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Doctor M(andril), A Villainous Demonstration of Crafting the Perfect Sequel

I’ll cut right to the chase, there is no baddie in the Sly franchise (to me) that has before and will ever again top the writing of this monke right here. That’s not to put down Clockwerk in any capacity. In fact, the majority of what makes M so amazing is not what he is in a vacuum, but what he serves to build upon the events that preceded him. Clockwerk is the giant who’s shoulders he stands on, the two games before him the backdrop that makes him shine so brightly. I’ve always been a strong believer that stories are in large part only as good as their antagonists, and this is what Dr.M has contributed to make Honor Among Thieves the narrative peak of the Sly Cooper franchise.

For minor starters, everything about this freak is downright unsettling.

A mandrill monkey was a great pick for a scary looking, vicious little mastermind. Even with a fresh coat of purple and his short stature, he looks about as repulsive and menacing as he is on the inside. He’s completely obsessed to the point of being consumed metaphorically by his envy and resentment of Connor. He gave us a lot of interesting insight into the life and relationships of Sly’s father while leaving us with even more mystery and questions to ponder. He’s meticulous and intellectually gifted in his ways, but it doesn’t do anything to overshadow the fact that he’s also an utterly deranged madman.

Clockwerk’s hatred for the cooper line, as genuine and strong as it was, had this almost detached element to it, being more like a means to an end and fueled by superiority and rivalry competition. It was kinda hard to get your head around it, and the second game keeps him in your thoughts more like a slumbering eldritch horror waiting to rise again or a pure, immortal force of evil itself, rather than a person. He isn’t even really “anthro” in his design. Clockwerk is a monster, a robotic husk of a former individual.

Dr.M’s hatred for the Coopers on the other hand is… uncomfortably humanized. He’s narcissistic, yet he’s also paranoid and motivated by a rage that’s responding to his sense of inferiority and victimhood. He’ll use his warped justifications to stoop to the most heinous acts- not just because he wants to prove himself better- but because he wants to destroy/take everything Conner loves and accomplished. Clockwerk’s hate was cold and mechanic. M’s hatred is personal and boiling over with venom. Both of them were defined by little more than their loathing of Coopers, but while Clockwerk kept himself alive with his vendetta, M’s was the very thing that led to his demise.

Clockwork was “the enemy of all Coopers”, but he left the final member of the bloodline to wither and then bloom more vibrantly than ever to return and defeat him. He underestimated Sly, and was content to live on and continue his own work with the overconfidence that he had already won. I wonder in my head sometimes if maybe his power was actually starting to fade in the light of seeing that vendetta finally resolved. Or if that time-worn weariness and frustration was part of why Sly, barely an adult, was able to accomplish what generations of his most skilled family had failed to. He never knew Clockwerk during his prime, the great monstrous owl that his clan used to live in constant terror of.

Doctor M feels like he was really Sly’s own Clockwerk. A fresh and unfamiliar threat to truly test every skill he had spent a whole career of thieving to master, and someone who’s own history was far more entangled with Sly’s blood than he could have imagined. Clockwerk condemned him to death (or destitution) for no other reason than being a Cooper, but Dr.M actually wanted to watch the life leave his eyes because he was Sly Cooper, son of Connor.

And he’s not just fitting to compare to the old bird, but he’s more overtly a direct foil to Bentley’s character too. He’s a dark prophecy of the worst possible result of what would happen if the Cooper gang fell out with each other in a similar manner, or if some of Bentley’s foreshadowed insecurities (that started presenting after he became wheelchair bound) were allowed to fester instead of him finding support from others. That turtle is also the only character that Dr.M is able to speak to like an equal, because he sees himself in Bentley despite being on opposite sides.

He’s a really, really well-written main antagonist that does not try to take a whole new direction like Neyla; instead, he’s like a revamped version of Clockwerk’s “idea” done without milking out any more references or revivals of the bird and his role, which by this point was well-concluded and moved on from… The past of Sly’s family coming back to haunt him, the weight of honoring the legacy of his ancestors, and the struggle of exploring who he is both as a Cooper and the leader of his own found family, and Honor Among Thieves checked those boxes without ruining the closure he got back in Paris. Band of Theives will always be my personal favorite to return to, but all of what M represents, along with many other reasons, is why I consider the third to narratively be the best game out of the series.

“We watched as Dr.M just stood there, unwilling to leave as the walls caved in on the vault.

He’d spent his life lusting over the Cooper Fortune, and he wasn’t going to give it up, no matter what the cost…”