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| “ | I'm back! | „ |
| ~ The Darkness |
Darkness, also known as Shadow Mario, Dark Mario, the Voice, and the Koopa, is the secondary antagonist in the Stupid Mario Brothers franchise.
It debuted as a major antagonist in Stupid Mario Brothers, serving as the secondary antagonist of Season Three, the main antagonist of The Movie, specifically the overarching antagonist of Act I and the main antagonist of Act II, the main antagonist in Operation: Blind Storm, the overarching antagonist in Season Four and a major character in Season Five.
He returns as the main antagonist of The Plumber Knight Returns, serving as the main antagonist in Season 1 and one of the two main antagonists (alongside the Blue Hood) in Season 2.
He returns as a major character in Stupid Mario Brothers: Legacy.
It was a substance who was Nox Decious' former henchman and Mario's counterpart. It was created by Decious with the ancient spell El Nox de la Shateu, translating to the Darkness of the Shadow. Decious created the Darkness to bind his soul to the Stone of Righteousness. It is the fourth of the six arch villains in the Stupid Mario Bros series (alongside Bowser, Nox Decious, Wario, Blaire Vherestorm and Ganondorf.). He is the archenemy to Wario and later Mario, The Plumber Knight.
Eventually, the Darkness redeems itself and joins the Mushroom Force, betraying Decious in the process. But after what seemed to be his death once and for all, the Darkness left Mario's spirit and overtime manifested itself into a physical being once more, and over the course of 30 years, plotted the events of the Plumber Knight, manipulating events and everyone in Ferrell City to kill an aging retired Mario. Eventually, he seemingly meets his final end at the hands of Luigi in the exact same field that he was killed in by Wario twice before, who seals him away inside of the Truth Stone, and Mario buries it deep in the forest nearby.
Personality[]
The Darkness' personality went through multiple changes throughout the series. Not much was explored throughout Season Three, but he was shown to be a calm and calculating individual, only showing anger when Nilrem revealed himself to be Merlin and when Waluigi refused to wrok with him.
In the film, he was shown to be more mentally unstable and sadistic, breaking into fits of insane laughter and describing all the horrible things he did and could have done as "fun". Also, he was determined to differentiate himself from the real Mario, and often referred to the latter simply as "him" in a derisive manner, except when he addressed Mario, where he called him by the name. Despite his love for killing, he showed mercy on Ness by letting him go after defeating him.
Despite his insanity, the Darkness is highly intelligent, finding out about Merlin's counter curse to kill him and working out a long term plan to rise to power and take over the world. However the Darkness has shown to be somewhat of a coward, waiting for Link to tire out so he can kill him, although this was out of careful planning. However, later on he cloaked himself and stabbed Mario from behind. He also said he'll just leave Ganondorf to Mario instead of fighting him. He has shown to be very egomaniacal, after absorbing our heroes powers, he calls himself the most powerful being in existence, despite the fact he's going to leave Ganon to Mario and not do anything relevant himself.
However, the Darkness can carry a conversation well enough. He has a sense of humor and can be playful at times. This side of him is mostly seen in Season Five as he has dreams of fighting Decious and enjoys reading magazines, ironically enough, the same sort as Decious.
However, by the end of Season Five, he begins to question what his goal is, no longer desiring conquest. According to Rich Alvarez in the May 13th update, the Darkness has become more humane from absorbing the heroes' powers. This shows when he dismisses the General right before the major battle, showing genuine concern for the well-being of the General's family if he were to die.
In The Plumber Knight Returns, the Darkness is once again evil after becoming the crime-lord known as the Koopa. It has also become obsessed with Mario to the point where it pretended to kill Luigi so that it could battle Mario and built its own criminal empire to further motivate him. The Darkness has also become much more organized, sneaky, cunning, despicable, and patient as it was able to manipulate events to where it and Mario would have their final battle. It was shown to be cruel and ruthless, having dealt harsh and painful tortures of both its enemies and its minions. He was also shown to be more laid back as instead of killing Mario himself he will have the Blue Hood do it instead, sadistically claiming it will be more fun that way. However, this turned out to be a lie, hoping to shock and break Mario by killing Luigi in front of him.
Ultimately, Luigi's son (who would now be known as Luigi Jr.) would then come to battle Darkness to avenge his father, and get retribution for all that it's done to Mario. After Darkness reveals his plan of chaos, Luigi Jr. then accuses it's true reason behind his goals and torturing of Mario, being out of spite and jealousy. Darkness reacts to this with anger, trying desperately to deny it, implying that Luigi Jr.'s accusation was correct. Along with Darkness' confession in the end, that it just wanted to be alive. These reactions to Luigi Jr in defeating him confirms his accusation, that Darkness did want desperately to be Mario. It wanted to be Mario so bad, that he deliberately took his form, or as Luigi Jr. put it, "that it was literally on it's face." Luigi Jr.'s accusation strongly suggests that because Darkness wasn't human, and that he couldn't grasp human emotion, Darkness twisted them and decided if he couldn't have a life like Mario's, it'd destroy his.
Abilities / Skills[]
As his physical body was created from half of the energy of Mario and a being a portion of magic created by Nox Decious, the Darkness has their combined power at his disposal. He mostly displays Mario's abilities, such as throwing fireball and is also able to teleport and turn invisible like Decious. Because both Mario and Decious are both very skilled with a beam sword, the Darkness demonstrates great skill himself. Like his master, Darkness was a skilled fighter able to fight on par with Link and win (note link was exausted from all the walking) easily beat ness, bested Luigi, and overpower Wario and would've killed him if Wario had no Truth Stone. After waking up from his first death, he says he was able to perfect what Decious had learned and mastered, allowing him to create superior replicas of the Black Widow Blade.
The Darkness is also capable of surviving mortal wounds to some extent: when he fought Wario in "Act II Part 3," he was able to recover from being impaled through the back with the Nether Saber, though he was in a death-like state for some time. Later, he told Mario that the Counter Curse and killing blow that Wario dealt him with in their second battle would have indeed killed him, had he not stored his essence in his hat.
After the events of Operation: Blind Storm, he also obtained the combined powers of Wario, Luigi, and Ness. With these combined powers, he killed Blaire with ease, freezed the Legion of Villains, and finally matched Nox Decious in battle, ultimately killing him and vice-versa.
In Plumber Knight Returns, he has shown to still possess most of his old abilities, such as teleportation, his Beam Sword skills, and ability to create blasts of dark energy.
Relationships[]
Mario[]
The Darkness as Wario refers to it is Mario's shadow. In the movie, the two were enemies. In Episode 66, Wario welcomes the Darkness as an ally in hopes of defeating Ganondorf. The Darkness does not seem to have a problem with working with Mario. In Episode 75, he even sacrifices his spirit of power to Mario to kill Ganondorf even asking Mario to take Ganon's head, showing that he still has his own agenda even in death.
After it gave Mario's spirit back to him, it eventually regenerated and became evil again due to Mario's soul making him more humane. After 20 years of Mario's retirement, The Darkness took the alias of the Koopa and formed a revolution of goomba's, after the goomba's have stated to terrorize Ferral City, The Darkness has made constant threats to the city and claimed to have killed Luigi to get Mario out of retirement. Once it and Mario finally fought, the Darkness revealed himself to him, and revealed he didn't actually kill Luigi and that everything was to get Mario out of retirement, then left. Eventually after Mario fought the blue hood, The Darkness had confirmed to Mario that the blue hood is Luigi, and that the one who killed him was Bowser Jr. Bowser Jr killed Luigi out of revenge for Mario ripping his father Bowser's head off, and then made him the blue hood to kill Mario. Darkness reveals he would now let blue hood kill him.
Nox Decious[]
The Darkness was originally created by his original boss Nox Decious, but it fed off of his heart for generations.
When the Darkness finally split from Decious, he pretended to recognize Decious as his master. However, after he killed Mario and Decious took over Luigi's body, he officially split from Decious, stating that he never cared about Decious and only wanted to give him a new body just for the purpose of killing Decious himself, which he eventually did in episode 75 after Nox was resurrected by Ganon. He has then grown to hate Decious more and more.
In Episode 73, the Darkness states that his only purpose is to kill Nox Decious.
In Episode 75, the Darkness and Nox Decious do battle, which results in the two killing each other. However, the Darkness doesn't mind his death, as he killed Nox Decious. The only reason he had for doing so was to finally rid himself of his past.
Trivia[]
- Rich Alvarez did not expect the Darkness to be so popular with the fans. "I'm actually really surprised at how much people liked the Darkness. The entire time I was playing the character I was always worried that I was doing it wrong and / or bad... I thought he would come off too stupid."
- He is never referred to as "Shadow Mario" onscreen; the other characters only refer to it as "the Darkness." However, both Alvarez and Chris Muller have referred to him as "Shadow Mario," most notably in "Unpersuasive Persuasion."
- The Darkness is actually not human nor is he alive really since he is only a substance that took on Mario's form. However, in "Act II Part 6," Wario says the counter curse "Obscurem Absentis Humanis," which is Latin for "Darkness be gone and become human." However, the Darkness revealed that he was actually mortal the entire time and was able to survive Wario's killing blows because he stored its being in his hat.
- The Darkness may never be truly killed as he was defeated 2 times by Wario, then he and Decious killed each other and he came back every single time. Also Richie said that he can't help but keep bringing him back, as he loves portraying him so much.
- Kevin Chamberlain, the actor portraying Yoshi, compared Darkness to The Joker from the Batman franchise.