Shego

Shego
File:Shego SD.jpg
Publication information
Publisher	Disney Channel
First appearance	"Crush"
Created by	Mark McCorkle Bob Schooley
In-story information
Alter ego	Unknown
Team affiliations	Dr. Drakken, Team Go
Notable aliases	Miss Go
Abilities	Superhuman strength, agility, speed, and reflexes Expert martial artist, Ability to create an deadly energy flame from her hands

Shego is a fictional character from Disney's animated television series Kim Possible voiced by Nicole Sullivan. She was first introduced as Dr. Drakken's sidekick at the beginning of Season 1 and was the last villain that Kim fought in the multi-part finale of season 3. She is one of the franchises primary antagonists among its most recurring characters.

Shego was first introduced as Dr. Drakken's sidekick, but as franchise progressed it was revealed that she was a mercenary working under a non-exclusive contract which permits her to work alone, or in concert with other villains. She can be said to be Kim's opposite number in the series, sharing many of her qualities and traits, but approaching them from the opposite angle.

Characteristics

Personality

Shego is among the most mature characters in the franchise, unlike most other Kim Possible villains she is not afflicted with megalomania or narcissism and she is calm and down-to-earth in most matters. She is not disturbed or irrational and occasionally shows remorse which indicates that she isn't a sociopath. However, despite an otherwise passive demeanor, she can be extremely impatient and quick to anger when she feels that people are being being obnoxious, stupid, or sexist . She has a strong sarcastic streak and, according to her brothers, has always been "smart mouthed".

Although Shego is dedicated to the pursuit of villainy, she often appears unmotivated and unambitious, and dividing her time between lounging in Drakken's lair around reading villain magazines and filing her clawed gloves, and visiting spa resorts. For the most part, she does not initiate any plans of her own. Instead preferring to assist others as an enforcer or infiltrator, even offering encouragement to them on occasion, although she generally prefers simple tactics, often involving physical force or intimidation, to the use of high technology gadgets and elaborate schemes. Because of her effectiveness as a sidekick, Shego appears to be well-respected among the villain community, as some of them have broken her out of prison for asking her help and assistance. Ironically, Shego rarely shows respect to the other villains except perhaps to Junior and through loyalty to Drakken.

Despite her fearsome persona, Shego is one of the few antagonists in the franchises to regularly be seen to think, or to consider the potential downsides of a scheme. She has expressed concern over cruelty to animals, and paused at the thought of stealing a wheelchair from a handicapped boy, stating that it was "a low act" even for villains such as Drakken. . Though her misgivings are pushed away if a plan appears to be working out.

Appearance

Shego is young, with long black hair and an athletic build, sharp jawline and narrowed eyes. She stands about a foot taller than Kim. Her exact age remains unknown, though it has been revealed that she is a college graduate (unspecified degree in child development), which indicates that she would have been around her mid twenties in Season 1.

As a result of being struck by a comet as a child (see below) has pale green skin and eyes. Her signature costume is a green and black full-body jumpsuit with matching gloves and boots. The gloves are tipped with metal claws, which she has occasionally been seen filing to keep them sharp. On the occasions when Shego has been seen to wear different outfits, they typically follow the same color scheme as her signature outfit.

Powers

Shego's primary power is a flame like ranged energy attack fired from her hands. Initially, Disney described this attack as being generated by her gloves , making them a weapon rather than a super power. However, this was retconned during Season 2, when the her abilities were revealed to be a true super-power resulting from exposure to a rainbow comet that also empowered her four brothers.

Originally, Disney desribed Shego's green flames as being purely concussive in nature, though this too was later changed with the release of several episodes showing her using her flames to burn or melt things.

In addition to her energy attack, Shego possesses super strength and enhanced toughness that allow her to lift objects many times heavier than would normally be possible, and to survive injuries that would kill an ordinary human .

In addition to her metal claws, she also has claw-like fingernails, which she has used on occasion.

History and Evolution

Though introduced as a villain, Shego’s past was revealed in Season 2. Like Kim, Shego used to be a justice fighter superhero and part of a group called Team Go, which was composed by her and her brothers.

She began life in Go City. One day her tree house was struck by a mysterious rainbow colored comet which endowed her, and her four brothers, with superpowers.

After the comet strike, Shego and her brothers formed Team Go. However, Shego eventually grew tired of the restraints put on her by being a superhero and by her overeager, constantly squabbling and somewhat dimwitted brothers. She gradually crossed over to the other side, abandoning her family and their quest for justice in exchange for a life as a mercenary for hire. In addition, according to Hego, she started to like fighting and evil themselves more than fighting evil.

At the beginning of the series, Shego was cast as Dr. Drakken's sidekick . It is during this period of her life, which covers the first three seasons of the show, that Shego began to face Kim every time she cooperated in an evil scheme, whether it was with Drakken or some other villain character. Their encounters and fights seem to be always expected even by themselves, most of these battles being won by Kim, but rarely managing to imprison her.

During the second season, Shego was unwillingly reunited with her family and teamed up with none other than her rival, Kim, in order to defeat an old foe of her days as a hero in order to help her brothers recover their powers, which had been stolen. This was the first time in which part of Shego’s past was revealed.

In the early episodes of forth season, Shego has shown less concern for Drakken, for example leaving him behind while being broken out of prison by other villains. However, after two such breakouts, as well as a vacation from her job, she returned to Drakken when she heard that he had been broken out of prison, only to learn that he had replaced her with an alien warrior named Warmonga, who had freed him. Because of Shego's mocking attitude towards Drakken, she was opposed by the new sidekick and even teamed up with Kim to get rid of Warmonga. With Warmonga gone, Shego returned to her place as Drakken's enforcer, as sarcastic as ever.

Part-way through the season, Shego was briefly turned good by a former enemy of Team Go. During this time she was sweet and excitable, and was shown to have a lot in common with Kim. Afterwards, she still returned to Drakken regardless.

Relationships

Drakken

Main article: Doctor Drakken

Drakken is Shego’s most common employer, to the point that she has been stated to be his sidekick. They’ve been working together in most of their schemes, but she has never shown much concern over him even though he claims that he likes to think of them as some kind of “evil family”. Unusually, her contract with him contains a no cloning clause.

She started out in the series as being deferential to him and followed his orders without question. However, as the franchise progressed, she began to develop a stronger personality and to openly show contempt for Drakken, making it clear that she was only following him because she was being paid or because she had nothing else to do. Eventually, Shego became the dominant partner in her relationship with Drakken, playing a "Bossy older sister" role for him and showed an increasing tendency to threaten him with violence if he stepped over the line with her.

At this point, she is rarely taken aback when Dr Drakken's most outlandish plans are foiled - going so far as to chide him for his overly complex or unconventional nature, even before they have failed. But even so, she continually rejoins him, usually without much reluctance unless she wants a vacation from him or sees a better opportunity. On the few occasions that such schemes appear to be working, she has been seen to be pleasantly surprised and appears to be happy for his minor successes.

Junior

One of the few people who has actually earned Shego’s respect is Señor Senior, Jr., whom she had once trained in villainy and has partnered with on two separate occasions. Jr. is one of the few people who can bring out Shego's softer side. Shego is considerably more cooperative and patient with Junior than she usually is with Drakken or anyone else she's worked with. Their relationship is not unlike an evil version of Kim and Ron's. Junior's relationship with Shego isn't exactly driven by evil. More likely, she treats him as a friend.

Kim Possible

Main article: Kim Possible (character)

Shego has a powerful rivalry relationship with Kim on the battlefield that is analogous to Kim's relationship with Bonnie in high school, although Kim has never really been hurt by Shego's insults the way she has with Bonnie's, and Kim's retorts push Shego's buttons more successfully than pushing Bonnie's. This rivalry is less personal between Kim and Shego than with Bonnie because it is fueled not by Kim's personality quirks but rather by her higher strivings for justice. Also, the context in which Kim and Shego meet is in a "professional" setting rather than in school, where Kim is much less at ease.

Like Bonnie, Shego talks down to Kim as if she is a child, often referring to her by the diminutive "Kimmie", and putting down both her appearance and wardrobe. Also like Bonnie, who gives angry deference to Kim's abilities by calling her "Miss Perfect", Shego sometimes refers to Kim as "Princess".

Despite this rivalry, or possibly because of it, Shego often shows a level of professional respect for Kim's skills as a fighter, and is less than impressed by the way in which Drakken treats her as an adversary. Like the Joker's relationship with Batman, Shego sees her confrontations with Kim as being personal, and does not like the idea for someone else taking out Kim. She has even gone so far as to help her against Drakken's new sidekick Warmonga (both by fighting her directly and by passing vital information to Wade), so that she could deal with Kim later on.

In some instances they share a bond, especially when they are stuck in the same "sitch", usually leading to small and almost friendly talks. As shown in "Stop Team Go", they would be good friends if they were not adversaries.

Shego has preemptively saved Kim's life twice in the series (Mad Dogs and Aliens and Captain Drakken), under the guise that she won't let anyone else finish off Kim but her. Both times seemed strange and deviated from what has happened in past seasons when Kim was about to be hurt or killed by something else other than Shego.

Family

Main article: Team Go

Shego has four brothers, Hego, Mego, and the Wego twins, which whom she used to form Team Go, a crime fighting family with much the same goals as Kim Possible, but even when she was a heroine she had, in her brothers’ words, a tendency to be smart-mouthed and prone to violence and cranky personality. Nonetheless, it was revealed that she was the one who kept Team Go focused on the task at hand, and that without her they disintegrated into bickering and largely broke up; becoming a group of individuals rather than a cohesive team

Due to her brothers’ attitude, which she evidently detests, Shego defected from the team and into the life of villainy. However, Shego accepted to coolaborate with Kim in order to help them, leading to her acquiring, and subsequently losing, all of their combined powers.

Despite how much she express her dislike towards them and that Shego denied it, it was highly hinted that Shego still has a small sense of familial love for her brothers, as Drakken postulated that the ease of her defeat might be a sign that she might have lost on purpose because she still cared for them, and even Kim noticed that defeating Shego had seemed unusually easy.

Alternative versions

In addition to the stock edition of Shego, her character and design has been modified on a number of occasions in order to fit in with specific plot devices and episodes.

The Supreme One

Shego is the only Kim Possible villain ever to successfully take over the world, a feat which she accomplished in the multi part episode A Sitch in Time.

After watching Drakken fail in his attempts to use the Tempus Simia, a mystical idol with the power to create portals through space-time, to attack Kim Possible at vulnerable moments in her life, Shego —acting on the advice of her future self— uses the Tempus Simia to travel in time where she employs her knowledge of future events to invest in the technology sector as it grew and to pull out just before the bubble burst thus making a healthy profit.

Noting that Ron and Kim worked best when they were together, Shego used some of her money to purchase the bank that Ron's mother worked for and transfer her to Norway —thus splitting up Team Possible. With Team Possible separated, Kim fared badly against the villains of the present and was forced to travel to the future, leaving the world undefended and open to takeover by Shego.

In this alternate future, Shego —now known as The Supreme One— establishes Middleton as her capital, renaming it "Shegoton", and transforms Club Banana into "Club Shego". She has dissenters brainwashed in special facilities and everyone, aside from a small band of resistance fighters, is forced to wear clothing based on Shego's green and black costume.

When the Supreme One was defeated by the intervention of present day Kim and Ron, her world was erased and everything went back to normal.

Miss Go (Rewriting History)

In the episode Rewriting History, the audience was introduced to Miss Go, an ancestor of Shego's. Her appearance and personality were identical to Shego's, though she dressed in period style. Like Shego, Miss Go was voiced by Nicole Sullivan.

Miss Go attempted to steal the "electrostatic illuminater" from the Middleton World Fair, approximately 100 years prior to the start of season 2. Although Miss Go failed to recover the device, she inadvertently succeeded in framing Kim's great-aunt Mim Possible for the crime. 100 Years later, a computer enhanced photograph proves Miss Go's guilt. At the end of the episode, Miss Go was revealed to be part of a dream sequence and most likely not an actual ancestor of present day Shego.

Miss Go (Stop Team Go)

In the Season 4 episode Stop Team Go, Shego's personality is temporarily reversed by an enhanced version of Jack Hench's Attitudinator wielded by an old enemy of Team Go, the techno-powered villainness Electronique. Hoping to avenge her imprisonment by Team Go by making them her willing henchmen, Electronique fails to realize that Shego is no longer good—or that without her, Team Go is fractious and prone to screw-ups. Thus, while the ray makes the rest of Team Go into dangerous (if somewhat inept) villains, it turns Shego into a sweet-natured, caring person.

Fearing that her brothers, transformed into villains by the same device, might find her and try to turn her back to her old self, Shego flees to Middleton and uses her degree in child development to become a substitute teacher in Middleton High School, where she asks Kim to shelter her.

As Miss Go, Shego is a genuinely kind and caring person and a "girly girl" who is into shopping and romantic movies. She has much in common with Kim and the two quickly become close friends, with Kim going so far as to describe her as being like a big sister. This does not sit well with Ron, who steadily loses his place as Kim's best friend to Miss Go. As Miss Go, Shego also manages to attract the attention of fellow substitute teacher Steve Barkin, and they enjoy a brief relationship. Meanwhile, finding out that Shego was the real brains of the team, Electronique orders the brothers to find and kidnap their sister at all costs so that she can be re-villainized.

At the end of the episode, Shego is accidentally transformed back to her original self by Ron and on the surface appears to resent Kim exactly as before. However, at the episode's close, she is seen looking wistfully at a strip of photo booth pictures of Kim and herself, suggesting that she may have regrets about the way that things turned out, though she burns them when she sees Drakken approaching.