Is There a Wizard of Oz Reference Hidden in Super Mario Galaxy?

Look, I don’t try to springboard off current events too often. As implied in the title of this site, I write about video games that aren’t new anymore. However, the relentless press tour supporting Wicked did make me realize that there is a hard-to-spot connection between all things L. Frank Baum and the Super Mario games.

Here is that story.

Probably one of the greatest legacies of the Super Mario Galaxy games is the introduction of Rosalina, a new female character who very quickly insinuated herself into all the spinoff titles, becoming regularly playable in a handful of years when it took Daisy a decade and Pauline nearly four decades. Early in the first Super Mario Galaxy, you’re introduced to Rosalina as a somewhat mysterious custodian of the cosmos. She fosters the star-like Luma, a race of creatures who eventually grow into celestial bodies and sometimes entire galaxies. Through optional cut scenes, you learn that Rosalina was once a normal human who came to oversee the perpetuation of the universe entirely by accident, attaining some unusual powers in the process. 

And while she’s dressed similarly enough to Peach and Daisy to assume that she is also a princess, she’s technically not one, as far as we’re told. So what is she, then?

Early in the planning stages of Super Mario Galaxy, Rosalina sported a different look, which I think was inspired by Glinda the Good Witch from The Wizard of Oz. It’s not necessarily the version played by Billie Burke in the 1939 live-action adaptation, however. That version of Glinda is very pink and very puffy, with a crown that looks more like a bishop’s hat than your standard tiara. The one thing that Rosalina does have in common with the Billie Burke version of Glinda is the star-tipped wand that she, in her finalized look, holds in Super Mario Galaxy, even if the prototype art doesn’t depict it.

No, I would instead guess that proto-Rosalina’s tiara, if it’s inspired by Glinda, actually came from the version of the character appearing in the 1986 anime The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (Ozu no Mahōtsukai, オズの魔法使い), where she also rocks a teal color scheme that’s closer to Rosalina’s trademark color. While the live-action Glinda would have been recognizable in Japan, this take on the character would have been even more so.

Compared to the Billie Burke Glinda, proto-Rosalina has a star-shaped brooch in the same spot, but that’s also where Peach and Daisy wear theirs. In fact, most of the elements of proto-Rosalina’s dress seem to use Peach’s as the base model — with the most significant difference being the Elizabethan collar, and I couldn’t find any version of Glinda with that costume element. The final version of Rosalina seen in Super Mario Galaxy and subsequent games wears a dress that’s more different from Peach’s than, say, Daisy’s, with flared sleeves and a peaked hemline, but aside from the star wand, there’s not much to recall any version of Glinda… to point that you may wonder where I’m going with this comparison. But I swear, I think this character’s origin as an homage persists in two subtle ways.

For one, there’s a visual signifier that’s present in Super Mario Galaxy’s homebase area — the Comet Observatory, which doubles as Rosalina’s home. A quirk of this space is that you can’t hurl Mario off the edge of it and into the endless void of deep space. If you attempt to do this, Mario will become encased in a magical bubble that appears around him and transports him back to safety.

(Via this YouTube video.)

While bubbles have appeared in the Super Mario series going back to Super Mario World and even exist in Super Mario Galaxy as something you can enter and ride around, this one functions differently. It just suddenly appears, as if by magic, and you don’t have control of Mario when he’s inside it. Instead, the bubble just whisks him back up to the observatory. Presumably, it’s some sort of safety mechanism — and since Rosalina built the spadcecraft herself, we’re told, I guess you could assume it’s one that she implemented herself. 

It’s probably not a coincidence that Glinda the Good Witch is maybe the character in pop culture most associated with bubbles. She famously uses them as a means of transportation, and although it’s the 1939 movie that gives her this association — there’s no mention of bubbles in the original text, Glinda-related or otherwise — they’ve been a part of her iconography in other adaptations ever since. It’s maybe no surprise that one of the first major callbacks to the 1939 film you see in Wicked is Ariana Grande riding around in a bubble.

But that’s not all. Weirdly, Rosalina sits out most of Super Mario Galaxy 2, only making an appearance in the ending. Seemingly in her place, the game introduces the Cosmic Spirit, a mysterious entity that looks like Rosalina’s basic form if it was filled in with… the void of outer space, I guess. It’s like the star-filled blue of the night sky has taken the form of Rosalina. You meet her (it?) only if you die too many times in a given stage. She’s basically the Super Guide of Super Mario Galaxy 2, and accepting her help gets you through a stage the game suspects you’re not good enough to beat on your own.

The character’s Japanese name, however, is intriguing: Otasuke Uitchi (おたすけウィッチ) — or in English, “Helper Witch.” A witch who helps you, you say? Then could you say she might be… a good witch?

I’m especially interested in the fact that the character’s name does not use the Japanese word for “witch” (魔女, majo) and instead uses an approximation of the English word (ウィッチ, uitchi). The Japanese name for the anime Little Witch Academia does the same, and so I will defer to Fatimah on the nuances between the two terms, though I would guess that the etymology of majo being 魔 (ma, “devil, evil spirit” or just “sorcery, witchcraft” outright) and 女 (onna, “woman”) might play a role in the English word landing slightly differently, regardless of connotation English-speakers put on it. And while English has plenty of examples of magic-using women who are nice — Samantha from Bewitched and Sabrina maybe foremost among them — Glinda might be the go-to example, just because “the Good Witch” is often included as if it’s part of her name, as if there were other pop culture Glindas we needed to differentiate her from.

For what it’s worth, there’s much about Rosalina that neither Super Mario Galaxy game explains, and it’s left unstated just how much power she has. That is a little witchy, and the first game has one of the rescued Toads who makes it to the observatory wondering aloud just who Rosalina is and whether she might be a witch. I suppose she might be, but if The Wizard of Oz teaches us anything, not all witches are necessarily bad. If we’re going to listen to Wicked in particular, not even the ones we’re told are good necessarily are.

Miscellaneous Notes

I skipped over it because it’s worth a post on its own and it’s very deep Super Mario lore, but there’s a pretty solid argument for Rosalina’s powers being greater than those of your run-of-the-mill witches and getting towards god-tier. Recall the ending to Super Mario Galaxy, if you don’t know what I’m talking about.

Basically, the galaxy collapses into a black hole and then a towering titanness Rosalina reboots the whole of existence. That makes a provocative statement about the way true power works, if not in the series as a whole than the Super Mario Galaxy games in particular. And in my book, it’s all the more curious because Rosalina looks so much like Peach. Like, what does it mean that the most powerful entity in any of the Mario games looks so much like the series’ most famous female character?

But then again there’s a whole other theory you can find here and there online about how Rosalina is Peach’s daughter from the future, reaching back Chibiusa-style to help Mario make sure she has the opportunity to exist. But like I said, it’s *deep* Mario lore that verges on speculative fiction. Maybe I’ll dig into that here one day.

It’s one big DWAI, but some people think this castle in the background is the Peach’s castle and that the mom she’s remembering might actually be Peach. 

EDIT: Popping the below paragraph based on a comment below.

Apparently the Prima guide to Super Mario Galaxy states that Rosalina was originally designed to be a relative of Peach’s (but not explicitly her daughter) and that’s why the two look so similar. I’m not sure where at Nintendo this info comes from, but I assume it’s the same part that gave the guide the concept art.

Nintendo has more recently kept localizations closer to the original Japanese, I assume for branding and marketing purposes. This was less so the case when Super Mario Galaxy debuted in 2007, because Rosalina’s Japanese name is ロゼッタ, Rozetta, seemingly in reference to a flower-shaped orbit pattern that results when a celestial body’s furthest point from the star it’s orbiting shifts each cycle, spirograph-style. (Fun fact: I was the first person online to point this out, back in the days of my previous blog.) I actually think this is rather lovely, and it even maintains the pattern of the Super Mario princess-types being named after beautiful things the way Peach and Daisy are. Alas, they opted for not only a new name in the English localization but many of the other ones as well. 

If we’re comparing Rosalina to various interpretations of Glinda, I suppose I have to mention the version Lena Horne plays in The Wiz, simply because this version ditches Billie Burke’s trademark pink for blue and also gives her star motif. 

But I’m guessing it’s a coincidence more than it is anything particularly meaningful.

As noted in the post about Super Mario Bros. 3’s apparent Tower of Babel reference, the Super Mario games draw on world mythology and folklore. Given the popularity of The Wizard of Oz, I really tried to think up other ways this franchise might have appeared in the games. Aside from Dorothy’s big song being namechecked in Super Mario 64, the one thing I could think of was the Warp Whistle in SMB3, just because it involves a swirling wind that takes you to somewhere else — in the game, the Warp Zone, and in The Wizard of Oz, it takes Dorothy to a fantasy land. But I’m guessing it’s not a reference, necessarily, just because Oz doesn’t have the musical instrument being the thing that summons the wind, and that seems pretty important to the whole process. Besides, SMB3 only features it as a nod to the original Legend of Zelda, though what inspired that particular tornado-summoning woodwind instrument is up for debate. Whatever the case, powerful cyclones will pick up people and take them away IRL, just presumably not to anywhere fun.

The Cosmic Spirit is the Rosalina counterpart to others characters that appear in Super Mario Galaxy, though there’s something weird with the name they’re given in the English localization. The character known as Cosmic Mario is known in Japan as シャドウマリオ or Shadō Mario — which should make you think of Shadow Mario, the evil Mario clone that appears in Super Mario Sunshine. You might assume that they’re supposed to be the same character, but they’re not. The Super Mario Sunshine clone character, which is really just a guise donned by Bowser Jr., is called Shadow Mario in English, but in Japanese he’s ニセマリオ or Nise Mario — “fake Mario” in English. That Japanese name is also shared by yet another fraudulent Mario: the lick-’em clones created by Belome in Super Mario RPG. Language is fun and confusing!

I was tempted to point out that further proof of Rosalina being a Glinda homage could be found in Mario Kart Tour, where her Halloween costume is a witch, but I don’t think it means anything, especially since Peach also got a Halloween witch costume. If anything, pink-as-all-hell Peach dressed up like a witch lands a lot closer to Glinda, as opposed to Rosalina, who reads much more Wicked Witch of the West.

Major props to whoever thought Witch Peach should be holding one of the wands from Super Mario Bros. 3.

And finally, there are a few more explicitly witchy characters in the Mario games. There’s Kammy Koopa, who was Bowser’s right-hand woman in the Paper Mario games before she got demoted. There’s Ashley in the WarioWare series. And then predating Ashley in the Super NES version of Wario’s Woods there’s a diminutive witch named Sarissa. 

Based on his expression, I’m guessing Toad does not support feminism?

Sarissa one of two female bosses in the game, and while I couldn’t find exactly how her name is rendered in the Japanese version, it’s notable to me that her English name is very close to Sarisa (サリサ), which we come to learn is the birth name of Faris in Final Fantasy V. Famously, the first official English localization of FFV’s text rendered this name as Salsa, which is hilarious and inappropriate to the point that I kind of wish the person localizing Wario’s Woods made the same mistake. Oh well.