Bowser gets an awful lot of stick as the antagonist of the Super Mario franchise and it’s easy to see why. He’s a villain who steals women - well, one woman - time and time again and is content to wage war on the Mushroom Kingdom for seemingly no other reason than to flex his scaly muscles.
But beneath all of this is a father who wants to do right by his kids. Even though the Koopa Kids can’t be proven to be his own spawn he’s clearly taken a shine to them, set them up with their own castles, their own battalions and basically has put them into business for themselves.
However, if that’s not enough for you then look no further than Bowser Jr. who wants to emulate his dad in every way, and who Bowser has tried to protect by telling him that Peach is his mother. It’s not a great lesson to teach his kid, that kidnapping to create the postcard family is the way forward but still, he just wants his son to feel loved.
Plus I think we can all agree, any dad who takes his kid go karting this many times has to be alright at some level surely?
WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well.
In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.
