#robot jerry

To be honest, the reading of how Titus is basically a woman disguising herself as a man who fails so badly, is truly what makes him more hilarious as a villain.

Titus was the spoiled, bratty daughter of the Insect Queen. When Titus was a little girl, she was spoiled and very demanding and rude. She would tell her mother she wanted to go home or sadistically agree with her mother to "squish" (kill) Mayor Jerry Generazzo after she makes the plan to have Jerry killed, to which Mabel Tanaka (as a beaver) and King George disagree.

After they disagree, the Insect Queen fights back, only for Mabel to accidentally kill her.

The crown falls as the Insect Queen dies. Titus then is horrified her mother dies. She starts seeking vengeance against Mabel for the death of her mother.

But later, she cries about her mother's death and seconds later steals her mother's crown and takes it as an opportunity to usurp the throne as the new Insect Queen. She always wanted to be queen. Spoiled, bratty, power hungry princess she is.

She says she is king though. Why? Well, later on, she says as king she will first pupate.

And once she pupates, she pupated into a butterfly... only to show off her transformation as...

That's how he became the Insect King. He is recrowned by a snake as the Insect King. His plan: to masquerade as Mayor Jerry at the political rally so that he can make an uncomfortable speech about how humans have squished insects and how he could do the same to humans.

Except even though Titus is supposed to masquerade herself as a male Mayor, she just cannot do it because she does not feel comfortable being male, so she removes the tie, even if he becomes less convincing and more inappropriate at the political rally because of it. Despite being a young teenage girl disguising herself as a middle-aged man, she still fits the archetype of a femme fatale because she still seduces to show how power hungry she is. Even if she only shows off her body during the male disguise, she clearly feels uncomfortable being fully male and he just wants to get his job done in a larger body.

Even though he removed his tie, he continues to mock Jerry taking over Jerry's place at his relection. He steals Jerry's phone using it to increase the sound waves to make their ears hurt so bad they eventually die. Thats how Titus, as fake Jerry, plots his vengeance to destroy humans.

Mabel eventually fights back trying to tell him to redeem himself and change for the better, only for him to double down on his villainy.

Mabel then with her backup plan tries to disable Titus's male disguise. George, the king beaver, stands up to Titus, back in her butterfly form, only for the council to stop George.

And so, Titus regains his conscience as the male fake Mayor,

only to have his mask removed, this is how people knew (and some knew from the start) he was not the real Mayor. His face recognition fails which is how his plan fails.

He drops the radio boxes, leading to the chaotic fire. His robot is destroyed, which makes the fire more intense.

His robot body is now gone. And so he returns to... her butterfly form. And she is eaten by the amphibian king.

After she dies, she is succeeded by an ant, who is also female, making her the third Insect Queen, succeeding Titus's mother and later Titus herself.

The ant was revealed to be female in the film's novelization.

The fact that the Insect Queen (her predecessor) and the ant (her sucessor) are all female, really shows the mastermind behind the Jerry robot disguise was the female caterpillar we see when Mabel and George meet the Insect Queen at the Animal Council, as she had no father or siblings, only a mother.

Pixar marketed Titus as male because he disguised himself as male and he needed a masculine voice to keep up with his male disguise. He is marketed as the "Insect Prince" and later the "Insect King" as we see in promos.

Genuinely lost as to why this caught my attention

Here’s some Titus clips I recorded in his robot and insect king forms. Sorry if they’re low quality, especially the butterfly ones.

Ok what if somebody draws Robo-Jerry wireplay?

On March 20, 2026, Ke Yang, an artist who helped with the production of Pixar’s 2026 film Hoppers, drew human versions of the Hoppers animal council, making it one of the few official humanizations from behind the scenes! Here is the drawings she made:

Titus as a prince, where he is seen with blonde short hair, black streaks, a crown, and a suit with a cape, with yellow shoes.

This could have apparently been his king version. His hair becomes darker, and she gave him some bangs and blonde streaks. She also changed his jacket to make it more like a suit. Also his shoes have slightly different patterns. Or it could be another form of his prince version.

The expressions she drew with Titus as a prince. Look at the emotions he is showing!!!

Now onto personal thoughts, Yang did a great job. I do have to say though, even though Titus was referred to with he/him pronouns in the novelization, the press kit, and referred to as king rather than queen (unlike the mother) by most of the characters (excluding the mother and any insect) in the story, I am quite shocked with the short hair and suit choice when first seeing it.

Knowing Eman Abdul-Razzak, a female Pixar lighting artist, voiced Titus as a caterpillar ("Insect Prince"), I’m sure just by her high pitched voice alone, most perceived her as a female character rather than a man, at least when she was a caterpillar. There have been many female adults who voiced young boys, such as Nick Wilde in the Zootopia franchise, whose younger version was voiced by Kath Soucie, an adult voice actress, so at first glance Titus could be a little boy. While little boys do have more higher-pitched voices because their voices have not dropped and some women can voice them neutrally without giving away feminine energy perfectly, Titus just does not give that vibe. She sounds so girly, not just neutral, with her mannerisms and tone. Plus even if she did sound neutral enough, it does not make sense plot wise for her to be a little boy (or girl), especially since if her mother did not die, she would have remained a caterpillar. It is implied that she waited for her mother to die to pupate, though at some point when she is fully grown she would have pupated herself at some point, thereby proving she is most likely an adult/teenager throughout the film and did not really age from child to teenager/adult throughout the film. Not to forget, she is also more like a teenager than a child because of her vocabulary usage. Given this, if she were male and a teenager or adult, his voice would’ve dropped by now, and he would’ve always been voiced by Dave Franco from start to finish.

Not to forget, even if we were to forget all this and assume Titus was in fact a male child and not a teenager, he would be the only male of the Insect Queen hierarchy, which makes no sense whatsoever given his father and brothers were never mentioned, not even once in the story. It was proven in the novelization the ant is female, with no evidence to back up otherwise as she barely had a role in the story aside from leading an army of ants to help end the forest fire.

Given all this, he is not a little boy, all of this has been debunked by his age and hierarchy. Even though he is referred to with he/him and the ant as she/her, there is no proof otherwise that the ant is male, but there is proof otherwise regarding Titus being male: they are using he/him for Titus because they did not want to give away that she was actually a female butterfly. Her main actress is Eman Abdul-Razzak, but they focused more on Dave Franco, so that they could fully focus on his disguise as the male Mayor Jerry Generazzo, because this is the main disguise he uses to double down on his villainy. The reason Dave Franco voiced him as a butterfly and not Eman Abdul-Razzak is not because he aged suddenly by multiple years but because he needed a male voice to fit with his male mayor disguise. Women usually cannot have a deep enough voice to impersonate a male mayor without tiring themselves during an election speech, even if they trained their voices a lot, which is why his Mayor robot has a different voice from his caterpillar version. If his voice did indeed drop genuinely, it makes no sense to be honest given his timeline and is a failure on the director's part.

Plus, all that aside, let's not forget how when Titus disguised herself as Jerry, he deliberately chose to remove his tie, despite being knowledgeable about humans enough to squish them or make human robot versions of them and it being inappropriate behavior to show off his chest, which would have made his disguise less convincing.

That being said, nevertheless, I really love the artwork! Personally, I wanted to draw Titus and planned to make a doll of her but never got the chance to do either, and when doing so I always envisioned Titus to have long hair and wear dresses. This drawing Yang made really gives an alternative perspective on Titus and showcases an alternative interpretation that rather than being ultra feminine she is actually butch. It is a stark contrast to the diva-like energy she gave throughout the film, even when she spent more time being disguised as the mayor than she did as an insect overall.

I really wish Titus was butch, but honestly I think this artwork was most certainly (and sadly) an early stage (they even say so themselves in the captions) because I'm pretty sure this was all done before they put casting Eman (or any actress) into thought when casting her. Like I'm sure her of Titus must have changed as more development was being made and that at some point "Insect Prince" or "Insect King" was meant to be deceiving rather than genuine and mainly used to make her more deceiving as a villain or as foreshadowing of her main presence which is as a male Mayor, not a female insect unlike her mother or successor. She is referred to as King or Prince because she is a tomboy as shown in her deliberate choice to even disguise herself as Jerry. She also is deceiving in that she is the surprise main villain. She was announced far later than Jerry. Before she was announced, everyone thought Jerry was going to be the main antagonist, they never thought Titus was going to exist or even be a character within the story.

Because here's the thing:

Throughout the film Hoppers, there is evidence as a whole in canon and in promotions that is against Titus being a male character, given the background of his family or his motives. Here is as outlined:

Titus has no father. He is literally the only child of the Insect family with only his mother, the Insect Queen. Sure, boys can have single mothers and no siblings, but this is about a heir not about a normal boy who lives with his mother. He is a legitimate heir, which is why he is forced to attend the Animal Council with his mother, and also why he complains in the first place why he wants to go home. If he weren't a legitimate heir he wouldn't be attending or complaining or whining. After his death at the hands of the Amphibian King, he is succeeded by a female ant which is revealed to be female in the novelization and not only that she sounds like woman in the movie for God's sake. King George, the Mammal King, on the other hand, comes from a male beaver family. I know beavers are usually ruled by women, but for Georges' sake, he mostly mentions about his father and uncle. While he does imply female Mammal Queens can and do exist when he tries to hail Mabel, for Titus it is not the case. After he dies, no male ant can be found. Ants and beavers, in real life, are ruled by female-led colonies, and yet they are seen as feminine far less than butterflies are in human history. Still, somehow George is male and the ant is female. Why is the ant female then? Because the insect monarchy is meant to be ruled by a queen.

And if Titus's hierarchy isn't enough evidence, when his mother dies, he hails himself "Insect King" instead of "Insect Queen", but the Animal Council is hesitant to hail him. Why? Because he's actually a female caterpillar and to them its absurd for a girl to declare herself as such titles. He has the legitimacy of a heir, so he is capable and hailable of being ruler, especially given he is the only heir available after his mother's death. They still hail him as King in the end, knowing rulers have absolute sovereignty.

Not only that, but it is heavily implied he declared himself King so that he can impersonate Mayor Jerry Generazzo later on. Right after he begins his reign, he hints and declares his plans to reverse Hopper technology and rants about how Jerry should be eliminated, showing and revealing his later plans to impersonate the male mayor. He says he is King so he can steal and mock Jerry, impersonate him at his rally, in a genocidal attempt to destroy humans, and as he reveals later, invertebrates and anyone who isn't an insect like him.

Plus when he does impersonate Mayor Jerry later on, as Jerry and Mabel are trapped inside the science lab, he struggles. He says his voice has dropped and that he has pupated into a man, but would a real male butterfly after puberty say it or is he just being theatrical about how his disguise worked? It's probably the latter. Plus, while people say he doesn't know humans wear ties, he was the one who orchestrated this robot. He mocks masculine items such as ties by pointing out how a tie is a "tail for your neck" and that a true King would show off his plumage (hairy chest) according to Titus himself.

As a monarch caterpillar, Titus was voiced by Eman Abdul-Razzak, a female Pixar employee, in the English dub, NOT Dave Franco as a caterpillar. It is a huge misconception that Dave Franco voiced the caterpillar and somehow feminized and made his voice more childish during his caterpillar phase, due to how Franco constantly promotes Titus while Abdul-Razzak doesn't and how Franco is more prominent and well-known compared to the latter. While female actresses do and have voiced young boys such as Bart Simpson, who was voiced by Nancy Cartwright, Titus sounds like a grown woman, despite having one of the more higher pitched voices of women as a whole. While both share high pitched tones because boys and women have similar pitches, boys have a raspier voice, while for Titus, her voice is less raspier, more mature, and more womanlike. It is implied Franco voiced the butterfly out of convenience given the lack of screentime it got, rather than because it genuinely went through male puberty and somehow got a deep voice during its pupation cycle.

It is clear that "Insect Prince" and "Insect King" are deceptive titles, as in the movie, Titus was never once referred to as a prince. It is only later on after he declares himself "Insect King" that he is ever referred to as a king and that is heavily implied to be because the animals were unaware he is actually female masquerading as male. The titles are mainly used as foreshadowing as he spends more time under the Jerry robot than he does as either insect form.

In the Japan dub, where the actors cosplayed as their characters, Titus is voiced by Ikue Otani, who cosplays him more like an elegant woman in a business suit with royal elements, than a female crossdressing as a prince. While she does wear a prince suit, she still maintains her feminine bun and wears white heels and nail polish, implying she is more a female character with tomboyish qualities and ambition than she is a male character cosplayed by a woman. Even the fish queen's actress, Megumi Ogata, cosplays the fish queen far more masculine, despite the fish queen being undeniably female, than Otani did as Titus. This hints, even with the false promotions of her as a Prince, that clearly she is meant to be a female character.

Titus lacks black spots on his wings, unlike most male monarch butterflies, who have black spots on their wings.