Sonya Blade's History
Lieutenant Sonya Blade, (USA) or Lt. Sonya Blade, (USA), is a female soldier who is a member of Earthrealm's Special Forces unit known as Outer World Investigation Agency (OIA) and is a heroine in the Mortal Kombat fighting game series, now she commands all the operations of the Special Forces and Units like the new Earthrealm unit which is Cassie's team. She is one of the few original Mortal Kombat characters, debuting in the first Mortal Kombat arcade game.
In the original Mortal Kombat (1992), Lieutenant Sonya Blade and her team pursue Kano, leader of the Black Dragon international crime organization. After he jumps aboard an old junk in order to escape capture, Sonya and her comrades follow him to a remote island where Shang Tsung's Mortal Kombat tournament was underway. Upon arrival, they are ambushed by Shang Tsung's personal guard and Sonya is forced to compete in order to spare her companions' lives. Shang Tsung, however, had no intention of fulfilling his end of the bargain and has her unit killed. After he is defeated by Shaolin monk Liu Kang in the final battle, Sonya teams up with movie star Johnny Cage and Kano to fight off the Shokan Prince Goro. During the battle, the island begins to crumble and she and Kano are sent to Outworld as Shang Tsung's prisoners to appease the Outworld emperor, Shao Kahn. However, Sonya is able to send a signal to Jax from Outworld and, during the events of Mortal Kombat II (1993), he travels there to find her. Jax makes contact with the other Earthrealm warriors and together they learn of Shao Kahn's scheme to invade Earth. Before and during their imprisonment meanwhile, Sonya and Kano are forced to put their differences aside and work together to survive in Outworld. She is later freed by Jax, who arrests Kano, but as soon as they pass through the portal to Earthrealm, Kano escapes and flees back to Outworld.
Sonya appears as one of a few selected Earthrealm warriors whose souls were not taken following Shao Kahn's invasion of Earth in Mortal Kombat 3 (1995). She re-encounters Kano on top of a skyscraper near his fortress and after a fight, hurls him off the roof to his apparent death. In Mortal Kombat 4 (1997), after her journey into Outworld and Shao Kahn's near destruction of Earth, Sonya becomes a member of the U.S. government's Outer World Investigation Agency (OIA). However, she continues to have conflicts with the Black Dragon, especially after its last known member, Jarek, fled to Edenia while Sonya was chasing him. This leads her and Jax to team up with Liu Kang and thunder god Raiden to free the 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 in to save himself, he tries to kill Sonya, but Jax intervenes and drops him off a cliff. After returning to Earthrealm, Jax and Sonya find the cyborg Cyrax malfunctioning in a desert. The two bring him back to OIA headquarters, where they are able to restore his humanity before helping him join the agency.
In Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance (2002), while on an assignment in the East, Sonya learns the OIA had been destroyed by an accomplice of the titular alliance of Shang Tsung and Quan Chi. Not long after, Raiden seeks out her aid against the Deadly Alliance and instructs her to meet with his other chosen warriors on Shang Tsung's abandoned island, where she develops a rivalry with Frost. To earn the right to pass into Outworld, each warrior has to defeat a representation of his or her adversary. To Sonya's surprise, hers is a stranger with a red dragon on his back. She is killed in battle against the Deadly Alliance's Tarkatan forces, but their victory is short-lived as the Dragon King Onaga reclaims Outworld and defeats them in turn. With his ability to raise the dead at will, he resurrects Sonya and her fallen comrades to serve as his slaves until their souls are freed by Liu Kang and Shao Kahn's enforcer Ermac during Mortal Kombat: Deception (2004).
In Mortal Kombat: Armageddon (2006), Sonya returns to Earth after Onaga's defeat, with the intention of continuing her assault on both the Black and Red Dragon clans, only to be forced to focus on a newly established threat. In her absence, the Tekunin cyber ninja clan had grown powerful enough to disrupt Earth civilization and violated the laws of Mortal Kombat by engaging in illegal interdimensional alliances with unknown parties. Sonya succeeds in downing the Tekunin's flagship, helmed by their Grandmaster Sektor. She sent in a team led by Jax to hunt for survivors, but they mysteriously vanished. Fearing for Jax's safety, she tracks the signal of a homing beacon placed on Tekunin prisoner Taven, who escaped thanks to her intervention, and eventually confronts him in Arktika to interrogate him, only to be beaten. Sonya later fights alongside her friends in the Battle of Armageddon in Edenia, only to become one of its many casualties; torn apart by an unknown opponent.
In the Mortal Kombat reboot game (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, is discovered to 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. 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 Johnny Cage after repeatedly rejecting his advances. Sonya soon encounters Shang Tsung himself, but Raiden, whom she had not met yet in this timeline, intervenes before she can fight him. He enables Sonya to free a wounded Jax, but Shang Tsung destroys their extraction transport and presents Kano to Sonya as a challenge. While she emerges victorious, she is forbidden to take him prisoner. Raiden reappears and heals Jax's injuries, causing Sonya to become 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; missing the second tournament entirely. Sonya and Jax reunite with the other Earthrealm warriors as they assemble to fight Shao Kahn's invasion of Earthrealm but most of them are massacred by his wife, Queen Sindel; leaving Sonya and Cage among the only survivors after the Kahn's demise and Raiden accidentally killing Liu Kang.
Sonya returns as a playable character in Mortal Kombat X (2015). Two years following Shao Kahn's death, Shinnok and his forces attack Earthrealm, but General Sonya Blade, along with Johnny and Kenshi, aid Raiden in imprisoning Shinnok in his own amulet. The two later track down Quan Chi, Shinnok's second-in-command, and defeat him; restoring Jax as well as Sub-Zero and Scorpion to normal. Over the following 25 years, Sonya and Johnny marry and have a daughter, Cassie Cage, but the two later divorce; allegedly due to Sonya frequently putting work before her family. However, after Cassie defeats Shinnok and saves Earthrealm, she, Sonya, and Johnny become a family again.
In Mortal Kombat 11 (2019), Sonya, Cassie, and Jax's daughter Jacqui lead a Special Forces strike team in storming the Netherrealm before they can attack Earthrealm. After being trapped under debris, Sonya sacrifices herself to ensure the mission's success and her allies' escape, devastating Johnny and Cassie. When the keeper of time Kronika causes temporal anomalies amidst her plot to reset time, younger versions of Sonya and Johnny are brought to the present. Upon learning of what happened to her older self, she is initially outraged that she had a child with Johnny and that Cassie apparently left her behind. Just as she learns her older self ordered Cassie to do so, she is captured by the present and past versions of Kano and forced to fight for the Black Dragon's entertainment before the Special Forces rescue her. During the ensuing fight, Sonya kills Kano's younger counterpart, erasing his present self from existence. Following this, she begins to warm up to her version of Johnny and reconciles with Cassie.
Sonya appears as one of the warriors representing the Mortal Kombat universe in the non-canonical crossover game, Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe (2008). In the story mode, Sonya is investigating the dimensional imbalance caused by Shao Kahn and Darkseid's inadvertent fusion into Dark Kahn. After defeating Catwoman, Baraka, Captain Marvel, and Green Lantern, Sonya and Jax return to their base to use a teleportation machine in an attempt to reach the DC Universe. When she finds Jax with Green Lantern, Sonya once again challenges the latter, only to be defeated and imprisoned before she and Jax escape again. When Earthrealm's heroes and Outworld's villains join forces to fight invaders from the DC universe, Sonya reluctantly teams up with Kano to track a foreign energy signal, but they are confronted and defeated by the Joker and Deathstroke. When both sides meet for one last battle, Sonya once again fights Catwoman. In the end, she is knocked unconscious while Raiden and Superman defeat Dark Kahn and separate their universes.
