#phantoon

            This would of course raise the question of who represents the patriarchy in this sense like I guess the Chozo since they made her??? But at the same time Gray Voice and Old Bird are meant to be good people ultimately so it might be hard to make Mother Brain a tragic byproduct without casting them in a bad light. I dunno we could also pivot to Raven Beak since he was There All Along, the ZDR murals depict the Mawkin and Mother Brain so there might be something there.

            Because Raven Beak does feel, to me, a blatant example of Toxic Masculinity. He’s a tough Man’s Man, he rips off his remaining wing without flinching because that’s the kind of culture the Mawkin take pride in. “Real Chozo don’t cry”-ass. Pain makes you tough. He resents the emasculation the other Chozo have submitted themselves to and even his dynamic with Samus is symbolic because in the end we have a woman’s father wanting to use her body to create more people who are subservient to him.

            Like this does feel an obvious metaphor for control over women’s bodies and using them as a resource to pump out more babies, hence Raven Beak wanting a Samus Clone army. He’s the grandparent who hates his kid but loves the grandchild because the grandparent/child don’t interact consistently enough for them to have to be there for the rougher parts of raising a child, and thus don’t get the chance to show their uglier sides. While the parent is caught between, seeing clearly how their kid is literally just them, yet the grandparent hates the parent while adoring the child. Raven Beak hates Samus but would be proud of his clone army raised under Mawkin values.

            Point is, I can see him as a more final villain who set up Mother Brain and this one-sided rivalry with Samus in a broader cultural context. Say what you will about Other M, it handles Feminist themes with the grace of a wounded hippopotamus. But in the end I think Sakamoto is onto something here. Metroid is a “feminist” series in the sense that a woman can be badass and do badass things and is not defined by her womanhood, in fact she’s often disconnected from it as much as possible.

            And it was revolutionary for its time but as the discussion around feminism evolves and it becomes apparent that this isn’t enough, we also need to make room for engagement with experiences that women go through and that having a woman just be a man in all but name is not always sufficient. There’s still value in these stories for women of course but again I think that’s why Other M exists. Because they wanted to dive into that for Samus, so of course they bring back Mother Brain via her clone Melissa Bergman.

            Really, on a narrative level Mother Brain’s resurrection in Super is intriguing because of the fact that it’s meant to follow up on Samus becoming a mother to the infant Metroid. After she y’know murdered and replaced its actual mother so that’s a whole can of worms and I’m sure it’s one Mother Brain would love to needle her with. When she already got defeated in Zero Mission what is the narrative purpose of bringing her back? To twist the knife of Samus’ own relationship with motherhood when the most prominent one in her life was admittedly not Virginia Aran but Mother Brain.

            So there’s something poetic about Mother Brain having this horrible mother-daughter dynamic with Samus and then seeing Samus build her own mother-daughter dynamic with the Metroid and she fucking ruins it. She kills that thing. She won’t let Samus have it. Like recruiting Ridley, there is a practical reason. Psychologically?

            I like to imagine that maybe Mother felt some sort of shame in trying to betray her own charge like this but at the same time it came less from a sense of moral guilt and more a wounded ego in realizing she was not this perfect patron saint she thought she was. And because she resents and envies Samus, seeing Samus be a better Chozen One already drove her mad but now Samus being a better mother? No she isn’t, she will never get the chance to be as Mother Brain plans to turn her own kid against her.

            In contrast to Raven Beak being some emotionally unimaginative man who just wants his grandkids to be obedient followers, Mother Brain wants to torture her grandchild and turn her against the parent out of spite. And when that fails she kills the Super Metroid to make Samus revel in her own failures as a parent because Mother is a bad mom but she never got HER child killed, even as much as she tried! Samus is a mom for a brief bit and already got hers annihilated in spite of trying to prevent that. Sad! Guess we’ll never know for sure if you’d have been a good mom but I bet you would’ve failed anyway!

            Samus of course puts down Mother Brain for good… Except psyche! Right after this (or not, Beyond’s placement relative to Other M confuses us) is Other M and Melissa Bergman and the theme of cloning is intriguing. It’s a story about rebirth, the old becoming young again. Ridley, the Queen Metroid, and of course Mother Brain (Even Nightmare counts as its older debut is given a chronologically newer debut in this game).

            Again Mother Brain is defined by temporality and the existential dread (Haha) that comes from that. The Mother is now the Daughter again, she is Melissa Bergman. The clones could be a second chance for these people, but in the end they fulfill their cyclical Child to Parent tragedies all over again. I think Other M humanizes Mother Brain by showing the kid she used to be, who nevertheless becomes broken because of the institutions that dehumanize her as a machine and tool all over again. She needs to be useful, that’s what a woman is right?

            And so symbolically it can help Samus and the audience explore Mother Brain’s backstory via metaphor and cycles rather than having to see it directly (the same could potentially apply to Ridley but I have thoughts about how I’d handle the Ridley clone storyline in Other M for a show), how does a sweet girl become like this? Even with an actual mother she fails. Samus defeats her evil mother and then sees firsthand how she used to be an innocent young girl. Will that be her in the end? Will she break the cycle for herself? She is not defined as a force meant to guide the galaxy when Samus confronts Raven Beak, so yes.

            Say what you will about Sakamoto but at least there’s a sincere attempt in engaging with feminist themes for Metroid and Other M indicates a genuine intrigue in Mother Brain as a character that the fandom clearly falters at. Like yes everyone talks about the Ridley moment but in the end he really only exists for that one moment before being written out off-screen. Melissa is the clearly focus antagonist, it’s about her.

            And you know I love the headcanon that Mother Brain’s organic components are cloned from a Chozo known for being motherly. Let’s call her… Mother Hand lol. It makes sense because the elderly Chozo wanted a motherly figure to take care of them. Old becomes young again, the elderly’s mental faculties regress to as they were as babies, they need to wear diapers and require caregivers again, is this Freudian I dunno. So again we have cycles.

            So who was this Chozo that Mother Brain was cloned from? Chozo culture isn’t necessarily gendered the way ours is but in the end there had to be mothers. So this Mother Hand, who was she? Is she actually reflected in Mother Brain, does MB feel some sort of failure in living up to the image of this beloved Mother Teresa of a Chozo midwife??? Mothers and daughters and cycles and legacies and reputations to live up to. Did Mother Hand secretly harbor a resentment and rage and ego that never got the chance to manifest itself up until Mother Brain and Melissa Bergman, who give her the freedom of clones who are disavowed from the original, allowed her to haunt the Chozo from the gave with the anonymity of a mask???

            And that’s not even getting into some promotional materials that suggested Phantoon is the ghost of the original Mother Brain and the one in Super is a clone, which in hindsight explains why Phantoon is shoehorned in as the final boss of a game, Other M, that is otherwise about Mother Brain’s reincarnation as the villain. Huh. I dunno where to even begin with that. I kind of prefer the idea of Phantoon as this inexplicable anomaly within the narrative, like it’s never specified what its deal and relationship with the Space Pirates even is, it’s just there and terrifying.

            But if one were to adapt Other M into a narrative arc for a Metroid show then he needs a reason to displace the Queen Metroid and Melissa Bergman as the final threat and revisiting that idea might actually work. Compared to the goofiness of Mecha Ridley in Zero Mission lol.