow doesn’t carry firearms, Sonic Team leader Takashi Iizuka told Video Games Chronicle that while Shadow will use a weapon, he doesn’t need one since Shadow himself is “a weapon.”

I agree that Shadow doesn’t need a weapon – in the lore he was created in a lab as the ultimate weapon – but with one he certainly looks like a damn villain, and some fans even celebrated the weapon’s return. Although the game series as a whole has moved away from this more mature side of the Sonic series, it’s fun to see it pop up again in a movie.

Sonic the Hedgehog 3 hits theaters on December 30th.