Shego

Shego
File:Shego SD.jpg Shego
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	Enhanced strength and agility, Advanced level Martial Arts skills, Ranged energy attack

Shego is a fictional character from Disney's animated television series Kim Possible.

Shego was first introduced as Dr. Drakken's sidekick and hired muscle in season 1, episode 1 (1st episode aired, 13th produced), and was the last villain that Kim fought in the multi-part finale of season 3.

She is voiced by Nicole Sullivan.

Role in the show

Shego is among the most mature characters in the franchise. Unlike most other Kim Possible villains, Shego is not afflicted with megalomania or narcissism. She is calm and down-to-earth in most matters, and usually prefers simple tactics (often involving physical force) to the use of high technology gadgets and elaborate schemes. However, she has been known to be quite impressed with plans involving pure destruction (such as when she complimented Motor Ed's plan to level Middleton via rocket kickback in Car Alarm) or random theft (when she worked with Señor Senior Junior in Two to Tutor and The Big Job), and has even encouraged the use of such plans to her employers.

It is partly because of this that she is rarely taken aback when Dr Drakken's more outlandish plans are foiled - going so far as to chide him for his over complex or unconventional nature, even before they have failed. On the few occasions that such schemes appear to be working, she has been seen to be pleasantly surprised. Shego is also one of the few Kim Possible, and Disney, villains to ever think ahead to potential consequences of a scheme, though this usually encourages her to work out a contingency - usually in the form of a favorable ambush position - rather than to negate the scheme.

Despite her fearsome persona, Shego is one of the few antagonists in the franchise ever to demonstrate unease about how deep she should stoop in the pursuit of world domination. 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. However, her misgivings are pushed aside when the related plans began unfolding.

Personality

In general terms, Shego seems unmotivated and unambitious, and spends most of her free time lazing around reading villain magazines and filing her clawed gloves. Although she is dedicated to the pursuit of evil, she never initiates any evil plans of her own. Instead, she assists other villains in carrying out their own schemes; she largely works for Dr. Drakken, but has also assisted other villains including Senor Senior Junior and Motor Ed. Although one exception to that exists in A Sitch in Time. However, many consider to have been largely out of character there.

Shego is quite impatient, and quickly gets angry at people when they're being obnoxious, stupid, or sexist.

Although she isn't known for showing much respect to anyone, she can be quite friendly to those who do manage to earn it. One of the few people who has actually earned her 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. Their relationship is not unlike an evil version of Kim and Ron's.

Character evolution

File:KPCKimVSShego.jpg

Shego's first battle against Kim

Season 1

While the concepts behind Shego's character have remained stable throughout Seasons 1-3, elements of her personality have undergone a certain amount of evolution. At the very beginning of Season 1, Shego was introduced as a subordinate character to Dr. Drakken; she was deferential to him and followed his orders without question. However, as the franchise progressed, she began to develop a stronger personality and lost most of her deference to Drakken, replacing it with a mixture of indifference and sarcasm. However, in "So the Drama", where Drakken had a surprisingly clever scheme (for him), Shego was clearly pleased, although annoyed at how he refused to divulge details about it until it started to unfold.

Season 2

By mid-season 2, many of the elements of Shego's personality that were displayed during interacting with Kim (primarily her aggressive and dominating behavior) had been expanded to cover her interactions with Drakken as well. Shego began openly showing contempt for Drakken, both to his face, while discussing the practicalities of his latest plans, and to Kim in the banter during fight scenes. Shego also began to make it clear that she was only following Drakken's orders because she was being paid to do so or because she had nothing else to do.

Season 3

File:KPCDestinedBattle.jpg

Shego VS Kim

By season 3, the growth in Shego's personality had reached the point that she often served as the dominant partner in the Shego-Drakken relationship , with Shego playing the role of "Bossy older sister" to Drakken - offering him advice on improving his plans, boasting about his progress as a villain during fight banter and frequently scolding him for little things, like being too busy to look after his dog properly.

During this period, Shego also showed an increasing tendency to threaten Drakken with violence if he stepped over the line with her. Though elements of her character had been present in some form since season 1.

Season 4

File:KPCKim&Shego.jpg

Shego and Kim in school

With the advent of Season 4, Shego's relationship with Drakken has been somewhat strained. In the early episodes of Season 4, Shego has been broken out of prison by other, somewhat more competent villains, leaving Drakken behind. After two such breakouts, as well as a vacation from her job, she returns to Drakken, only to learn that Drakken had replaced her in her absence with an alien warrior named Warmonga. Apparently, Shego does not appreciate being replaced from her rightful job, as evidenced when she 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 into a good guy 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. It was also 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

Status

Shego, on business for Señor Senior Sr.

When first introduced, Shego was cast as Dr. Drakken's sidekick, however, as the series went on was revealed that she is more of a mercenary working under contract to Drakken.

Though few details are given, her contract appears to be non-exclusive and she has been shown working independently, and accepting commissions from other villains. Unusually, her contract contains a no cloning clause.

Besides Drakken, Shego has also performed jobs for other villains (usually because they keep breaking her out of prison). Motor Ed and Señor Senior Junior are two such villains that Shego has worked with.

Rivalry

As a character, Shego has a somewhat rivalrous 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". It usually leads to small talk like in The Twin Factor, Sick Day, Emotion Sickness, and The Big Job. As shown in "Stop Team Go", they would be good friends if they were not adversaries.

Family history

File:Goodteamgo.jpg

Shego's family

Shego has four brothers, Hego, Mego, and the Wego twins. Together, they form Team Go, a crime fighting family with much the same goals as Kim Possible. She became estranged from them prior to the start of season 1, and were not introduced until mid-way though season 2.

Shego's exact age has never been directly addressed in the show, though in Season 4 it is revealed that she is a college graduate. She began life in Go City. This all changed one day when 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 soon tired of the restraints put on her by being a superhero, and of her overeager brothers, and gradually crossed over to the other side, abandoning her family and their quest for justice in exchange for a life of crime.

Shego was unwillingly reunited with her family in "Go, Team Go", leading to her acquiring, and subsequently losing, all of their combined powers. Drakken postulated that the ease of her defeat might be a sign that she might have lost on purpose because she still cared for her brothers, and even Kim noticed that defeating Shego had seemed unusually easy. Although Shego denied it, it's highly possible that Shego still has a small sense of familial love for her brothers.

Even when she was a heroine she had, in her brother Hego's words, a tendency to be smart-mouthed and prone to violence. In fact Hego and Mego said she was always cranky. However, it was revealed that Shego was the one that could keep the team focused on their objetives and make them work as a good team.

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.

Future Shego

File:KP-Shego-ASIT.jpg

Shego 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 Future Shego 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)

File:Miss Go.png

Miss 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.

File:Shegoregret2.jpg

Shego experiencing regret

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 and appears to resent Kim exactly as before. However, at the episode's close, she is seen looking wistfully at a strip of pictures of Kim and herself, suggesting that she may have regrets about the way that things turned out. However, she burns the pictures as soon as Drakken comes near (and is seen to have an awkward look in her eyes as she does so)

Canon debates

Since Shego's first appearance, several pieces of information have been released by Disney that have either confused, or been in contradiction to, the canon set in the series.

File:Energyball.jpg

Shego using her powers.

According to the index of Kim Possible villains on the Disney Channel website, Shego's energy blasts are generated by her gloves, and so are a weapon not a true super-power. This was later contradicted in the series, when the origins of her powers were explained, revealing them to be a true super-power generated by her body rather than by her gloves. Disney has also stated separately that her energy blasts are purely concussive in nature, though episode canon shows that they can also be thermal.

Further debate over the nature of her powers is raised in the half length episode "Rufus vs Commodore Puddles" in which Shego can be seen using her powers to spot-weld. , in "Ron Millionaire" in which her green flames incinerate a magazine that she is holding, , in "Odds Man In" where she burns an obstacle course used in a team building exercise. , and in Stop Team Go she ignites a strip of photographs which are seen to burn with a green flame after she has dropped them.

There has also been confusion over Shego's claws which she can be seen filing in several episodes. For a time, it was thought that she was attempting to file her nails through her gloves, but the show's producers confirmed that she was sharpening the claws on her gloves, in agreement with her website profile. However, she has also been seen slashing objects with her fingernails without her gloves on, indicating that her fingernails are just as sharp as the metal claws built into her costume.

Trivia

• Shego has a degree in child development.
• Shego can be quite unmotivated to take any sort of initiative in a situation, often just going along with the plan of others (even if she considers the plan to be unworkable or stupid). Even in A Sitch in Time, it wasn't until Shego got the suggestion from her future self that she began her plan to conquer the world via time travel.
• Shego, unlike Drakken, appears to be well-respected among the villain community. She has been broken out of prison twice in Season 4 by both Motor Ed and Senior Jr. Ironically, Shego rarely shows any respect to most of the other villains, especially Motor Ed.