The Mario franchise has always carried symbolic weight beneath its playful surface, and its aesthetic trajectory reflects shifts from fraternal ritualism into Christian cosmology. Early works leaned on Masonic and Gnostic motifs. Super Mario 64 epitomized this with checkerboard floors, portals through paintings, and staircases resembling a lodge or temple. Peach appeared as a Sophia-like figure imprisoned by Bowser, who acted as a Demiurge presiding over false worlds. Even earlier, the Super Show! parodied lodge culture with the “Plumber-Pubah,” presenting Mario and Luigi as blue-collar Italians embedded in a mock fraternity. These phases emphasized ritual, initiation, and fraternity — a cold but structured spiritual frame.From the GameCube era, the aesthetic shifted toward Christian imagery. Luigi’s Mansion resembled purgatory, with ghosts awaiting judgment and Luigi’s humility rescuing Mario. Sunshine centered on baptism and purification through water. The Wii’s Galaxy made this turn explicit: domes as chapels, the Garden as Eden, Rosalina as a Marian Queen of Heaven, and Lumas ascending as cherubic souls. The cosmos itself became a cathedral, with salvation framed not as gnosis but as grace. Odyssey later layered in a post-apocalyptic pilgrimage motif, as Mario traversed ruins of civilizations and memory itself.The masculine archetypes define Mario’s mythic backbone. Mario himself is the solar redeemer — comic, fleshy, heroic yet earthy. Luigi is the lunar witness, timid and effeminate by contrast yet essential as reflective counterpart, whose absence in 64 marks the “missing witness.” Wario is the failed initiate, exaggerating Mario’s Incarnation into grotesque vice, while Waluigi is the failed witness — a hollow non-archetype, negating Luigi’s role entirely. Yoshi’s Island even frames Mario as a redeemer-child, with Yoshi in the role of psychopomp carrying him through trials, a Nativity allegory woven into the saga.
Bowser evolves in parallel. In the NES/SNES era, he is a folkloric dragon-tyrant, a brute force adversary. In 64, he becomes a demiurge, false creator of illusory worlds. The GameCube recasts him as satanic accuser and polluter, with Shadow Mario as a false redeemer. In Galaxy, he becomes the Dragon of Revelation, threatening the Marian Queen and embodying cosmic tyranny whose defeat brings renewal. In modern works (Odyssey and the 2023 movie), Bowser is the false bridegroom, appearing in white to wed Peach by force — a parody of sacred union. Here he is both tyrant and clown, jealous suitor and comic foil, a humanized parody of evil rather than a cosmic adversary.The feminine archetypes balance the male. Peach is the unattainable beloved — Sophia/Eve, perpetually longed for but never fulfilled. Pauline contrasts as the memory-woman, tying Mario back to Brooklyn and embodying the ex-girlfriend or lost past. Daisy grounds Luigi, a secondary partner for the secondary brother, affirming his dignity without mythic burden. Rosalina is transcendent, the Marian Queen who orders the cosmos. Toadette is the innocent witness, individuated purity in contrast to the crowd. Birdo serves as the liminal trickster feminine, crossing boundaries and destabilizing categories. Taken together, these figures distribute longing, memory, grounding, transcendence, innocence, and disruption across Mario’s world.
At the meta level, a few details complete the picture. Luigi has to stay recognizably human — nervous, cowardly, a bit effeminate — because he’s the witness, not the redeemer, and his humanity makes Mario’s myth legible. Peach doesn’t really work as a partner because she’s built as an eternal symbol of longing rather than a woman who can reciprocate; Daisy works for Luigi precisely because she’s scaled down to his level, secondary but grounding. Pauline plays a different role, tying Mario back to Brooklyn and memory — a worldly past love, not an eternal ideal. Wario, in contrast, parodies masculinity by turning women into objects of lust and grotesque comedy, showing what happens when incarnation degenerates into appetite. Rosalina ultimately displaces Peach in Odyssey, appearing at the end as the hidden heart on the moon — the transcendent New Eve who resolves the cycle of failed unions. These layers clarify why the myth doesn’t resolve in “Mario gets the girl,” but in a balance between witness, redeemer, memory, grounding, and transcendence.
As archetypes, their ultimate fates are already set by the structure of the myth. Mario is the redeemer who endlessly replays the cycle of descent, trial, and renewal; Luigi is the witness who must remain human, timid, and earthly — his role is to validate the redeemer, which is why his most important act (Luigi’s Mansion) is saving Mario by drawing him out of the paintings, a direct inversion of 64 where Mario alone braved painted illusions. Luigi’s fate is to keep the myth from collapsing into pure initiation — to pull it back into humanity. Wario, by contrast, embodies the occult parody of initiation: his worlds teem with bizarre, clownish demons and magic contraptions, making him less a brute and more a distorted magician figure, a caricature of ritual power gone wrong. Peach will stay the unreachable beloved, forever deferred; Daisy the grounding bride who stabilizes Luigi; Pauline the memory-woman linking back to Brooklyn; Rosalina the transcendent mother who supersedes earthly longing. Waluigi, as the failed witness, will never get his own game because his very essence is non-being — he represents what happens when the lunar witness archetype never coheres, a shadow without story. To give him a central role would break his symbolic function, erasing the absence that makes the rest legible. His exclusion is his archetype: the missing witness, forever stuck outside the paintings.
Bit much at once but unironically a fascinating read
>>719350276Cool, thanks. Keep it bumped so more anons can read it.
>>719350532No problem
