So since it’s unlikely we’ll ever get any more cuphead content I wanted to do a series going through the history of all of the characters in the series, or at least as many as I feel like covering. For my first episode in this retrospective series, I’ll be looking at my favorite cuphead character, Cala Maria. In this part I’ll be talking about all of her appearances and portrayals throughout all of the cuphead media. Without further ado, let’s begin.

Before the game: The art of cuphead shows us that Cala Maria went through many beta designs before they came to the final product. These designs portray her in many different roles and have plenty of features that never saw the light of day. Some of these include her looking like a warrior, queen, or princess, some have her wielding a sword or anchor as a weapon. Two features that appear in her beta designs that never reached the final product were a pair of fins on the side of her head think something like undyne. The octopus that serves as her wig was added fairly late into the design process as most of her designs show her with actual hair. The most unusual of her beta designs shows her as a buff muscle (or should I say mussel) girl with a crab tattoo in the shape of a skull, which is really badass of you ask me. However there is one design choice that I really wish made it into the final product, some of the concept art shows Cala in her medusa form, but instead of her normal mermaid tail she has tentacles like Ursala which I’m really disappointed that they never made it in. making it out of the drawing phase we also see her shown extensively in trailers, in one of these trailers we see that her original intro animation was recycled into her ghost spitting attack, replaced with the “yoo hoo” she gives in the final game. By looking at the game files we see that Cala has an unused attack, this attack would have been in her first phase and it involves her taking a blue fish out of the water and having it shoot wide spinning projectiles at you, I can kinda see why this wasn’t added to the final product because it would have been a bit much.

In the game: now we move on to her appearance in game. Cala Maria can be fought in the level titled “High Seas Hi-Jinx” located on the far right side of Inkwell isle 3. She is one of only 6 plane bosses littered throughout the game and her fight has the standard 3 phases. Cala’s main gimmick is luck, while a lot of bosses have RNG elements Cala Maria leans into it the most. In ehr first phase Cala Maria has three attacks, a red fish that will spit out a spread of projectiles (some of which are pink), a yellow fish that will shoot one or two projectiles that follow you for a brief period, and her aforementioned ghost spitting attack, where she spits three ghosts out of her mouth and have all of them converge onto your current location. She will use one of her three attacks in tandem with one of her three summons, those being a seahorse that will blow water onto you to force you to the top of the screen, a turtle that will fire large mines vertically for them to explode into frags upon reaching the top of the screen, and a hoard of pufferfish that will rise from the bottom of the screen (some of which are pink). You can kill the seahorse and turtle, but this is only viable in regular or simple mode as they have far more health in expert mode. To Cala in her first phase her death quote will be “you’re a cutie I’m not sure if I should catch and release” catch and release is a phrase used to describe fishermen who release the fish that they catch. In Cala Maria’s second phase, she only has one attack, but it’s one of the most devastating in the entire game, the medusa stare, this is a screen wide beam that will turn you to stone, forcing you to button mash your way out of its casing. Meanwhile a horde of eels will surround cala and spit out spreads of projectiles (some of which are pink). You can kill them but usually that just draws fire away from Cala herself. If you die in this phase Cala will say “you dare to gaze? How ‘bout stone boots so you can sleep with the fishes” sleep with the fishes is slang for, getting killed, the origin of the phrase coming from the fact that the mafia will throw the bodies of people they have killed into the ocean where nobody can find them, usually while tying something heavy to them, such as boots filled with concrete, hence the term, stone boots (although if sleeping with the fishes has anything to do with her then count me in). In Cala’s third and final phase, her head will fall off her body and retreat into a cave, you cannot touch the ceiling or the floor of the cave or else you’ll take damage, there will also be spiked walls you will have to manuver your way around. Cala herself has two attacks the first being an acidic bubble that will hover up and down, the other is the previously mentioned medusa stare. If you die in this phase Cala will say “holy mackerel is that your best effort” holy mackerel is a statement of shock and a mackerel is a type of fish. Cala also appears right in front of the stage in the ending cutscene, far smaller than she appears in her bossfight.

Before moving on to the next segment here are some fun facts about Cala Maria in game She’s one of only three bosses to have a unique death animation in simple mode, the other two being Capitan Brineybeard and Ribby and Croaks. When transitioning from her first to second phase she is grabbed by a pair of eels, in the art of cuphead they describe this moment with the phrase “grab the flub” and I’ll forever refer to Cala’s midsection as “the flub” When fighting Cala Maria with the golden Chalice skin she’ll turn you to gold instead of turning you to stone The cactus lady refers to her fight as “the sea siren’s swan song”

The novels: I should note that I have only read the first two thirds of the first novel and have not touched the second, however I think the bit I have read goes over all of her novel appearances. Cala Maria is first seen in chapter 9 of the first novel Carnival Chaos. Here she blows a kiss to mugman, which hypnotizes him and gets him to follow her into the carnival. After getting separated Cuphead and Chalice have to search the carnival to find him. They eventually do in chapter 13 where we learn that Mugman’s love of planes is stronger than Cala’s hypnosis. In this chapter we learn what happened during the last few chapters. In that time Cala had hypnotized mugman into getting her a bunch of, as the book puts it “tomfoodery” as in, he gets her a shit ton of food. Cala does kind of repay mugman by winning him a tin monkey in a carnival game, but otherwise she just takes his money and leaves. In the novels Cala Maria’s beauty is brought up on multiple occasions, being the most well described character in the novel, for some reason the book doesn’t go into detail on describing most of the characters but goes into quite a bit of detail on Cala’s looks, even describing her as “the most beautiful creature on inkwell isle” (a phrase also mentioned in the art of cuphead, what can I say the Mouldenhours have immaculate taste) as well as “the most well known mermaid on the isle” implying that there’s more mermaids than just her, which intrigues me greatly. After Cala leaves she isn’t seen again as far as I’m aware.

The comics: Cala Maria is the only boss to get two comic shorts centered around them, those bing Troublesome Tunes in the first book and Siren Smack Down in the second. In Troublesome Tunes, King Dice hires Cala Maria to hypnotize people into coming to the casino so he can scam them out of their money. Cala is scammed as well as she was promised “buckets of money” hoevwer king dice only gives her enough money to buy a few buckets. In her rage Cala hypnotizes everyone into tearing the casino down and chasing king dice away, allowing everyone to get their hard earned money. In Siren Smackdown Cuphead and Mugman are tasked to go out into the cold to get ketchup from the shop, however on their way cuphead is hypnotized by Cala’s singing and is drawn to her private island (which she has in the comics) Mugman is immune to her singing because he is wearing earmuffs despite not having hears. Cala Maria uses her singing to get Cuphead (as well as a bunch of other characters) to do her chores for her while shit sits around and gets some shut eye. Mugman is unhappy with the working conditions and recommends the use of earmuffs. Cala, not caring about her slav-- I mean workers, just tells them to put shells on their ears. They do as they are told, but what they don’t realize is that the shells belonged to hermit crabs, who pinch them in retaliation, in the panic everyone destroys what they were working on and trash Cala’s coral castle (because she lives in a castle for some reason) giving Cala her comeuppance.

The Cuphead Show: Cala Maria makes her first appearance in season 2 (or 1B if your favorite character is stickler) episode 3, High Seas Adventure. In this episode Cuphead and Mugman sneak onto the ship of Capitan Brineybeard, who enlists their help in finding his true love, Cala Maria. Brineybeard wants to profess his love for the massive siren by giving her a box of sweets, however before he can finish his spiel Cala turns him to stone for “talking too much”. After petrifying Briney she sends the ship, with the brothers on it, into some rocks landing them on the beach of her skull shaped island. Cuphead wants to escape while they still can but Mugman is surprisingly committed to helping Brineybeard, so they decide to finish what they started, they take Briney’s body into Cala’s cave where we are given the ebay song in the whole show, Number One Sea Beast, this serves as our true introduction into Cala Mara, and besides Chalice, she has the most amount of backstory and lore tied to her. Through her song we learn that Cala Maria had always wanted to be famous or as she puts it “known across the seven seas” and she found her fame by being a sea monster (imfamy is still fame technically speaking) we also learn that she is lonely and does have regrets about her lifestyle choice, but as she claims herself “its the only life I would ever want for me” . honestly I can talk about the nuances of this song, its lyrics, her expressions, and the hidden meanings for ages but I’m not gonna bore you with that. After Cala sings her song Mugman reveals himself, Cala tries to eat him but stopes when he mentions Brineybeard and the sweets he brought her. Charmed by his gesture Cala Maria kisses his statue, which breaks him free of his stone bindings. We get a bit more talking where we learn that Cala and Briney went on a date at one point (although they have to jog her memory a bit to get her to remember it). After they’re done talking Cala attempts to eat them again, although she does give them a rather meaningless 10 second headstart. She of course catches up to them immediately and tries to eat them again, however Mugman distracts her with the box of sweets, which works for some reason (despite the fact that eating the three of them would have been more filling than a box of treats but whatever) Cuphead, Mugman, and Brineybeard make it to the ship but can’t get it off the rocks. Brineybeard blows Cala a kiss, who in turn blows one to him, filling their sails with wind, and allowing them to escape. Cala Maria makes a smaller appearance in season 2 episode 6 I Scream Man. in this episode Cala Maria appears in my fantasies… I mean Mugman’s fantasies. Mugman is placing himself in the shoes of the main character of the book he’s reading, that character being Mugbeard, Cala is taking on the role of the dreaded sea beast (which she is referred to in High Seas Adventure as well) Mugbeard’s love interest. Ry time Mugman tries to re-enact the kissing scene from his book he is interrupted by the ice cream man. Mugman gets progressively more annoyed as time goes on and eventually blows up at the ice cream man and almost kill him (even though there is one guy in this subreddit who will fight tooth and nail saying that wasn’t straight-up attempted murder, you know who you are and we’ve argued about this twice now I’m not hearing it anymore!). After returning from his attempted crime Mugman returns to his fantasy only to be rejected by Cala Maria who cannot kiss because he was “so very cruel to the ice cream man” and she swims away, leaving my man mugman blueballed in his own fantasy, pour one out for the mug. Cala Maria is voiced by Natasia Demetriou a British comedian, actress, and scriptwriter who’s been in the business since 2012. Natasia gives Cala Maria a thick Greek accent, a far cry from her more high-pitched, Betty Boop-inspired voice from the game, the voice change might have been because Cala’s in game voice might have gotten grating to listen to after awhile and Cala Maria has origins in many different Greek myths so the accent makes sense when you think about it

Merchandise: I’m not gonna go super in depth on Cala’s merchandise appearances just some general items. Her first appearance in merchandise was when she was featured alongside the main characters on a T-shirt box. However her first pieces of actual merchandise came in the second wave of funko products, including a funko pop, a pluhie, and a 1/36 rarity mystery mini (which isn’t super rare, but not very common either its in the middle)

And that’s it, that is all of Cala Maria’s appearances throughout all of the cuphead media. What did you think of this retrospective, did you enjoy it? And if so what character should I cover next?