Mario & Luigi: Brothership has one of Mario’s best villains, and here’s why
I’ve talked a lot about Mario & Luigi: Brothership here, and today, we’re continuing that trend with a write-up on one of its best characters. By now, we all know the game suffers from a dire flaw in the form of its horrendously slow pacing, and for me personally, that’s going to prevent me from going back to the game in the future. That’s on top of the fact that its technical performance is severely lacking on the original Nintendo Switch, which becomes especially prevalent during the endgame.
From the way I talk about Brothership, you probably get the impression that I don’t like it very much. So then, why am I still talking about it over a year later? For all of its flaws, I feel like Brothership’s ideas and themes come together in a notably cohesive way at the end of the game – and it makes it extremely memorable, even though the rest of the story runs at a snail’s pace. Part of the reason Brothership’s ending remains so memorable is because of its new villain. Major spoilers within, so be warned!
Brothership’s true villain
From the very beginning of Mario & Luigi: Brothership, you can tell the main theme of the game is the bond not just between Mario and Luigi, but the bond between people in general. That’s pretty typical fare – nothing special, at least not on the surface. As mentioned earlier, this game’s pace is slower than a crawl – but along the way, you see Mario and Luigi help countless others in need and triumph over many enemies. Again, nothing too crazy – over time, Mario and Luigi chase down Zokket, who is implied to be the game’s main antagonist. And I’m sure glad he isn’t – Zokket’s only real character trait is that he forgets people’s names so that he doesn’t say them and accidentally form bonds. This makes some sort of sense, though, given that Zokket is simply a brainwashed Cozette. Eventually, the brothers arrive at Fortress Zokket and defeat him there, but they’re too late – this little egg he’s been carrying around begins to hatch, and it’s revealed to be an ancient entity who has supposedly destroyed several other worlds. Even after sitting on it for a year, I still think Reclusa is perhaps the greatest Mario villain – he runs completely counter to everything Mario himself embodies.
Right from the beginning, Reclusa proves himself to be incredibly powerful. In a matter of seconds, he completely takes over Concordia by creating the Soli-Tree as his lair. Unfortunately, this section of the game is dragged down by having to backtrack and unlock seven bonds – again, this is part of the reason I don’t really want to replay the game – but the ideas are really good if you can look past the tedious gameplay sections. Reclusa uses mechanical-looking flowers to capture many Concordian residents, which traps them in their own personal dream worlds that they never want to leave. Reclusa himself also states that people trapped in dream worlds can’t survive for very long – because they’ll quite literally starve to death.
Like I mentioned earlier, part of what makes Reclusa such a great villain is that he is quite literally the complete opposite of Mario and Luigi – and I feel like his lack of a decent motive actually makes him stronger as an antagonist. Reclusa wants to be completely alone, and hates all other living beings for absolutely no reason. But he hates them in a childish, immature way – not because he was wronged by anybody in the past, but because that’s simply the way he is. Reclusa genuinely has fun severing people’s bonds, watching them suffer, and even watching them die. He’s an irredeemable freak, and he even implies he’ll travel to the Mushroom Kingdom and destroy its population in the same way he did Concordia. Interestingly enough, Reclusa’s very nature seems to make Mario extremely angry, almost uncharacteristically so – which is a nice change of pace from his usual cheerful, carefree attitude.
Mario and Luigi soon gather all the necessary bonds and invade the Soli-Tree, where Reclusa ambushes them with flowers that place them in a corrupted version of the Mushroom Kingdom where Bowser and his troops are friends instead of foes. The brothers soon realize something is wrong, and find Reclusa hiding in the background. The two make a huge effort to deny this dream world and escape, and eventually, Reclusa decides that Mario and Luigi aren’t fun to mess with at all and takes a different approach. When the brothers get to the top of the Soli-Tree, a huge army of enemies is waiting for them – which is when Bowser steps in with his airship to save them at the last minute. What I appreciate about Reclusa is that he doesn’t really pull any punches – some Nintendo villains get too overconfident, which leads to their downfall. For his battle against Mario and Luigi, Reclusa takes over the Soli-Tree, becoming a gargantuan threat that actually manages to defeat them as well as Bowser and his army rather easily. Fortunately, Mario and Luigi’s bond powers finally fully activate, which allows them to continue fighting.
After an additional three phases, Reclusa finally goes down, and ironically, I feel like his character is best portrayed in his last moments. For a moment, he feigns defeat and even tries to apologize for all the pain he’s caused others, only to immediately clarify that he is incapable of apologies or remorse before destroying the Soli-Tree in a last-ditch effort to take Mario and Luigi down with him. Instead, the brothers use their hammers in an incredibly satisfying section to finish off Reclusa for good – they even wind up destroying his face, or screen, or whichever it technically counts as. By this point in the story, Reclusa has been around for several hours, and has been a constant nuisance, to say the least – getting the chance to literally beat him to death in a dramatic scene feels like a very satisfying payoff.
Even in his final moments, Reclusa cannot understand how he could have lost or that he was wrong to sever everyone’s connections. And it soon becomes clear why he can’t change – when Reclusa “dies”, his screen turns off just like a TV would and even makes a power-down sound. This makes it pretty clear that Reclusa is actually a machine, though there is absolutely no information available on why that is, who created him, or if he was even created by someone at all.
What makes a good Mario villain?
When I think of a good Mario villain, I think of a few things. For one, Mario villains rarely (if ever) have a tragic or sympathetic backstory – they’re simple and unapologetically evil. Their designs are also highly expressive, and in the case of most Mario RPG villains, they feature gray, purple, or both as primary colors. Mario villains usually have very definitive and well-designed abilities, too. Reclusa is all of these things, and more – to me, Mario himself has always had a comforting “welcome home” vibe to him. A vibe that encourages creativity, cheerfulness, and exploration, whereas Reclusa’s is exactly the opposite – embodying destruction, suffering, and the like. I think it’s interesting that Reclusa is also a machine whereas Mario and Luigi are organic beings (of course), which is another opposite trait that they share.
To be perfectly clear, I don’t think Mario & Luigi: Brothership is all bad by any means. But I do think it’s a shame that it has this fantastic villain that most players will never see, because they’ve quit the game before he even shows up. Its signature pacing issues don’t stop after Reclusa becomes active, either – the bond-gathering section and the fake Mushroom Kingdom section both drag on for far too long, which does admittedly cheapen the coolness of both situations. What’s even more of a shame is that I’d be willing to bet that Reclusa will never appear in any form of media ever again even though he’s a perfect foil to Mario and Luigi. But in my opinion, he’s the perfect example of a Mario antagonist done right, and proof that the writers of the Mario & Luigi series are still more than capable of making lovable characters. Even if they are only one-offs!
And although my feelings on Brothership are incredibly mixed, I almost appreciate it for how nuanced conversation around the game is. I don’t think it’s as simple as “Brothership is bad because it has a slow pace”. I think it’s more like “Brothership is deeply flawed, but its ideas are so cool – there’s a ton of potential for a sequel”, if I had to describe my feelings on it in a single sentence. Even though I won’t replay the game anytime soon, I always feel like conversation around it is interesting and can go in many different directions, if that makes sense.
What did you think of Mario & Luigi: Brothership’s true antagonist? Feel free to let us know in the comments down below. In the meantime, you can learn more about the game at Nintendo’s official website. Special thanks to MarioWiki for the pictures here.
For more on Mario & Luigi: Brothership, check out our post here on how the game could be fixed.
