Strap yourselves in, because this is gonna be a long one.
First of all, let’s go over what we know about Gandrayda:
She’s an ally of Samus, a fellow bounty hunter hired by the Federation to investigate the Phazon incident.
She possesses shapeshifting abilities that blatantly disregard the law of conservation of mass. She can shapeshift into things MUCH smaller and larger than herself, and in any form, she can control bioelectricity.
She also possesses the power to drain energy in the boss fight against her, and can then reverse it in a sort of overclocking-attack.
Her backstory is a complete mystery. All we know for sure is that she’s mentally immature and she possesses some similarities to another shapeshifting race who live on Jovia XIII, but she can do things that are impossible for them.
She considers Samus her main rival in bounty hunting, and wants to outshine and surpass her. She talks passive-aggressively at Samus in general. Despite this, it seems like Samus had no idea who she was prior to meeting her in Prime 3, so the rivalry is one-sided.
She prefers being sent on combat missions where she can fight directly, but due to her abilities she is consistently relegated to stealth missions, much to her chagrin.
Whereas Rundas just stays stone-cold silent when mind controlled and Ghor retains his primary personality other than constantly taunting and boasting about how powerful Phazon is, Gandrayda loses it. She apparently was called “Mistress Gandrayda” by the space pirates, implying she joined and cooperated with them, and yet she delights in going around their homeworld killing them indiscriminately. She’s also incredibly giddy at the idea of gruesomely murdering Samus and presenting her bloody helmet to Dark Samus.
So, all in all: Gandrayda is a shapeshifting entity who is mentally immature and has an irrational view of Samus as her rival. Her shapeshifting abilities can seemingly defy the laws of physics, and in all forms she has a few consistent abilities, including draining energy from adversaries. And finally, she has a violent streak that she keeps mostly under wraps until she’s corrupted by phazon. This isn’t a lot to go on without some outside-the-box thinking.
Gorea was the final boss of Metroid Prime: Hunters, that Prime spinoff game that mainly focused on the multiplayer PvP mode. What do we know about Gorea?
Gorea arrived on the Alimbics’ homeworld with no warning and no clear goal other than completely annihilating them. It “is power beyond reckoning and evil unrelenting. The universe has not known terror such as this.” It sounds like a genuine eldritch abomination, similar to Phantoon.
“At first we thought Gorea was a comet. It crashed upon our planet and emerged as a vapour, it mimicked our cellular structure and replicated itself in solid form. We have seen Gorea alter its atomic structure between polarizing states. Our scientists believe it may also possess other shape-changing abilities.”
“We deployed our deadliest weapons to defeat the beast. To our horror, every weapon was somehow used against us… It devoured our people’s life energy and grew even more powerful from such sustenance.” Indeed, Gorea’s most frightening abilitity is that it can effortlessly steal the abilities of any warrior who tries to kill it, usually manifesting this power as tendrils of light that literally pierce through its prey and rip out their own powers.
To summarize: Gorea is an eldritch monstrosity with seemingly infinite shapeshifting power, whose original form was beyond physical comprehension before it took on a physical body in the image of the Alimbics. It has no goal other than annihilating seemingly all life it encounters. It also possesses the ability to drain energy, life, abilities, and powers from those who fight it, immediately turning what it steals against them.
Sound familiar? And the kicker is, Gandrayda was introduced in Metroid Prime 3. Metroid Prime Hunters takes place between Metroid Prime 1 and 2.
The truth is this: Gorea, in all of its ridiculous just-will-not-die-ability, somehow survived its final battle with Samus Aran - but in a different, much weaker form. In losing to Samus Aran, it was obliterated so thoroughly that it lost all of its memories other than a few base instincts, i.e. a desire to destroy all life with impunity and a deep loathing of Samus Aran for managing to kill it.
The reason nobody knows what exactly Gandrayda is is because she’s a completely unique life-form, the same way Gorea was, and even she’s not aware of her real origins. She’s only following her base instincts to cause havoc and become stronger than Samus Aran, while also having to obey the laws of the Galactic Federation now that she’s in a much more “normal” form. Even their names are similar - Gorea and Gandrayda.
Does this mean Gandrayda was doomed to return to her evil ways from the start? Not at all. She did have an amicable relationship with the Federation, Ghor, Rundas, and even Samus at times. But as soon as she was corrupted by phazon, her instincts to cause havoc went from harmless pranks to gleeful murder with no regard for the consequences, and her desire to become stronger than Samus went from an unrequited rivalry to a deathwish on her.
Whether Gandrayda’s memories came back and she realized her true nature as Gorea’s next “incarnation” when she was corrupted is unclear. Maybe if she had never been involved in the phazon incident, her desire for mass destruction would never have awakened, and she could have curbed her instincts with maturity. We may never know.
ellievsbear
origamiaround
kianamaiart
blakekathryn
vaporwave
discoholicmusic
stormborns
andulkaphoto
titsay