Super Mario Galaxy Adds Intergalactic Mercenary Fox McCloud

Super Mario Galaxy kicks off a new animated adventure on April first, and Nintendo decided to drop a bombshell with less than a week to go. A fresh poster for the film reveals Fox McCloud standing proudly next to his Arwing, ready to roll alongside Mario, Luigi, Peach, and Bowser. For years, the Star Fox crew mostly stuck to their own corner of the Nintendo universe, popping up alongside Mario only in Super Smash Bros. brawls. How exactly did a space-faring fox end up in a Mario movie?

That Blurry Shape Was Actually Fox

Eagle-eyed fans had already squinted at previous trailers, spotting a blurry shape in the background that looked like it could, maybe, possibly be the famous pilot. Most dismissed it as wishful thinking, especially after Shigeru Miyamoto himself mentioned an unwritten rule about keeping Nintendo franchises separate.

Mario stays in Mario land, Splatoon stays in Splatoon territory, and nobody crosses the streams—except for Pikmin, which apparently get a free pass to wander into other games whenever they please. So why does Star Fox suddenly get an exception to the rule? Turns out Miyamoto makes exceptions when he feels like it, and the Star Fox team now flies alongside the Mushroom Kingdom gang in what promises to be a huge surprise for fans who’ve been waiting years for anything new.

Star Fox Finally Leaves Smash Bros Cage

The last proper entry in the series arrived back in 2016 with Star Fox Zero on the Wii U, a collaboration with PlatinumGames that earned mixed reactions and never made the jump to Switch. A year later, Nintendo dusted off Star Fox 2, the completed SNES game that sat on a shelf for decades before finally seeing the light of day on the SNES Classic Edition. Doesn’t it feel like the franchise has been stuck in a weird limbo ever since?

Now, with Fox McCloud appearing on the big screen, speculation runs wild about whether this signals something bigger on the horizon. Nintendo rarely tosses a character like Star Fox into a major film without some ulterior motive brewing behind the scenes. A cameo this prominent feels less like a random gift to fans and more like a deliberate nudge, a hint that maybe, just maybe, a new game lurks somewhere in development. Could a movie appearance finally breathe life back into a series that’s been dormant for nearly a decade?

Franchise Gets Second Life On Big Screen