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| Darkness | |
| Also Known As: | Shadow Mario Dark Mario The Voice "Shadow Scum" "The Koopa" |
| Gender: | Genderless (masculine) |
| Series: | Stupid Mario Brothers |
| Home World: | Real World |
| Allies: | General Ken Morgan Pirate Crunch Pirates Link Merlin The Mushroom Force |
| Enemies: | Mario Ganondorf Bowser Nox Decious Tommy Vercetti Zubashi Blaire Vherestorm Pauline FedEx Kamek Scott Masterson Ninjas |
| Debut: | This time, It's Personal! |
| Conclusion: | The Plumber Knight Returns Episode 20 |
| Status: | Sealed away inside of the Truth Stone |
| Portrayer: | Richard Michael Alvarez |
- "I'm back!"
- —The Darkness in "Act II Part 5"
The Darkness, also known as Shadow Mario, Dark Mario, the Voice, and the Koopa, 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.).
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.
The Darkness was the secondary antagonist of Season Three, the main antagonist of The Movie, one of the main antagonists in Season Four,a supporting protagonist in Season Five, and the main antagonist of the first season of The Plumber Knight Returns, and a secondary/tertiary antagonist of season 2.
The Plumber Knight Returns
The Darkness, as seen in The Plumber Knight Returns
After leaving Mario's head, the Darkness would end up returning. It turns out that it has never truly been alive. Everyone, "including the Darkness", thought it had become mortal because Mario's soul was growing strong within it. So when the Darkness "died", it returned to its incorporeal form while Mario's soul returned to Mario. Now the Darkness is back to its evil roots with none of Mario's soul to make it soft. About 30 years after the events of Stupid Mario Brothers, The Darkness would end up taking the disguise of "The Koopa" to try and get Mario out of retirement after he fell into a deep depression after Bowser killed Peach and then his brother Luigi was murdered. Darkness would fake that he was the one who killed Luigi which made Mario put on the suit once again. Throughout The Plumber Knight Returns Season 1, Mario keeps trying to hunt him down, battling Goombas and a giant Goomba named Jeckle. Darkness then ends up kidnapping Denise, who is a friend of Mario's, to lure Mario to his location to fight him. Once Mario rescues Denise, he then leaves to find "The Koopa". Once he meets him in the forest, Darkness tells him that he killed a bunch of innocent people just to get Mario out of retirement so they could have a final duel. Mario is disgusted by this. Darkness then brings up the topic of Beam Swords, claiming that they were Mario's favorite weapon. He then pulls out the Black Widow Blade and remarks on how Mario doesnt have his anymore until he reveals he still has a Beam Sword. They then have a duel. They are both evenly matched until Darkness disarms Mario and attempts to kill him. Mario blocks his swing and fires up a fireball while Darkness charges up a ball of dark energy. They both fire at each other sending them both flying backwards. Mario gets up and beats him to the ground demanding for his identity. Darkness then gets up and laughs continuously before taking off his mask and revealing his true face with grey hair and a grey beard, much to Mario's horror.
The Darkness reveals that it did not kill Luigi and was on playing Mario along to get him out of retirement. It doesn't reveal its true motives or its reasoning for the creation of the Goombas and its persona of the Koopa. Later, the Darkness vanishes off to let Mario take care of the new problems that have emerged.
Later, The Darkness then transforms back to his Koopa disguise to talk to Dr. John Horrus. He tells him to get rid of Comissioner Steve McGuinness.
After Mario fights the Blue Hood and realizes he is actually his brother Luigi, he travels back to where he encountered the Darkness earlier and Darkness shows up as well. The Darkness reveals to Mario that the Blue Hood is Luigi and that Luigi's true killer was Bowser Jr. in revenge for Mario killing Bowser. He also tells Mario that after he buried Luigi, Bowser Jr. and a group of magikoopas stole Luigi's body and brainwashed him to give him one goal: to kill Mario. He says that there is probably still a little bit of the old Luigi left since he killed many of the criminals in Rapid City. He then tells Mario to not bother going to see Bowser Jr. because he's dead, he was the first person killed by the Blue Hood once he was freed from his chains. He reveals that he plans to have the Blue Hood kill Mario because he knows Mario won't be able to to kill Blue Hood because he is his brother. The Darkness then leaves him once again
The Blue Hood confronts Mario. He beats up Denise, knocking her out cold, fights Mario, and quickly overpowers him, but as Mario finally breaks the hold on Luigi's mind, the Darkness appears and quickly kills him off, stabbing him in the back with the original Black Widow Blade. Later, the son of Luigi confronts the Darkness in the exact same field he was killed in by Wario many years before. The Darkness goes on to explain that he was the mastermind behind everything that had happened in the Plumber Knight, and once even tricked Mario and his friends into letting him fight Ganondorf and his legion with them. Thinking that no one will ever truly stop him, he boasts about how many have tried to end him, but he always returns. He goes into detail about how he will create his new world out of choas, and Luigi (the son of the original Luigi) exposes the Darkness' true feelings towards Mario and vows to stop him permanently. After an evenly matched battle, the Darkness hits Luigi with an energy blast, knocking him down and thinking he'd won. However, much to his dismay, Luigi pulls out the Truth Stone, rises, and throws it at the Darkness while saying the curse "El Nox de la Shateau". As the Darkness is being trapped in the stone, he lamented at the fact that he just wanted to be alive before finally being sealed away. Mario at some point after buries the Truth Stone deep underground in the woods, so that no one will ever find it. However, he forgets about the Black Widow Blade, which is found and taken by Rosalina and Omega.
Character Overview
Originally, the Darkness was pure evil as it was created by evil magic from Nox Decious. The Darkness grew to have eventually hated Decious as it was forced to live inside him for centuries.
When the Darkness took on human form, it began to become overpowered by Mario's spirit, whom it has used to take the form of and become stronger. Eventually, the Darkness found that it wasn't truly evil anymore. It eventually died after not only killing its former boss, but saving Wario's life in the process.
Sometime within the following 30 years, the Darkness was reanimated, but this time it did not have Mario's spirit to reduce the shadow magic, so as a result it became even more insane than ever before, disguising itself as the Koopa and took Jeckel in as it's right hand man and creating a gang called the goombas. It later abandons Jeckel and it's followers and works alone, preferring to stick to the shadows and let others do it's dirty work.
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.
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 fireballs 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 Decious' what Decious had learned, 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 killing blow Wario dealt him 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, freezes the Legion of Villains and finally match Nox Decious in battle and ultimately killed 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 able to create Dark Energy Balls.
Attire
In its original form, the Darkness looked like a dark version of Mario. It wore black overalls over a black shirt with chains under a trench coat and black gloves. It wore a hat similar to Mario's and had dark rings around its eyes. Over this, it wore a black overcoat and wielded the Black Widow Blade until its first duel with Wario.
Eventually, the Darkness took off its overcoat before its battle with Wario, which it never donned again. Following the battle, it discarded its hat, saying it had "no need of that disgusting thing anymore" as it did not want to associate itself with Mario, the latter of which it transferred a large percentage of its being. Before its "final" battle with Wario, the Darkness seemed to have required a necklace and its hair had orange highlights.
In Season Four, the Darkness' attire is drastically different: Although it still wears the shirt, overalls, and the chains, it now wears a leather overcoat as opposed to its older one and has smaller circles around its eyes. Its hair is turned red, which it claims it dyed, but is truly a side effect of Mario's energy as both the Darkness and "him" grew stronger.
In Season Five, the Darkness has dyed its hair closely back to its black color as it was told that "red was not in this year". It is seen without its necklace until the last few episodes. Also, the Darkness' hair style constantly changes: In the film, it was sort of flat with a curve in the front. In the last few episodes, its hair is more like a mohawk.
In The Plumber Knight Returns, the Darkness has bleached hair and a bleached beard, even retaining the dark small circles around its eyes. Its appearance is the same as Mario probably because it still has a bit of Mario's spirit left in it. His attire consists of his leather trenchcoat, a black shirt, a chain necklace and a pair of jeans
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.