Highlights

  • Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door expands lore beyond the Mushroom Kingdom, revealing secrets and intriguing stories.
  • The X-Nauts serve as unique and difficult antagonists, with mysterious origins and a failed attempt at world domination.
  • Despite their high-tech resources, the X-Nauts are constantly outsmarted and ultimately reduced in numbers after their defeat.

Major Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door spoilers ahead.

Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door proves itself to be a strong sequel to the original Paper Mario in many ways. With one of them being where the first title expanded upon lore dealing with the Mushroom Kingdom, Paper Mario: Thousand-Year Door expands beyond it and what came before Mario and friends a millennium before. There are plenty of secrets to discover and lore to find in TTYD, and now many people get to understand this intriguing story with the game more accessible on Switch.

The main antagonists that players will encounter on this adventure are the X-Nauts. One of their leaders, Crump, is encountered in the prologue when Mario meets Goombella, and Crump also serves as the game's first battle tutorial. The threat these X-Nauts pose is made even clearer with each chapter of the game. As the X-Nauts are one of the more unique and difficult enemies in Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, players might want to know all they can about them.

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Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door Deals With Stopping the X-Nauts From Taking Over the World

There sadly isn't much to go on when it comes to how the X-Nauts began or where they came from. All that's understood is that the X-Nauts saw themselves as a secret society, and eventually, they became aware of the Thousand-Year Door through the rumor that Beldam of The Three Shadows spread about a secret treasure. It's highly likely that the X-Nauts slowly developed over time, discovering the rumors of treasure, and eventually being told the truth through Beldam to form their alliance.

Judging by the way that they've called themselves the X-Nauts, even if it's unclear if it's "ex" or "cross," the "nauts" part may come from "astronaut," which suggests they've always been a secret society on the moon. Despite how the society manages to recruit incredibly smart scientists and loyal henchmen, capable of creating potions and supercomputers, their leader Grodus is very self-serving.

He throws one of his most loyal underlings, Crump, away in Chapter 7 of Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door for the sake of using Mario as a decoy to open up the Thousand-Year Door when it was clear the plumber would gather the Crystal Stars regardless of the X-Nauts' actions. It begs the question of what kind of world he'd have created if he succeeded if even the secret society he ran was so easy to throw away.

The reason why the name "X-Nauts" is confusing is because tattles and in-game dialogue contradict each other. The X-Yux creatures players fight have tattles saying that their names are pronounced "cross-yux." However, gramatically, "cross-nauts" would need to be referred to as "a cross-naut," but X-nauts are always treated as if it is pronounced like "an ex-naut." Other translations don't help this matter, either, as each language picks one version over the other to where It's hard to tell what the actual intent is.

The X-Nauts Were Never As Ahead As They Thought They Were in Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door

The most interesting thing about the X-Nauts is how even they appear to think that they're ahead of the game at all times, when really their alliance with The Three Shadows was strictly for the purpose of resurrecting the Shadow Queen on their terms, and even Grodus is dealt with once she's restored. At every angle, someone else is one step ahead of them, be it Mario as he grows stronger on his journey or even the betrayal from an ally that lurks under their noses.

In the end, Grodus' computer-like dome head stores his brain, so he ends up surviving with a few lingering X-Naut members as seen during the game's epilogue. It seems as if the secret society has taken a hit in terms of its numbers, and Goombella states that they don't seem to be up to evil anymore. The secret society has likely gone back to being just that, albeit without their possible namesake moon hideout, and they're likely continuing what activities they had before the demon behind the Thousand-Year Door set them on a quest to rule the world.