Second Round of Sonic The Hedgehog Secret Lair Draws Fire for Being Entirely Fan OC’s

Irvine, CA — Many fans of Sonic the Hedgehog and Magic: The Gathering were excited for rumors of a second Sonic Secret Lair Superdrop, but now find themselves confused at the announcement of the new cards.

“I’m not an expert on Sonic lore by any means,” explained Reddit user MommyVanillaPlease, “but I can name more than a few obscure Sonic characters. I would be very excited for a Megani the Jackal or Hocke-Wulf card, but I’m just baffled by whoever Elliotte the Rabbit and Merril the Shallowskin are.”

The first Sonic the Hedgehog Secret Lair Superdrop, released in summer of 2025, was met with a generally positive reaction by Magic players who were Sonic fans, and a grunt of acknowledgement by Magic players who weren’t fans. It featured popular characters Sonic, Tails, and Dr. Eggman in mechanically-unique bundle available to LGS’s, and the seemingly inevitable follow-up was expected to be the same. But fan reaction has been sour.

Bluesky user TanArmsOnly.sagexpo.org had this to say: “Who the hell is Gexby and why isn’t it Rouge the Bat? Hell, I’d have settled for Honey the Cat. But this is just absurd.”

Commander’s Herald reporters went to Sega of America headquarters in Irvine to speak with Sega about this, and were granted an audience with Shuji Utsumi, President and COO of Sega, in a translated interview.

Commander’s Herald: Thank you for meeting with us today, Mr. Utsumi.

Shuji Utsumi: Happy to. But I admit, I am a little confused as to why a publication that focuses on card games wanted to interview us.

CH: That’s the thing, Mr. Utsumi, it’s about the collaboration between Sonic and Magic: The Gathering.

Utsumi: Ah, of course. The collaboration with our friends in Renton was a wonderful chance to use Sonic to further distract the public from our grey-market pachinko dealings.

CH: But this is about the newly announced second superdrop.

[Mr. Utusmi then leaned over to an assistant, and had a short whispered conversation.]

Utsumi: Yes. Of course. The second… one of those.

[Our reporter then pulled out a large image of one of the characters represented on a card.]

CH: The public is mostly just confused about who… “Dark Sorceress Aurelina” is, is all.

[At this point Mr. Utsumi’s face grows pale, and his hands begin to shake. He stands up, and starts gesticulating wildly at his assistants]

Utsumi: [shouting in English] I swear to God if those bastards at IDW are trying to pull some Penders bullshit, I’m going to lose my goddamn mind! I knew letting Lanolin the Sheep fly was a mistake! I want Ian Flynn’s head on a pike NOW!”

After the interview, we attempted to contact Wizards of the Coast for comment, but were met mostly by panicked lawyers putting up literal, physical sandbags around the main headquarters. An employee who has chosen to remain anonymous explained, “Yeah, so, usually doing collabs with Japanese companies requires a lot of back-and-forth bureaucracy, and someone thought it would be a good idea to just skip past all that and pick out some original characters off of the weird parts of the internet. Huge mistake. We got visited by some very… interesting individuals with some very… interesting back tattoos, so now we’re all fearing for our lives. I’d get at least a few blocks away if I were you.”