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Nintendo’s Super Mario Galaxy Movie Fuels Peach-Rosalina Lore Debate

Originally posted on Total Apex Gaming | By Mollie Dominy | Last updated Sep 15, 2025 3:15 PM ET

Mamma mia! Nintendo drops the Super Mario Galaxy Movie announcement, and suddenly, the entire fanbase transforms into a collective of string-theory-weaving detectives. Everyone’s scrambling back to the first Super Mario Bros. Movie, pointing at one specific scene that feels less like a cute backstory and more like a massive, galaxy-sized wink to the audience.

This, combined with the fact that the movie is literally named after Super Mario Galaxy, has fans screaming from the rooftops that a huge piece of Mario lore is about to become canon after decades of debate. And honestly? I’m right there with them, popcorn in hand.

What’s Rosalina’s Origin Story Anyway?

For those who haven’t had the pleasure, Super Mario Galaxy introduces us to Rosalina, the enigmatic princess of the cosmos. Nintendo has always been a bit cheeky, saying she just “shares similarities” with Princess Peach. The game itself tells her backstory through a beautifully illustrated storybook where she’s searching the stars for her lost mother. It’s all very tragic and mysterious.

The juicy part? Her parentage is intentionally vague, with her mother shown but conveniently obscured. It’s long been rumored that Nintendo’s original plan was to create a direct link between Rosalina and the Mushroom Kingdom, tying her to Peach’s family tree. But, for whatever reason, they backed off, leaving us to speculate wildly.

Unpacking Peach’s Backstory from the First Movie

Image of Princess Peach, Courtesy of Universal Pictures and Nintendo

This brings us back to the 2023 movie. Remember that scene? Mario, being his usual blunt self, points out that Peach doesn’t exactly look like a Toad.

“I don’t know where I’m from,” she confesses. The movie then throws us into a flashback of a toddler Peach, stumbling out of a warp pipe into the Mushroom Kingdom. And what is she wearing? A skirt decorated with stars and moons! The Toads find her, raise her, and eventually crown her their princess.

Mario suggests she might be from his world, but Peach shuts that down with a line that might as well have been delivered with a giant flashing arrow: “There’s a huge universe out there, with a lot of galaxies,” she says, as the camera zooms out to the star-filled sky.

Subtle, guys. Real subtle.

This is the moment fans are clinging to. Is this a nod to Peach having her own cosmic origins? And if so, does that finally cement the connection to Rosalina that Nintendo has been dodging for years?

The Sibling or Mother Theory

Mario games aren’t exactly known for their deep, intricate plots. Galaxy’s director, Yoshiaki Koizumi, has even admitted he wrote the storybook part in secret after hours, surprising even the legendary Shigeru Miyamoto.

With Nintendo keeping the details under wraps, fans have been left to fill in the blanks. The two main theories are:

Sisters: Peach and Rosalina are long-lost siblings, separated by some cosmic event.
Mother/Daughter: One is the mother of the other. Given the timeline, it’s a bit of a head-scratcher, but hey, this is a universe with talking mushrooms and dinosaur-turtles. Anything is possible.

So, has Nintendo finally decided to stop being so secretive? Last week’s Nintendo Direct gave us even more fuel for the fire. Koizumi and Miyamoto announced a physical version of Galaxy’s storybook and, get this, new storybook pages will be included in the Switch 2 re-releases of the games. Coincidence? I think not!

With the Super Mario Galaxy Movie launching into space next year, it feels like we’re finally on the verge of getting some real answers. Get ready, folks. It’s about to get cosmic.

This article first appeared on Total Apex Gaming and was syndicated with permission.

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