Chelsea Van Der Zee (Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken)

Queen Nerissa (Annie Murphy), known by her human pseudonym name Chelsea Van Der Zee, is the main antagonist of DreamWorks' 44th full-length animated film Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken.
She is the newest & most popular student at Oceanside High School. Posing as a regular human, her true form is actually a mermaid. Feigning a friendship with Ruby, Chelsea manipulates her into giving her a mythical trident, which she plans to use to increase her power, avenge her kind, and kill all the krakens. She is also the former friend & arch-nemesis of Ruby Gillman and the Gillman family as a whole.
== Appearance==
While disguised as a human, Chelsea is a tall and slim teenage girl with luscious red hair, sapphire blue eyes and a slender figure. She wears a cyan crop top, long jeans, circular earrings, a small choker and plain white shoes. She also wears light blue nail polish.
In her mermaid form, her appearance is mostly the same; however, her lower half is now a turquoise mermaid tail with red at the tips of it.
After being empowered by the trident, she becomes a giant Sea Monster with dark red skin accompanied by glowing blue streaks and turquoise patterns near her tail, and her hair is long and silvery, appearing to be made out of water. Her eyes now have glowing pale blue sclera and reddish-pink irises. Her ears and eyebrows become fins and her teeth become shark-like.
==Personality==
As the queen of the ruined Mermaid Kingdom, Nerissa's desires are to kill Ruby's mom, dethrone Ruby's grandmother, and lay waste to the kraken kingdom, as they did to hers, and is willing to manipulate, and hurt anybody, in order to accomplish her goal.
Due to Nerissa being a plot twist villain, determining the exact details of her personality is extremely difficult, and is made even more difficult due to the fact that, while normally, it can be assumed that her personality after the reveal is her actual one, due to her returning back to her Chelsea personality after being defeated, and staying in it, even after it became clear that it will not help her Escape, it may be possible that her Chelsea personality maybe her actual personality.
According to Grandmamah, Agatha makes a unknowingly false statement that "Nerissa's daughter" is manipulating her, In response, Grandmamah is confused and replies agitatedly "Daughter?! Nerissa never HAD a daughter!" So sometimes, her mermaid physiology can sometimes confuse that of krakens. 
She is a two-faced, manipulative, cruel, "will-do-anything-to-destroy-the-world" kind of a mermaid, and since the queen of the mermaids is the central antagonist, she would do anything to twist the backstory, and turn the table, like how she did by revealing Ruby's identity intentionally using social media.
A possibility that is made even more likely due to statements made by the director of the film Kirk DeMicco, which were further supported by statements made by co-director Faryn Pearl, which essentially state that the backstory that Marissa gave to Ruby was genuine and that she was genuinely relating to Ruby's plight, which, in turn, possibly means that all of her other reactions, such is the one where she appears to be confused, and possibly worrying about Ruby, after she ran off to the library, are genuine, a possibility that is further supported by the fact that many of set reactions occurred when nobody was looking or paying attention to her. 
Additionally, the sequences in the movie in which Grandmamah talks about the mermaids and the Battle of the Trident, cannot be considered good sources of information about her, due to being too vague, and as a result of Grandmamah's clear hatred towards the mermaids, to the point where the movie basically confirms, that she either wants to, or is actively genociding the mermaids, clear bias.
With the same or similar problems existing with every statement about her made by every Kraken in the movie.
Due to this, the only sources of information that can be considered reliable, of her post reveal personality, are her own words and actions following her reveal, alongside any statements made about her by the creators of the film.
==Powers and Abilities== 
*Mermaid Abilities. 
**Land-Water Adaptability: While she is immersed in water, Nerissa is in her natural mermaid form, but is able to change into a human form once on land.
**Superhuman Swimming Speed: Nerissa, in her mermaid form, is able to swim in speeds most likely equivalent to those of other sea life equal to her in size, such as dolphins.
**Underwater Breathing: In her mermaid form, Nerissa can breathe underwater.
**Longevity/Possible Semi-immortality: Nerissa is likely as old as Ruby’s mother and possibly even as old as her Grandmamah, maybe older, but resembles someone about Ruby’s age, according to Nerissa, this is because quote: "Mermaids don't age," however, as there are no other sources of information that can confirm this to be true, alongside the fact that most of the depictions of mermaids that appear in the Kraken Kingdom appear to resemble adults instead of teenagers, makes the accuracy of that statement Highly Questionable.
**Hypnocharm: Nerissa is physically very beautiful and charming, a fact that she uses alongside a fake identity, and possible fake personality, to make herself not seem suspicious or dangerous, examples include: When she steals the credit for saving Connor. When Ruby, after being saved by her, does not expose her identity to her mother or grandmother, and goes to her for guidance after having a panic attack, despite being told repeatedly by her grandmother that all mermaids are evil and dangerous, and is later on tricked by her to get the trident under the flimsy excuse of using it as a symbol of peace between the mermaids and Krakens.
*Trident Abilities. 
**Size Changing: Once empowered by the trident, Nerissa grows to a size equivalent to that of the Giant Krakens.
**Superhuman Strength: Nerissa in her Kaiju form gain strength equivalent to that of a Giant kraken. It is also possible that her strength is even greater than that of the Giant Krakens, however, as she is never depicted fighting more than one opponent at a time, this is currently impossible to confirm.
**Energy Absorption: Using the trident, Nerissa is able to absorb the energy that powers the Giant Krakens abilities, by stabbing them with it, this also allows her to block their energy based attacks by having the Trident absorb them.
==Biography==
===Past ===
As Queen of the Mermaids, Nerissa, after finding the ancient weapon known as the Trident of Oceanus, led the mermaids in what would later on be known as the Battle of the Trident, in which she, with the power of the trident, would slay all but three of the giant Krakens, before being defeated by their greatest champion, the daughter of the Kraken Queen, Agatha Gillman. 
As a result, Nerissa, alongside the rest of her kind, were forced to flee their Homeland, in order to avoid being completely genocide by the Kraken Kingdom, a faith that they were only safe from ironically, due to the actions of the very same Kraken responsible for their current state of affairs, Agatha Gillman, who sometime after the events of the Battle of the Trident, would hide the Trident in the Well of Seas, before fleeing her Homeland with her husband and recently born child Ruby Gillman, which, as a result of the Krakens never finding the place in which she hid the trident, prevented them from eliminating the mermaids.
Sometime later, Nerissa, after learning of the actions of Agatha, attempted and succeeded at locating the trident, only to realize that only a giant Kraken can retrieve it from the Well of Seas, in response, Nerissa, refusing to go back into hiding, and accept the total humiliation of her failures, abandoned her people, and fled to the very same place her mortal enemy ended up fleeing to, Oceanside, where she would hide herself under the fake human identity of Chelsea Van Der Zee, and would begin to go to Oceanside High, where she would become the school's most popular student, on her first day, after stealing the credit for saving the teenager known as Connor, from the daughter of Agatha, Ruby Gillman, moments before encountering her in person.
Which she would later on attempt, and would succeed, after saving her life, and helping her to deal with some of her problems, befriending Ruby, in order to regain the trident. 
===Role===
Nerissa takes on the identity of a human girl named Chelsea Van Der Zee, arriving at the school at the exact same time that Ruby saves her crush, Connor, which she steals the credit for, resulting in her getting heavily praised, stating that she was prompted to save him by a saying her mother told her in her youth, which, alongside her beauty, immediately skyrockets her to the top of the school's popularity poll.
Later, Chelsea saves Ruby from being killed by the Oceanside's tour guide Gordon Lighthouse, revealing her true identity as a mermaid in the process. The two later become closer friends when they ditch school together, spending their leisure hours relaxing in the ocean, where the two then end up deciding to try to bring peace between their species, by getting the Trident and using it as a symbol of peace. Chelsea then tells Ruby that her mother was Nerissa, and that she died trying to retrieve the Trident from the Well of Seas. 
On prom night, Ruby is elated to tell her mother, Agatha, about Chelsea. Due to her being a mermaid, Agatha questions Chelsea's true motives and forbids Ruby from seeing her grandmother out of disappointment. Frustrated, Ruby runs off with the trident and gives it to Chelsea. With the trident in her hand, she reveals that she is Nerissa and that her friendship with Ruby was a lie so she can get the trident to gain more power. She then grows to a monstrous size and goes off to attack the town. As a result of her friend's betrayal, Ruby is distraught; however, with some words of encouragement from her uncle, Brill, Ruby gains enough confidence to take on Nerissa.
Nerissa then arrives at Oceanside from underwater to search for Agatha as she knocked down the door of a house the latter sold to a couple. When Agatha asks where Ruby is, Nerissa explains that they have said their "goodbyes", while mocking Agatha for being a waste of time with Grandmamah defending her before the duo tried to stop her, only to be overpowered.
Ruby then arrives and fights Nerissa while protecting her family and friends. Nerissa tries to stop Ruby by knocking out the children with a tidal wave. However, Ruby saves everyone from danger, with her friends and Connor seeing her in her giant form. Before they can say anything, Margo warns Ruby about Nerissa, who knocks the latter underwater.
Nerissa taunts Ruby telling her she'll never win and that she is just a dumb teenager, and continues to belittle her for thinking she that someone like her would ever be friends with a "monster". This has Ruby stand up to Nerissa while distracting her by using her laser-eyes to take the Trident out of her hand, while the latter goes to both her mother and grandmother about her plan, that the trident can be destroyed with enough power.
After Nerissa finds the Trident, Ruby tries to reason with her on redemption, and convincing her to give her the trident but the latter refuses, saying she'll never take it from her. However, Ruby, Agatha, and Grandmamah combine their laser eyes to shoot at the trident together, destroying it and defeating Nerissa, returning her to her normal size as she is then taken away on Captain Lighthouse's boat. Captured, Nerissa pleads Captain Lighthouse to let her go under the excuse that she is pretty and misunderstood instead of a monster to no avail, and while Grandmamah suggest cooking Nerissa for her actions, Ruby convinces her not to. Nerissa is last seen still caged while Lighthouse makes a livestream about how mermaids are the real monsters rather than krakens, leading Nerissa to ask if she's attracting more followers, possibly staying in the cage or being imprisoned else where.
==Trivia== 
*In the trailer, she was holding the trident while pointing at someone, possibly Ruby, with a stern battle face. This scene, however, wasn’t shown in the movie.
* Chelsea Van Der Zee is often times compared to Ariel from The Little Mermaid due to her appearance (red hair, blue eyes, and fair skin), which created several Internet memes, such as the fan-nickname "Evil Ariel". The fact that the film was released one month after The Little Mermaid live-action remake also helped significantly.
* Her full name means "Chelsea of the Sea" in Dutch, which is one of the foreshadowings of her true nature. She also says “kusjes” in one scene, which is Dutch for “kisses”, so she at least has some knowledge of Dutch culture.
*She could be considered a dark side to both Agatha and Grandmamah, symbolizing what they might become if they hadn't learned to reconcile.
*There was some foreshadowing that Chelsea was Nerissa all along: 
**Chelsea, despite acting friendly towards Ruby, doesn't actually show true concern for her the way a real friend would. When Ruby is violently pushed out of the current while trying to get the trident, multiple times, Chelsea asks "What happened?" instead of "Are you okay?", not to mention showing little concern about asking Ruby to be the one to get the trident in the first place. She also notices Ruby decline a call from Connor, but doesn't say anything about it or offer any encouragement, because she doesn't actually care about Ruby or how she's growing more distant from her other friends.
**When first explaining to Ruby where the trident is and how to get to it, she seems to know a surprising amount about it considering that her mother, who supposedly died trying to reach it, would have done so when Chelsea was too young to remember this info. She knows the information because Chelsea actually is Nerissa, so she has personally tried to get the trident back.
**She also expresses nervousness about meeting Agatha when Ruby plans to introduce them, and when she actually tries to, Chelsea is mysteriously gone. Ruby doesn't call her out on this when they next meet up, but we soon learn there's a good reason for it (and why Chelsea never meets Grandmamah, either): both Grandmamah and Agatha would have instantly recognized her as Nerissa, so she avoids them and only directly interacts with Ruby, who doesn't know what Nerissa actually looks like, until she gets what she wants.
*One of the most criticized aspects of Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken is that the majority of the movies' trailers completely give out the spoiler of Chelsea being the villain, preventing the villain role from actually being a twist despite being set up as one.
*It's never explained what happened to the rest of her kind, whether they died or went their separate ways. However, a group of mermaids was seen on a poster for the movie. However, when Nerissa explained her background to Ruby she said that the mermaids hid after the great battle. But, given the fact that she’s has a manipulative nature, she could’ve been lying.
*In a deleted scene, Chelsea & Nerissa were two different characters and that Agatha was the one who killed Nerissa, who was her mother in this case. This was debunked in the final version, however, with Chelsea posing as Nerissa’s daughter, but Grandmamah mentions that Nerissa never had a daughter, confirming that “Chelsea” is not who she says she is.
* Unlike most mermaids, she isn’t shown singing. In folklore, evil mermaids would sing to lure their victims into drowning.
Category:2020s
Category:Computer-Generated Villainess
Category:Coward
Category:Defeated By Magic
Category:Failure Intolerant
Category:Femme Fatale
Category:Giantess
Category:Hegemony
Category:Immortal
Category:Mermaid
Category:Mutated Villainess
Category:Neutral Evil
Category:Opportunistic Corruption
Category:Psychotic
Category:Queen
Category:Redhead
Category:Super-Powered
Category:Terrorist
Category:Traitoress
Category:Vengeful
Category:Western Animation Villainess
Category:Would Hurt an Animal
Category:Fate: Guilty