Ed appeared in Street Fighter 4, ages very quickly and looks a lot like Abel for a reason; here's what we know about SF5's newest character

Posted by John 'Velociraptor' Guerrero • May 6, 2017 at 3:45 p.m. PDT • Comments: 127

We noticed in our Ed reveal story that some of you commented to say he looks a lot like Abel, and that's probably intentional.

Though he's best known for his appearances in Street Fighter 5, Ed's story actually begins with a brief sighting from Street Fighter 4. In Balrog's Super Street Fighter 4 ending, a young, nameless Bison clone survives the destruction of a S.I.N lab, and runs into Balrog.

Rog collects the young clone, stating "If you're supposed to be a replacement body for him, you've gotta do something. Can you fly or see the future or what?" Ed's hand then glows with the same pink Shadaloo symbol we see in Street Fighter 5:

Ed will actually be the fifth playable character spawned as a potential Bison replacement body, with Cammy, Rose, Abel and Seth as the other four. This may explain why he'd look so similar to Abel, as he could have very well been a part of the same batch of clones.

Ed's appearances thus far have all been earlier in the Street Fighter timeline than what we consider to be the "present" as the landscape appears in Season 2. The individual character stories (Ed appears as a major part of Balrog's) are all preface to the game's main story: A Shadow Falls.

Even Shadow is set before the present, as Helen makes her transformation to Kolin at the very end of it. This would account for why Ed appears so much younger and scrawnier than in the design revealed today. As a clone he ages faster than a normal human, and so he's matured in the short time between Shadow and now.

Below you'll see Ed's Super Street Fighter 4 appearance as well as his role in Balrog's SF5 story:

Video source: onebyonetv. Thank you very much to Zephyrus and Cerevega_Alexandersson for contributions to this story.