Board Thread:Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time discussion/@comment-70.118.175.85-20130324190846/@comment-7445818-20130821055247

It was an honestly predictable thing to me personally, her betrayal, when the Black Knight appeared. Predictable, but interesting that Sanzuru put it in at all. It's these plot twists that make the Sly story worth exploring; it's no fun going somewhere, beating a boss, and having everything be fine before heading to the next boss, doing the same thing over and over again. I'm glad the developers are taking risks and at the same time removing some repetitiveness.

As for why/how she betrayed the Cooper Clan, I must agree with the analysts that it is a mystery that can currrently only be theorized. Also, we're talking about time machines now, and time travel brings many complications concerning the past, present, future, and hidden intel. Penelope may have been brainwashed by Le Paradox upod abduction, or she may have been with him all along; the fact that she suddenly disappeared at all is a mystery because there was nothing odd going on before that happened. Her betraying at all was unexpected by the Cooper Gang despite hints the player may easily see before the betrayal became obvious. Wealth and fame has always been her thing, and perhaps she was too materialistic and egotistic, though in Sly 3, one had to look more closely to realize that (she came from a wealthy family, and she willingly cheated to win). Her morals were never clear to begin with, though the fact that she had a ThiefNet account at all may already have put suspicion to some fans about her seeming "innocence".

So what will happen in Sly 5 (this series simply cannot end at Sly 4!)? It is clear that Penelope is a fugitive (likely in the present time due to the post cards she's been sending to Bentley, but there's a possibility she built a second time machine, this time for herself and not for Le Paradox); she is definitely not viewed as the "main threat", per se, as the Cooper Gang is concerned with Sly, who is in Ancient Egypt (no idea where someone got this info to put on this wiki), perhaps with Slytunkhamen Cooper (the guy who created the Thevius Raccoonus). I know not how big of an antagonist she will be at all, but since she was able to break out of jail, apparently with only scraps available, I'm not sure she was alone in the breakout. Her unusual craving for money, though, makes me think of Nami in the One Piece manga series/TV show, where she's working for this evil person so she can "buy back" some freedoms the evil person confiscated (and once the evil person was defeated by Luffy, the protagonist, Nami rejoined Luffy's crew, this time fully loyally).