Nintendo knocked it out of the park with 2023's The Super Mario Bros. Movie, which would go on to bring in over $1.36 billion at the box office. Since then, fans have been wondering when the film would get a sequel, and today that question was answered during the latest Nintendo Direct. That's when Nintendo revealed the sequel would be titled The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, and with that announcement, it also confirms a game character we can't wait to see in Mario's big screen world.
Super Mario Galaxy brought fresh ideas to the traditional Super Mario gameplay, and it also introduced new characters to the world. One of the biggest new additions to the franchise was Rosalina, who takes care of the Lumas (who are those adorable star creatures) at the Comet Observatory, and that eventually brings her into conflict with Bowser.
That is likely to be a key part of the film, and if so, we could get some extended screen time for Rosalina. Rosalina helps Mario and Luigi in their rescue operation of Princess Peach, and after enough Power Stars are collected, she takes you to the final battle with Bowser to win back the Grand Stars and Princess Peach, and there are more potential cutscenes depending on which stars you have collected.
Rosalina's backstory is where the character really resonated with fans, and it's easy to understand why. Rosalina meets a young Luma and helps them rebuild their spaceship to reunite them with their mother. After an eventful journey looking for Luma's mother, they end up building the Comet Observatory, though Rosalina greatly misses her own mother and her home over the course of this journey.
The storybook in the Comet Observatory reveals that Rosalina (though never mentioned by name) has a dream of her mother walking away from her while promising that she will always watch over her. Rosalina's mother says she will watch over her "like the sun in the day and the moon in the night", and after the girl asks what happens when it rains, the mother replies that "I will turn into a star in the clouds and wait for your tears to dry."
The girl wakes up with tears in her eyes and starts to come to terms with the fact that she'll never see her mother again. After Luma's search also keeps coming up with no leads, the girl tells Luma what her mother told her, and vows to take care of Luma from then on. That leads to Rosalina taking in more Lumas over time, though the story also reveals that part of this whole process was Rosalina coming to terms with the fact that her mother wasn't out in the sky, but was sleeping under the tree on the hill. The leads Rosalina and the Lumas to make a trip back home to visit her mother every 100 years.
More often than not, Rosalina appears in her trademark aqua dress with her star wand in hand, though she has been featured in a few alternate costumes in various games. In Super Mario Galaxy and games like Smash Bros. She is able to wield her powerful and mysterious cosmic abilities, which include creating force fields around herself and others, the ability to float and hover in the air, deflecting attacks with her wand, and an effective spin move that can take out enemies.