Medusa

Medusa's redesigned appearance for Kid Icarus Uprising.
Medusa
Species	Goddess
Hair color	Green/one Red (Snakes)
Eye color	Blue
Voiced by	Cree Summer (2012)
Debut	Kid Icarus

Medusa is the fallen Goddess of Darkness who was featured as the final boss of the original Kid Icarus, and returned as a prominent enemy in Kid Icarus Uprising.

Background

Medusa was once one of the two goddesses who ruled over Angel Land, alongside the Goddess of Light, Palutena. Medusa ruled over darkness while Palutena controlled light. However, trouble between the two arose between their different treatments of humans. While Palutena showed the humans respect and kindness, Medusa hated all humans and proceeded to curse their crops and turn them into stone. Palutena was angered by this, and she transformed Medusa into a hideous monster before banishing her to the Underworld.

Kid Icarus

Medusa swore revenge, specifically that she would conquer Palutena's Palace in the Sky. Indeed, within the Underworld she formed pacts with the local monsters and evil spirits, who formed her evil army. Palutena and Medusa proceeded to wage war, which Medusa ultimately won in a final surprise attack. She also stole the Three Sacred Treasures, turned most of Palutena's centurion soldiers into stone statues and imprisoned Palutena herself deep within her own palace. Angel Land quickly became a land of darkness under Medusa's rule and was soon completely inhabited by monsters. But one of Palutena's bodyguards, Pit, managed to escape from a prison in the Underworld and fought his way up to the Palace in the Sky for a final confrontation with Medusa, wielding the Three Sacred Treasures.

The final battle was actually against a representation of Medusa that the real Medusa piloted - an giant, ugly, one-eyed face on a wall. It fired beams and shot out snakes, but by repeatedly shooting the eye with the Arrows of Light, the eye was destroyed to reveal the real Medusa hiding there, at which point she collapsed. The wall was then completely destroyed, with Medusa's actual fate left uncertain, although Uprising clarified that she perished upon her defeat.

Uprising

Twenty-five years later, Hades secretly "resurrected" Medusa. The more accurate explanation which he gives is that he made a new Medusa by combining a number of the souls of the dead with traces of the original Medusa's memories. Medusa was left to believe that she was somehow resurrected, and although she did not know how, she focused on continuing to seek revenge on Palutena. Medusa quickly assembled her Underworld army anew, with all of her old generals, and she began to launch a campaign against the world of the living.

The main obstacle standing in her way was once again Pit, but this time he and Palutena were working together as a team. She occasionally made long-distance interruptions of their conversations to taunt her, even as her generals started falling again. She even lost Pandora and with her the Mirror of Truth that could have been used to infinitely reproduce their forces. However, her Underworld army remained bolstered through uncertain memes (it is likely due to the explanation Hades gives later on for the expansion of his own forces, which is that he transformed the souls of the dead into monsters). The Mirror had produced Dark Pit, who Medusa was certain would be inclined to serve darkness, but he had a rebellious streak due to being created while the Mirror was cracked, so he instead joined in the campaign against Medusa.

Pit eventually reached her stronghold within the Underworld in Chapter 9. She tried to distract him by forcing him to go through illusions of the areas he already defeated, using the memories of Pit and her defeated generals, and she pitted him against souls that she transformed to resemble those generals (unaware that she was at the time a product of a similar process). Pit fought through her trials and engaged her with the Three Sacred Treasures once more. She had been assuming a beautiful-looking human form complete with a matching face, but once Pit weakened her enough, her "true" face, the one-eyed monstrous face, was revealed. Pit continued to fend her off until she was finally destroyed, completely.

It was at this point when Hades made his move. Medusa's campaign had only been intended as a distraction while Hades prepared his own plans. However, Medusa returned again during the final battle in Chapter 25. She had apparently been resurrected again and was sick of being "revived" just to act as Hades's puppet. Pit was able to use a beacon to guide her approach, unaware of who was actually coming to his aid, and she arrived in time to prevent Hades's deadliest attack from being used on Pit. Medusa did not last long, however, and she was quickly destroyed again by Hades.

Other Appearances

Video Games

• In the Super Smash Bros. series, Medusa has been represented as a trophy in Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and as two stages of a Primary Spirit in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. The first form of Medusa's Spirit was an Advanced-rank Spirit that used her art from the original Kid Icarus. After being leveled up to Level 99, the Spirit could be enhanced into a Legend-rank Spirit of Medusa's appearance from Uprising, which came with the bonus effect of making the player fighter giant perpetually within a match. When fought against in a Spirit match, Medusa would possess a giant version of Palutena.

Other Media

• In the 90s cartoon Captain N: The Game Master, Medusa was featured in one episode, where she guarded the Three Sacred Treasures on Mount Icarus and tried to trick Simon Belmont into being turned to stone by her gaze. She was ultimately herself tricked into looking into Kid Icarus's Mirror Shield, causing her to turn herself into stone.
• One of the anime shorts created to promote Uprising was Medusa's Revenge. This one recalled Medusa's backstory from her point of view.

Trivia

• She is based on the well-known figure from Greek and Roman mythology, who was a Gorgon capable of turning people into stone just by looking at them.