Mothra (MonsterVerse)

:NOTE: This article is about the incarnation of Mothra from the MonsterVerse. The mainstream version can be found here: Mothra.
Mothra, also known as Mosura, and dubbed as Titanus Mosura, is the tritagonist of the franchise. She is a lepidopteran-like Titan who is capable of defending the natural world and was revered as a goddess by ancient human civilizations. She serves as Godzilla's partner and lover.
Unlike other Titans, she is portrayed in CGI.
==Biography==
===Origins===
Mothra is a prehistoric lepidopteran Titan known as Titanus Mosura who had a symbiotic relationship with Godzilla's species and was worshipped by ancient humans as a goddess. Hieroglyphs and cave paintings indicate she fought alongside Godzilla against Ghidorah in ancient times and that she was also involved in Godzilla's feud with the Titanus Kong species. Because of the Chen sisters' knowledge of Mothra and being third generation members of Monarch, they have a secret connection with Mothra. It's heavily implied (particularly in the King of the Monsters novelization) that Mothra has a psychic connection to the Chen twins, and that their family's ancestral link to Mothra worship is the reason why at least three generations of the family (and implicitly more generations going further back) has uncannily consisted of identical twin girls.
===Kong: Skull Island===
In 1973, after the discovery of Kong on Skull Island by James Conrad and Mason Weaver, Mothra appeared as a cameo on a cave painting during a brief slide show.
===Godzilla: King of the Monsters===
Mothra is first seen as a larva hatching from her egg in an ancient temple in the Yunnan rainforest in China after being closely monitored by Monarch for years. She becomes agitated when Monarch operatives fire electrical pulses at her and spits silk at them in defense. Dr. Mancini nearly attempts terminating her before she can destroy the facility, but Dr. Emma Russell manages to calm Mothra down using the ORCA device, which releases sonar pulses only understood by Titans (including an Alpha frequency which is a combination of her symbiotic partner Godzilla's bio-acoustics with a human's). Now more relaxed, Mothra leans close towards Dr. Russell and her daughter, Madison, and allows Madison to reach out to touch her. Moments later, eco-terrorists led by Alan Jonah raid the facility, killing all the Monarch personnel except for Emma and Madison, who they abduct. Mothra escapes the facility as a result, and retreats to a nearby waterfall where she cocoons herself to begin metamorphosing.
When Ghidorah usurps Godzilla as the dominant Alpha Titan and begins using a combination of the other Titans and global Weather Manipulation to begin razing man and nature alike to create an extinction event, Mothra hatches from her cocoon in her imago form in front of Dr. Brooks, Ling Chen and numerous other Monarch operatives, spreading her wings. The novelization confirms she sped up her metamorphosis willfully when she sensed Ghidorah's global takeover.
She takes flight, heading to Castle Bravo and calling out to Godzilla, which alerts Monarch that Godzilla is still alive after nearly being killed by the Oxygen Destroyer. It's also implied in the film and confirmed in the novelization that Mothra knowingly guides Monarch's submarine towards the vortex to the Hollow Earth so they can reach Godzilla and hasten his recovery so that Godzilla can save the Earth from Ghidorah.
Mothra travels to Boston and assists Godzilla in his re-match against Ghidorah. She spits silk at Ghidorah, pinning him to the side of a building and allowing Godzilla to brutally ram him through. Before she can further assist her alpha, Rodan appears and intercepts her, slamming her into a building. The two Titans grapple each other in the sky, and a fierce aerial battle ensues. Rodan, being much larger and, arguably, more powerful than Mothra, has the advantage for most of the fight. Eventually, Rodan pins Mothra against a building and just as he had her at his mercy while preparing to deliver the killing blow, she quickly pierces Rodan with her hidden stinger, incapacitating him.
Severely wounded and weakened from her fight with Rodan, Mothra later flies over to Godzilla, who has just been dropped from thousands of feet by Ghidorah. Using the last of her strength, she flies towards Ghidorah, who blasts her with his gravity beams. As Mothra burns up and disintegrates, her radioactive ashes fall down onto Godzilla, transferring her power to him. Godzilla, now burning red, blasts Ghidorah with thermonuclear pulses, which take the shape of Mothra's wings. Using these thermonuclear pulses, Godzilla is able to avenge Mothra by destroying Ghidorah and secures his position as the Alpha Titan.
Following Ghidorah's death, newspaper articles reveal that an egg believed to be Mothra's (expliitly confirmed by the director to have been laid by her) has been discovered, meaning Mothra will one day be reborn again.
===Godzilla Dominion and Godzilla vs. Kong novelization===
Although Mothra apparently remains dead for the time being, it's revealed that a part of her powers remains permanently transferred to Godzilla due to her sacrifice, granting him an increased awareness of the very elements of the Earth around him.
===Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire===
In 2027, during an expedition within the Hollow Earth to uncover the source of a mysterious signal, Dr. Ilene Andrews, her adoptive daughter Jia, fellow scientist Trapper and conspiracy theorist Bernie Hayes happened upon the ruins of an ancient Iwi temple where they discovered murals of Mothra alongside an irrigation system. By following the irrigation system, the group discovered a hidden Iwi tribe and subsequently learned of a prophecy which purported that Mothra would return to help Godzilla save the world, and that she could only be awakened by an Iwi from Skull Island. As the Skar King's forces closed in on the hidden Iwi village, Jia, being the last of the Iwi from Skull Island, conducted a ritual which resurrected Mothra and allowed her to manifest back into her imago form between the Iwi pyramids. Unfurling her wings, Mothra immediately departed with Jia through the portal to the surface that Kong had earlier jumped through in a bid to secure Godzilla's assistance against the Skar King.
In Egypt, Mothra and Jia arrived in the nick of time to stop Godzilla and Kong from killing each other, with Mothra using her god rays to knock Godzilla off his feet just as he had Kong at his mercy. As Jia stood atop the Great Sphinx of Giza, Mothra appeared to communicate to Godzilla regarding Kong's intent on facing the Skar King, calming Godzilla into losing all malice that he possessed towards Kong as a result of Mothra's intervention. Now working together, the trio returned to the Hollow Earth to put an end to the threat of the Skar King permanently. After the Iwi used their gravity distortion technology to temporarily remove gravity in the region, Mothra rescued the HEAV from one of the Skar King's minions, since the HEAV had lost power as a result of the gravity distortion. Mothra proceeded to fight more of the Skar King's henchmen by bounding them in silk before witnessing Shimo freezing Godzilla, at which point Mothra inflicted an unknown form of attack on her, allowing Godzilla to break free and resume fighting the ancient Titan. Once the gravity returned, Mothra once again saved Dr. Andrews, Trapper, Bernie, and the Iwi Queen from falling to their deaths, catching the HEAV in mid-fall and gently returning it to the the ground. Godzilla and Kong later killed Skar King and freed Shimo of her enslavement, thus fulfilling the prophecy.
In the aftermath of the battle, Mothra returned Jia to Dr. Andrews before restoring the protective wall surrounding the Iwi village with her silk. With the Iwi safe once again, Mothra proceeded to fly deep into an unknown region of the Hollow Earth with ambiguous intent, possibly to look for a peaceful nesting ground.
==Personality==
Upon hatching from her egg as a larva, Mothra display signs of curiosity and inquisitiveness at the Monarch personnel around her. However, she becomes aggressive when they try to contain her and webs up some of them with her silk attacks. When Emma emits the Alpha frequency from the ORCA, Mothra immediately calms down, allowing Madison to approach and nearly touch her. Even when provoked to aggression, Mothra notably goes out of her way to avoid killing humans unnecessarily, such as when she throws a containment team guard caught in her jaws into a nearby spiderweb (which cushions his impact whilst immobilizing him) instead of just crushing or devouring him. She also serves as voice of reason of sort among her fellow Titans, being the one who cleared up things to Godzilla and Kong when the latter's attempt to enlist the former's aid againsg Scar King don't end well.
Mothra remains loyal to Godzilla even after Ghidorah became the alpha Titan and immediately flies to his location after emerging from her cocoon. Mothra implicitly displays both intelligence and a capacity for self-sacrifice when she charges at Ghidorah in defense of the downed Godzilla, which prompts Ghidorah to vaporize her with his gravity beams but causes her radioactive ashes to empower Godzilla and unlock his Burning Godzilla form. In situations where Godzilla must team up with other Titans, Mothra serves as the voice of reason for the group, as evident when she broke up the brawl between him and Kong in order for the two to clear up their misunderstanding during the events of Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire.
==Physical appearance==
===Larval===
Mothra's appearance in her larval stage is mostly similar to that of her previous incarnations, being a giant segmented caterpillar-like creature. The segments of her body are rounded, and her head is very small compared to the rest of her body. The legs of her larval form are larger and more visible than they have been in her past designs. Instead of the large oval-shaped eyes of the imago stage, Mothra's larval stage has much smaller blue eyes. She possesses a vaguely armadillo-like segmented back, and three arthropod-like mandibles and teeth, as opposed to her past incarnations which only possessed two mandibles. Her larval stage possesses several bioluminescent patches, which emit a soft blue light when she is calm but change to a red color when she is hostile and is ready to attack.
===Imago===
Mothra's appearance in her imago stage is mostly similar to that of her previous incarnations, being a gigantic moth-like creature with a segmented insect-like body, equipped with six legs and two wings. Her legs are considerably different from those of her past designs, which are typically small and equally-sized, with clawed bird-like feet. Mothra also has two long hind legs with two joints and two clawed toes. She has four forelimbs, two on each side of her body, with one large pair and one smaller pair. Her forelimbs are longer and more muscular than those of her past designs, and end in large hooked claws, similar to a praying mantis. Mothra's head is comparatively smaller than it usually is, though it retains her traditional large blue eyes, which are oval-shaped rather than circular while she retains a facial resemblance to her larval form in the form of her mandibles. She possesses two large white antennae which typically lay flat against the top of her head. Also, Mothra possesses an abdomen shaped like a wasp's with a large, retractable stinger. Mothra has two gigantic compound wings each composed of two segments; a larger segment near the front of her body and a smaller segment toward the rear. The wings possess intricate patterns with the character's traditional orange, yellow and black coloration, which can emit bioluminescent glows that shift in color. There is a circular pattern on both sides of the front corners of Mothra's wings, as is the case with her previous designs. However, these circles are meant to represent Godzilla's eyes, demonstrating a connection between the monsters. Mothra also is clearly seen possessing white fur, with some orange fur on her forehead.
In , Mothra's appearance in her imago stage is similar to the previous design from , except she appears to now have thicker fur with a much brighter orange coloration and white stripes. When using her pulse attack, blue bioluminescent spots appear throughout her body, including around her mouth, chest, eyebrows, and on the tip of her antennae, as well as what appears to be a hidden third eye on her forehead that is only visible when these spots glow.
==Powers and Abilities==
===Powers===
*Titanus Mosura Physiology: As a Titanus Mosura, Mothra is incredibly powerful, possessing several physical and supernatural attributes.
**Enhanced Strength: Despite her smaller size compared to other Titans, Mothra is shown to be pretty strong as she is able to pick up and throw a guard into a wall in her larval form and knock Rodan off with her claws for a short period of time. In Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, she is shown to be strong enough to knock Godzilla over after he attempted to kill Kong and was even able to carry a Hollow Earth Aerial Vehicle filled with human passengers as well.
**Enhanced Durability: Mothra is shown to be quite durable as she is able to withstand conventional weaponry such as electrical pulses from Monarch operatives in her larval form and was capable of continuing her fight with Rodan in Boston, despite being half-burned by exposure to the latter Titan's high temperatures. When she was subsequently disintegrated by Ghidorah with a point-blank blast of his gravity beams, she endured the attack for a few seconds before exploding into energy. Like all Titans, Mothra can also survive Gravitational Inversion, a planet's worth of gravity reversed in a split second.
**Enhanced Mobility: Mothra is extremely fast and agile as her muscles and skeleton are incredibly flexible, allowing her to fly at high speed. During her fight with Rodan in Boston, she was capable of dodging his attacks while being pinned against a skyscraper and was quick enough to use her stinger to stab him in the chest before he could deliver the killing blow on her.
**Enhanced Stamina: Mothra's musculature is considerably efficient. Her virtually inexhaustible stamina enables her to exert herself at peak capacity for an undefined period of time without tiring at all, allowing Mothra to fight her enemies without getting exhausted. This is proven in her fights against Rodan in Boston since completing her metamorphosis as well as the Skar King and his army of apes in the Hollow Earth. Even when flying, Mothra doesn't even seem to have any signs of fatigue.
**Enhanced Reflexes: Mothra has amazing reflexes that are sufficient to dodge two thrusts of Rodan's beak as the Titan had her at his mercy while pinning Mothra against a building during their fight in Boston. She was even able to catch a Hollow Earth Aerial Vehicle in mid-fall during her fight with the Skar King and his army of apes in the Hollow Earth.
**Enhanced Endurance: Mothra's endurance is shown to be high, capable of enduring attacks from other Titans such as Rodan and able to fight with all her might while ignoring the pain.
**Enhanced Senses: Mothra has a very strong sense of hearing as she is capable of sensing Godzilla in pain after he was injured by a blast of the Oxygen Destroyer.
**Self-Sustenance: As a Titan, Mothra does not need to eat or sleep.
**Accelerated Healing Factor: Despite her body's endurance, Mothra can sustain physical injury. If wounded, her metabolism quickly enables her to rapidly regenerate damaged bodily tissue much faster, depending on how serious her injuries are. After being half-burned by exposure to Rodan's high temperatures and then killed by Ghidorah's gravity beams in 2019 before being resurrected in 2027, she was completely healed.
**Bioluminescence: In her larva and imago forms, Mothra can change color depending on her mood. When she is angry or aggravated, she turns red and whenever she's calm, she turns blue with traces of aqua green.
**God Rays: Mothra's signature weapon is her "god rays", concentrated beams of beta-wave bioluminescence which she can project through the patterns of her wings. She first uses this as a beacon to communicate with Godzilla and lead Monarch to him and can even weaponize it to create brilliant, near-blinding blue light or angelic-looking golden-white light. These god-rays are also powerful enough to completely dispel storm clouds and produce mighty winds.
**Energy Dispersal: Upon her death, Mothra can release a cloud of energy which can empower Godzilla following the latter's thermonuclear overload, allowing him to emit smelting heat and release a series of all-devastating thermonuclear pulses.
**Pulses: In Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, Mothra utilized pulses to break up Godzilla and Kong's fight in Egypt as they are shown to be powerful enough to knock Godzilla down before he could kill the latter. During the battle in the Iwi civilization, she was able to use one of her pulses to phase Shimo and caused her to cease her ice breath on Godzilla.
**Flight: In her imago stage, Mothra is capable of using her massive wings to fly through the air at high speed and high altitudes. Her flight was notably hindered after her wings were burned by the lava dripping from Rodan's wings.
**Telepathy: Mothra is capable of using telepathy as she and Godzilla are able to communicate with each other due to their symbiotic relationship.
**Immortality: Mothra is effectively immortal as she has the ability to asexually lay an egg to be reincarnate. Each she will be reincarnate from an egg to be ressurected, she has her memories intact.
**Meteorokinesis: Mothra is notably able to clear the sky in her immediate vicinity of the storms being spread around the world by Ghidorah. She first does this before she emerges from her cocoon and again when she arrives at Castle Bravo.
**Silk: Mothra can fire short, controlled, and sudden blasts of sticky spider-like silk from inside her mandibles as she can do this in both her larval and imago forms. Her silk is strong enough to immobilize humans and is even shown to temporarily glue Ghidorah's heads to the side of a building for a significant length of time. In Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, Mothra uses her silk to restrain the Skar King's army of apes and later, she repairs the wall surrounding the Iwi's Hollow Earth village following the Skar King's defeat at the hands of Kong and Godzilla with assistance from Shimo and Suko in Rio de Janeiro.
**Symbiosis: Mothra has a symbiotic relationship with Godzilla where they can share their life-force to one another to gain an edge in combat. When taking Ghidorah's gravity beams, she managed to disperse every ounce of her life energy to Godzilla in order to empower him.
**Thermal Vision: Mothra in her larval form is capable of sensing thermal radiation, although it is unknown if she still possesses this sense in her imago form.
===Abilities===
*Skilled Combatant: Mothra can use her raptorial forelimbs and stinger in combat against other Titans such as Rodan as well as the Skar King and his army of apes. Despite resembling a moth, her combat style is very similar to that of insects such as praying mantises and wasps; which use their raptorial legs and stinger in combat.
*Stinger: Similar to wasps, Mothra possesses a large stinger in her abdomen which she could use as a formidable weapon. She is able to use it to incapacitate a target simply by impaling or stabbing them at point-blank range as she is able to impale Rodan with it when the latter has momentarily pinned her down. Presumably, her stinger also injects venom, though its properties are unknown.
*Raptorial Forelimbs: Similar to praying mantises, Mothra's legs possess pointed tips which she could use to slash at opponents and fight other Titans at close range when needed. Also, a single strike from them is strong enough to ward off Rodan.
===Weaknesses===
*Limited Durability: Although Mothra was incredibly powerful, she did have her limits; for example, Rodan's extremely-high body temperature was able to slowly burn away and weaken her during their fight in Boston, to the point that after the end of their fight, Mothra was reduced to weakly slouching and crawling. This also singed her wings, making Mothra unable to fly. She was also completely killed and disintegrated after being hit by a direct blast from all three of Ghidorah's gravity beams when she sacrificed herself to protect Godzilla.
==Relationships==
====Godzilla====
Mothra and Godzilla have a symbotic relationship. Mothra helps Monarch find Godzilla when Godzilla's nearly dead. Mothra remains loyal to Godzilla even after Ghidorah becomes the alpha Titan. Mothra sacrifices herself to save Godzilla from Ghidorah and empower him with her radioactive remains.
The extent of both Titans' loyalty to one another is later shown in Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire at which Godzilla listens to the newly returned Mothra who comes to clear up his misunderstanding with Kong.
====Emma Russell====
When Mothra hatched, even in her aggravated state she notably (but warily, delivering a warning gesture) allowed Emma to approach her carefully, and she became completely docile towards her and Madison once Emma successfully used the ORCA to calm Mothra down. Even when Emma initially used the wrong Titan frequencies and ended up provoking Mothra further before finding the right frequency, Mothra seemed to hold back from straight-up attacking her and Madison.
====Madison Russell====
Madison was fond of Mothra when she hatched out of her egg. Mothra seemed to hold back from attacking Madison when she was aggravated, and after she was calmed down with the ORCA, Mothra was friendly and docile to Madison as she even let Madison touch her. The novelization heavily implies Mothra formed a telepathic bond with Madison upon hatching, and that Mothra psychically intervened to bring Madison back to life when the latter suffered a near-death experience in Boston.
====Rodan====
Rodan viciously fought Mothra in Boston during the final battle. Rodan overpowers and nearly kills Mothra, but she stabs him with her stinger and pushes him on the ground - it's unclear whether it was merely good fortune for Rodan that he survived the blow from Mothra's stinger, or if Mothra deliberately made sure to deal him a crippling but non-fatal blow.
====Ghidorah====
Hieroglyphs and cave paintings indicate Mothra has aided Godzilla in fighting off Ghidorah before in ancient times. In modern times, when Mothra senses Ghidorah usurping command of the Earth's Titans from Godzilla and beginning to inflict an extinction event, Mothra refuses to acknowledge the hostile, life-threatening alien as the new alpha, and she speeds up her metamorphosis to aid Godzilla and humanity in defeating Ghidorah. During the Boston battle, she intervenes on Godzilla's behalf against Ghidorah, webbing him up and giving Godzilla and advantage, and it's implied she was aiming to skewer the alien monster with her raptorial forelimbs before Rodan arrived and forcibly kept her occupied fighting him. Even when debilitatingly wounded, Mothra charged at Ghidorah in defense of Godzilla's life, and it's implied she deliberately tricked Ghidorah into killing her so that her remains would empower Godzilla to end the three-headed monster's menace.
====Kong====
Not much to know of their relationship, but unlike Godzilla, who is still a rival to Kong, he seems to trust Mothra due to her kindness and wisdom as they both despise Ghidorah while they bond with humans, especially with Jia. When they first met for the first time in Egypt, Mothra saves Kong from being killed by Godzilla, who's the only one to answer for Mothra since they have a bond, when she reveals Skar King, his ape army and Shimo are on their way to exit the Hollow Earth to reclaim his territory on Earth unless they must work together again before it's too late. Later, Mothra and Suko help Kong and Godzilla fight off the ape army while she silks them. After the battle, Mothra still remains alive while she flies away to look for a peaceful nesting ground.
====Jia====
When Mothra was first revived by Jia she recognizes her as the last iwi of skull island while she able to communicate her through her mind and allows her to ride on her back to stop Godzilla from killing Kong in order to form an alliance to face the evil Skar King. she even uses her Essense to protect and heal Jia from suffocating inside the portal of hollow earth.
====Skar King====
Mothra sees the Skar King as the worst side of Ghidorah when she witnesses him enslaving the apes to act like his army along with Shimo as his enforcer. After she convinces Godzilla and Kong to help her stop the Skar King's army, all she can do is restrain them with her silk without even killing them since violence is not her option. 
==Trivia==
*This is the first incarnation of Mothra to appear in an American-made film.
*To make Mothra's vocalizations, the filmmakers used a mix of animals by recording sounds of crickets, insects, whales and dolphins to create Mothra's vocal sound effects and as an example, they exponentially slowed down crickets' chittering to make it sound like a song.
*It is revealed that Mothra and Godzilla are in a symbiotic relationship, which is where two species of animals take care of each other and receive a benefit from the relationship. Benefits received in symbiotic relationships are food, protection and shelter these benefits are given to animals that help to take care of another animal of a different species. Thus in Godzilla and Mothra's case, using their energy to empower one another.
*Mothra has a wingspan of 803 feet.
*Unlike the other Titans, namely Kong and Godzilla themselves, Mothra is portrayed completely in CGI.
*Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire is the first time Mothra and Kong acknowledge each other while Kong sees her no different than Godzilla since she is a peacekeeper.
**Originally, Mothra and Kong were going to meet and fight each other in the unmade King Kong vs. Ebirah, which was later reworked into Ebirah, Horror of the Deep.
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