I beat Donkey Kong Bananza feeling 100% confident about Pauline's true identity, but now I'm deep in a rabbithole of fan theories and I don't know what to believe anymore

Ever since the full reveal of Donkey Kong Bananza, we've had one big question: why is Pauline a child? I played the game ahead of launch for our Donkey Kong Bananza review, and I finished it feeling very confident that I understood the nature of Pauline's identity. But now that the game's actually out and the DK fandom at large has started to finish it, a tidal wave of new fan theories has got me questioning everything.

Obviously, this means we're about to talk major spoilers for Donkey Kong Bananza, so if you haven't yet finished the game – and you care about preserving the surprises the plot has in store – this is your cue to go smash some more bananas.

Prior to the launch of Bananza, we – that is, Nintendo fans who care about the Mario and Donkey Kong lore – understood Pauline to be the same kidnapped woman, often known as Lady, from the original arcade Donkey Kong game. That Donkey Kong would morph into Cranky Kong, grandfather of the DK we've been familiar with since the Donkey Kong Country series.

How, then, could a 13-year-old Pauline team up with the current Donkey Kong, occasionally meeting up with a very well-aged Cranky Kong, in Bananza? Well, throughout the game, you'll hear young Pauline make reference to her grandma. During scenes where she naps with DK, Pauline will talk about how her grandmother's love of music inspired her.

"Ah," I thought to myself, "obviously this young Pauline must be the granddaughter of the original Lady, just as DK is the grandson of Cranky Kong!" Young Pauline picked up her love of music from OG Pauline, and her post-game quest to put on a big performance in New Donk City was born out of love for her grandma, whose musical talents were displayed with Jump Up, Super Star in Super Mario Odyssey. Aw, so sweet.

After reading far too many posts on the Donkey Kong subreddit, I am forced to conclude that I was a damn fool, holding beliefs so absurd, I may as well have been claiming that the Mushroom Kingdom is flat. Everyone seems willing to acknowledge that OG Donkey Kong's distressed damsel, Lady, is a separate character from our modern Pauline, but there's another possibility, and one that's quickly taken hold in the fandom.

Young Pauline isn't a separate character from modern, adult Pauline – she's Lady from the original DK, who's separate from any modern incarnation. Donkey Kong Bananza is not a sequel to Super Mario Odyssey, but rather a prequel, telling the story of how that Pauline rose to prominence as the musical mayor of New Donk City.

That would make the entire Donkey Kong series, from Donkey Kong Country through DK64 and even Bananza, a prequel to the entire Super Mario series. It would also mean that Jumpman, the arcade protagonist we've believed to be Mario this entire time, isn't actually Mario at all. Modern Donkey Kong, Pauline, and Mario would, in fact, be the descendants of Cranky Kong, Lady, and Jumpman.

While parts of this fandom theory started making me question myself, the idea that Jumpman and Mario are separate characters is where it breaks down for me, and I find myself returning to the original theory I felt was obvious while playing Bananza for myself.

Jumpman and Lady are simply the old versions of Mario and Pauline. Young Pauline, as we meet her in Donkey Kong Bananza, is the granddaughter of the Pauline we've always known. It's clean. It's simple. It doesn't require retconning every single Donkey Kong and Mario game of the past 40 years to make the timeline work.

And yet… suddenly I'm thinking of Donkey Kong Jr., the arcade sequel where Jumpman clearly, obviously dies at the end. Could it be true then, that our modern Mario is a different character? What of the continued confusion over whether Cranky is actually DK's father or grandfather? Is it possible that there's some other factor we're not considering?

Or is it possible that there is no answer, and Nintendo's simply spent decades building up all this lore without a plan for what to do with it in the end?

I'm laughing at myself a bit now, but with the amount of love Bananza has shown for the DK games that have come before, I can't help but wonder how the devs themselves would answer.

You know what I do understand? Bananas. Here's where to find Bananas in Donkey Kong Bananza.