Super Mario recap: the story so far

No. 01 · 1986 · Film · optional

Super Mario Bros.: The Great Mission to Rescue Princess Peach! recap

Mario is playing a video game late at night when Princess Peach leaps out of the TV, running from enemies. King Koopa follows her into the real world, beats Mario, and drags her back into the screen, leaving behind her green necklace. The next day, a small dog-like creature named Kibidango steals the necklace from Mario and Luigi's grocery store and leads them down a pipe into the Mushroom Kingdom. An old mushroom hermit explains that Koopa, angry that Peach turned down his proposal, has turned the kingdom's people into objects and plans to force her to marry him. A legend says the brothers can only beat him with three power-ups: the Mushroom, the Fire Flower and the Star. With Kibidango as a guide, they set out to find all three.

How Super Mario Bros.: The Great Mission to Rescue Princess Peach! ends

Mario reaches Koopa's castle as the wedding begins, uses the power-ups to beat Koopa and breaks his spell. Kibidango changes back into Prince Haru of the Flower Kingdom, Peach's real fiance, whom Koopa had cursed. Mario wishes the couple well and the brothers head home.

Post-credits scenes

Yes. In a post-credits scene, Koopa and his minions are working at the brothers' grocery store as punishment.

No. 02 · 1989 · Series · optional

The Super Mario Bros. Super Show! recap

Each episode mixes live action and animation. In the live-action segments, Mario and Luigi, played by Lou Albano and Danny Wells, run a plumbing business from their Brooklyn apartment, where comedy situations often involve a celebrity guest star. In the cartoons, the brothers have fallen down a drain into the Mushroom Kingdom, where they help Princess Toadstool and Toad stop King Koopa, who takes on a new disguise and scheme in each story, often parodying a film, book or historical event. On Fridays, the cartoon is replaced with The Legend of Zelda, in which Link and Princess Zelda defend Hyrule from Ganon. The show runs for one season of 65 episodes.

How The Super Mario Bros. Super Show! ends

There is no finale; each cartoon is a standalone adventure, and the show ends after its single season in 1989. The Mushroom Kingdom adventures continue with a new cast in The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3.

No. 03 · 1990 · Series · optional

The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3 recap

Based on the game Super Mario Bros. 3, the series follows Mario, Luigi, Princess Toadstool and Toad as they defend the Mushroom World from King Koopa and his seven children, the Koopalings. The stories are standalone. Many episodes send the heroes, or Koopa's gang, through warp pipes into the real world, to places such as Brooklyn, London, Paris, Venice, Washington and Los Angeles, where Koopa tries to take over Earth as well. In one story, the Koopalings split up to invade all seven continents. The game's power-ups, such as the Super Leaf and the Tanooki suit, appear throughout.

How The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3 ends

There is no finale. The show ends after one season of 26 short episodes in 1990, and the story picks up in Super Mario World, set in Dinosaur Land.

No. 04 · 1991 · Series · optional

Super Mario World recap

Based on the game Super Mario World, Mario, Luigi and Princess Toadstool live in Dinosaur Land, a prehistoric world with cavemen and dinosaurs, after following King Koopa there. Toad is gone, and in his place is Oogtar, a clumsy caveboy. Yoshi, a young dinosaur who loves to eat, becomes Mario's friend and mount. In each standalone episode, Koopa and his children try to take over Dinosaur Land, and the heroes, with the cave people, stop them.

How Super Mario World ends

There is no finale. The show runs for 13 episodes in 1991 and is the last of the Mario cartoon series.

No. 05 · 1993 · Film

Super Mario Bros. recap

Sixty-five million years ago, a meteorite splits the universe in two, and dinosaurs in a parallel world evolve into humanlike people. In modern Brooklyn, the plumbers Mario and Luigi Mario meet Daisy, an archaeology student who carries a piece of the meteorite and was left as a baby on a church doorstep. Koopa, the germ-obsessed tyrant who rules the other dimension's city, Dinohattan, sends his henchmen, Iggy and Spike, to kidnap her. Koopa needs her rock to merge the two worlds and rule both. The brothers follow them through a portal under Brooklyn into Dinohattan, a fungus-covered city. They learn that Daisy is the princess of the other dimension, and that her father, the king, has been turned into fungus that covers the city. Koopa turns enemies into dim-witted Goombas with a de-evolution gun.

How Super Mario Bros. ends

Koopa merges the dimensions, but Mario and Luigi get the rock back and separate them. Mario fires de-evolution guns at Koopa, turning him into a tyrannosaurus and then slime. The king is restored, and Daisy stays to rebuild her world. Weeks later, she turns up in Brooklyn asking the brothers for help.

Post-credits scenes

Yes. In a mid-credits scene, Iggy and Spike pitch a Super Mario Bros. video game to Japanese businessmen.

No. 06 · 2023 · Film

The Super Mario Bros. Movie recap

Mario and Luigi, two Brooklyn brothers who have just started their own plumbing business, are sucked into a warp pipe under the city while trying to fix a water main. Luigi lands in the Dark Lands, where he is captured by Bowser, king of the Koopas, who has stolen a Super Star and wants to marry Princess Peach. Mario lands in the Mushroom Kingdom, where Toad takes him to Peach. She agrees to help find Luigi and trains Mario through power-ups. Mario, Peach and Toad go to the Jungle Kingdom to win the Kongs as allies; Mario has to beat Donkey Kong in a fight first. They race along Rainbow Road and are ambushed by Bowser's forces, and Mario and Donkey Kong fall into the ocean. Bowser's fleet invades the Mushroom Kingdom, and Peach agrees to marry him to save her people.

How The Super Mario Bros. Movie ends

Peach turns the wedding around with an ice flower, and Bowser launches a giant bill to destroy the kingdom. It blasts through a pipe into Brooklyn, where the brothers fight Bowser together using the Super Star. Peach shrinks Bowser with a blue mushroom and he is locked in a jar. The brothers move to the Mushroom Kingdom as heroes.

Post-credits scenes

Yes. In a mid-credits scene, the tiny Bowser sings his love song to Peach from his jar. In a post-credits scene, a Yoshi egg in the Brooklyn sewers starts to hatch, setting up the sequel.

No. 07 · 2026 · Film

The Super Mario Galaxy Movie recap

Bowser Jr. kidnaps Rosalina, the adoptive mother of the star creatures called Lumas, to power a cannon that can destroy the universe, in honour of his father, who has been shrunk and kept at Peach's castle. A Luma asks Peach and Toad to help find Rosalina, while Mario, Luigi and their new friend Yoshi, a dinosaur who hatched in Brooklyn, defend the kingdom and try to reform Bowser. Bowser Jr. lifts the castle into space and the castle is wrecked; Bowser returns to full size and his son rescues him. In the Gateway Galaxy, the thieving monkey Ukiki steals Toad's backpack. The group hires the pilot Fox McCloud, whose Arwing crashes at Fossil Falls after an attack by the Bowsers, who turn the brothers into babies with a Super Scope. Yoshi saves them and restores them. At the Comet Observatory, Peach learns that she and Rosalina are sisters made from stardust.

How The Super Mario Galaxy Movie ends

On Planet Bowser, Mario drops Bowser into lava, and he survives as a skeleton, Dry Bowser. Mario, Luigi and Yoshi defeat both Bowsers, and Mario saves Bowser Jr. from one of his own creations. Peach revives Rosalina and they turn the planet into a new world. The castle is rebuilt, Peach kisses Mario and Fox takes the Bowsers to prison.

Post-credits scenes

Yes. In a mid-credits scene, Fox leaves the prison in his Arwing to head home, hinting at a Star Fox film, while Bowser and Bowser Jr. plot an escape until their warden, Lumalee, interrupts. In a post-credits scene, Ukiki robs someone in the Gateway Galaxy and is knocked flat by Princess Daisy, setting up her role in a future film.