Considering we aren’t going to see The Super Mario Bros. Movie 2 until well after the 2025 movie schedule has concluded, it’s perfectly normal behavior for fans to wish there was a Legend of Zelda-like musical instrument we could play to control the flow of time. (Anyone who just thought, “Why not use Mario’s Time Machine?” can GTFO right now.) Thankfully, star Keegan-Michael Key has shared some new details that will likely get fellow longtime fans as pumped as I am about the upcoming video game adaptation.
Resident fun guy Toad is voiced by the Key & Peele vet, and is as core to the Super Mario franchise as the plumber brothers and Princess Peach, so it only makes sense that the actor would be privy to the majority of the film’s sequences and locations, if not all of them. And it sounds like at least one very familiar setting will be explored on the big screen, along with a slew of video game references. As Key put it when talking to Men's Journal:
One thing I can say about the second movie is that it's a little broader in scope, and where it takes place is very intriguing lore and the Mario world. They're going to find some really fantastic Easter eggs and it's been very exciting so far.
Anytime anyone says "lore," it just presents a reason and motivation to toss every other life responsibility aside in order to fully focus on the entire history of creator Shigeru Miyamoto's inspirations and accomplishments regarding the Mario Bros. franchise and brand. But I guess life doesn't work like that, so we'll have to spend a little less time speculating about what kinds of easter eggs there are and where it takes place.
Still, such speculating seems to be a warranted concept, as Key continued to tease how the second film will incorporate elements from the nearly 40-year-old video game sereis. As he put it:
I feel like what they've done creatively is they've really widened out the universe that these characters live in and we're going to meet some new folks. We're going to meet some new folks that are old favorites and some folks that I think are really deep cuts, but because of the way the story's laying itself out right now, those characters are going to be very intriguing.
Loving everything he just said there, and I don't think it's outside the realm of logical thinking to lightly assume that he's hinting at the second movie going far outside the borders of the Mushroom Kingdom and into outer space for the star systems of Super Mario Galaxy, a theory I posited back in March when Miyamoto also used world-broadening as a teasy concept.
Sure, "widened out the universe" can mean several things, but we're taking it at full mustachioed-face value here, because that's really one of the core video game ideas that didn't get featured in a big way for the first Super Mario Bros. Movie. And there were already so many easter eggs and references jammed in there, so pairing the Chris Pratt-voiced hero with a talking star might have been too much too soon. But after making more than a billion dollars at the box office, not even the sky is the limit here.
It's hard to even think about who might be considered a deep-cut character in the age of the Internet where no details are ignored in the thousands and thousands of videos that gamers have made about this francise. I'm all about more Paper Mario and Super Mario RPG references, though, if anyone is paying attention to me.
The Super Mario Bros. Movie 2 is set to hit theaters on April 3, 2026, but don't forget to check out the upcoming Nintendo Switch game Mario & Luigi: Brothership when it arrives on November 7.
