Warning: The following contains SPOILERS for the 2021 Mortal Kombat movie, and Sonya Blade's storyline.

Sonya Blade has a major role in the 2021 Mortal Kombat movie, as befits her status as the series' first female fighter. Strangely enough, the film does a better job of explaining Sonya's supernatural powers than the original games did, though just why her inner power manifests as pink energy blasts is still a mystery.

Most of the warriors in Mortal Kombat had special attacks that were reflective of their training, their technology, or their otherworldly heritage, such as Raiden the thunder god having lightning-based attacks. For reasons that were never explained in the original game, Sonya had the ability to shoot pink energy rings from her hands and could kill finish her enemies with the Fire Kiss; Sonya Blade's fatality where she blew a kiss at her opponent and set them on fire. Later games added a Poison Kiss, where Sonya blew a pink powder into the face of her enemy, leaving them vomiting and choking to death on their own blood. While this made a little more sense given her soldier background, the kissing aspect of Sonya's fatalities has never meshed with her no-nonsense personality and seems problematic by modern standards, particularly given her requiring frequent rescue by Jax and Liu Kang in the earliest Mortal Kombat games.

Related: Mortal Kombat Retcons Kano & Sonya's Backstory For The Third Time

The new movie averts all of this, offering a definitive explanation for the supernatural powers of the various Earthrealm fighters while establishing that Sonya Blade is nobody's damsel in distress. The mythology of the 2021 Mortal Kombat movie introduces the concept of dragon marks; magical brands in the shape of the Mortal Kombat logo which appear on the bodies of those fighters chosen to represent Earthrealm in the Mortal Kombat Tournament. Only a Chosen One with the dragon mark can go on to discover their Arcana: the magical abilities born of their inner power. The dragon marks can be transferred if one of the chosen warriors is killed by another warrior. This is how Sonya, who spent most of the movie trying to track down and assist the Chosen Ones, ultimately joined their ranks after defeating Kano in single-combat. She later returned to the Temple of Raiden and manifested her trademark pink energy rings from the game, blowing a hole through the torso of the assassin Mileena while she fought Cole Young.

Sonya Blade stabbing Kano through the eye in Mortal Kombat 2021

Curiously, the movie doesn't get into how Sonya discovered her Arcana or decided to try throwing energy at Mileena just minutes after earning her dragon mark. This is odd given how much time is devoted to setting up the dragon mark and Arcana concepts and how all of the other characters have abilities that are reflective of their personalities or training. Cole Young, for instance, first manifested his Arcana as golden armor when he needed to protect his family. Major Jackson "Jax" Briggs similarly used his Arcana to further enhance his prosthetic arms, giving him the strength needed to lift a large boulder off of a pinned Sonya. There is nothing about rings or the color pink that is significant to Sonya, apart from pink being a color traditionally associated with women in Western culture and Sonya being the one woman among Earth's champions.

It's possible that Sonya's energy blasts are symbolic of Sonya herself; a woman who is attractive by most conventional standards but is still a fighter first and foremost. Certainly the 2021 Mortal Kombat movie goes out of its way to portray Sonya as a serious soldier, who is capable of defeating Kano both before and after he manifests his Arcana. It should also be noted that Sonya, having killed Kano and Mileena, has the highest body count of all the heroes in the movie, proving her worthiness to stand among Earth's greatest champions.

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