I love you, children. And I'm gonna make you love me...no matter HOW MUCH IT HURTS!
- ―Mother Mae-Eye[src]
This is the page concerning the character Mother Mae-Eye. For the Teen Titans episode, go to Mother Mae-Eye.
Mother Mae-Eye is a villainous, manipulative witch and an enemy of the Teen Titans. She is obsessed with being loved so she can trick her "children" into willingly being baked into a giant pie, and the only way her "children" can love her is if they eat her enchanting pie that causes the eaters to think she is a kind, sweet woman (a.k.a. their mother).
Appearance
Mother Mae-Eye in her illusionary disguise
In her human form, Mae-Eye appears as a bald, plump, rosy-cheeked and stereotypical kindly old woman with blue eyes dressed in a red, white and pink Mrs. Claus-esque outfit (and if one looks closely, she also appears to wear white and pink polka-dotted underwear). In her true form, however, she is actually a three-eyed, ugly, wart-nosed, green-skinned witch with grey hair in pigtails in gritty orange, purple, and black attire with white and black polka-dotted underwear who is capable of growing and shrinking in size. She also wields a wooden spoon that serves as a magic wand in both of her forms.
Personality
- Mother will always be here to take care of you...WHETHER YA LIKE IT OR NOT!
- ―Mother Mae-Eye[src]
Mae-Eye doting on Raven
Mae-Eye's outward personality is very sugary and excessively maternal. She is sometimes very strict and overbearing (usually because she feels that her "children" are being disobedient), but mostly comes across as very sweet and motherly despite being one of the Titans' enemies. She tends to treat her victims as immature children; cooking, cleaning, tidying, and doing things for them rather than letting them do things themselves (like tying your shoes, brushing your hair, or cleaning boogers out of one's nose). Her habit of treating her victims like children is at such extremes that she sends them to bed at only 5:00 pm and replaces Robin's weapons with things like rattles, pacifiers, teddy bears and milk bottles. When communicating with her victims, she speaks to them in motherese, i.e. in a manner reminiscent of communicating with a newborn, infant, toddler, or four-year-old, frequently calling them "sweeties," "little ones," "children," and similar terms of endearment (regardless of how old her victims really are) as well as pet nicknames for each of her victims, like "Twinkle Star", "Beastie Boo", "Rae-Rae" , "Robby-Wobby", and "Borgy Bear"; they, likewise, frequently address her as "Mother." She seems to have a habit of pinching her victims' cheeks, as she does this to Raven twice. Mother Mae-Eye also has a habit of dressing her victims in childish outfits, such as a frilly, sunny little girl's dress on a dark and moody person (Raven), and putting a very tight and constricting bunny suit on a person who changes into much fiercer animals (Beast Boy), that reflect the opposite of their normal personalities.
However, Mae-Eye's intentions are anything but benign, and despite appearances, her exaggeratedly sweet, maternal attitude is actually a facade. She cares nothing about her "children"; she really wants to feed on their fabricated feelings of affection for her. Therefore, she becomes angered when her victims either come out of the spell on their own or refuse to eat her pies, which deprives her of her nourishment, like how a vampire will grow weak if he/she doesn't have fresh blood to feed on.
Character history
- Friends!, Awaken!, Alarm! The Mother Mae-Eye is not truly our mother but an evil witch who has tricked us all, and invaded our home, and forbidden missions, and stolen our boogers, and keeps us all under her spell with frequent and plentiful helpings of enchanted pie!
- ―Starfire[src]
Starfire after the realization of Mae-Eye's true nature
Mae-Eye came to the Titans hidden inside a pie that Cyborg, in his gluttony, bought from a dubious gypsy (possibly Mae-Eye herself, as the gypsy very much resembled her) and brought to Titans Tower, where she was subsequently released. She put the Titans under a very powerful mind control spell by feeding them enchanted pie, which caused them all to mentally regress to increasingly childlike behavior and come under hallucinations that she was (and has always been) their mother. The witch also used her powers at the beginning of the episode to redecorate Titans Tower, transforming it into a gigantic T-shaped gingerbread house and the rest of Titans Island into a veritable candy land, complete with fluff covered fields, giant lollipops and candy canes for trees, cute little animals, a grinning sun, and a giant rainbow stretching across the sky. This also represents how controlling and manipulative she appears to be.
Mother May-Eye being banished back into the pie
During a subsequent battle with the H.I.V.E. Five, Starfire was accidentally hit on the head, which broke Mae-Eye's spell and allowed her to see the witch for what she really was. After several unsuccessful attempts to fight Mother Mae-Eye and rousing her friends, Starfire saw no other way than to treat the other Titans with the same 'shock' treatment, freeing them from the magic control as well. Finding themselves outmatched by Mae-Eye's powerful magic, Robin decided to outsmart her by using her own magic to banish her back into the pie, in which they succeeded. In order to pay back the H.I.V.E. for the latest defeat, the Titans sent the pie to them, and all of the H.I.V.E. promptly fell under Mae-Eye's control themselves. Mother Mae-Eye later appeared as a recruit of the Brotherhood of Evil and participated in the final battle against the assembled Titans. Near the end of the fight, Madame Rouge inadvertently slammed Hot Spot and Wildebeest into her, either making her seemingly pop out of existence, or causing her to decide to teleport away.
Later in Teen Titan's Go!, Mother Mae-Eye appeared disguised in a television game show to seduce Beast Boy, Cyborg, and Starfire into playing games and rewarded eating pies. However, Bumblebee who was watching the show notified Robin and teamed up with the Titans to take her down. What's interesting is that the announcer uses the same terms of endearment that she uses when speaking to the audience.
Powers and Abilities
The Titans Tower after having been altered by Mother Mae-Eye's power
Mother Mae-Eye has very powerful magical abilities that enable her to manipulate reality as she sees fit. Among her primarily used magical abilities are mind control (which uses her pies as a focus), the adoption of the illusionary appearance of a kind-looking obese woman, and enchanting pastry with any desired magical effect, such as animating gingerbread men as her minions. Mother also has superhuman strength, as she easily defeated the H.I.V.E. Five with one blow each, using only her purse.
Mother Mae-Eye is essentially an psychic vampire, who sustains herself by absorbing the feelings of affection from her victims, first gradually, then in one stroke as she bakes them up in pie under the guise of tucking them into bed and putting them to sleep. Her mind control powers are keyed solely toward that purpose.
Trivia
- She is based on the Wicked Witch from the story of "Hansel and Gretel."
- She is named after the children's game "Mother, May I?".
- Mother is loosely based on Mother Grimm, a character featured in a Legends of the Dark Knight storyline. She is also based around the Looney Tunes character Witch Hazel, but only in her true witch form.
- She is known as Petite Mamounette in the Parisian French version of the episode. The Titans refer to her in the dub as "Maman".
- If you look closely at the flashback when Cyborg buys the pie, among her selections of "mystical items" you can see the Puppet King, Control Freak's remote, Beast Boy's dream moped Tidwell-3000, the Wicked Scary monster prop-up from Fear Itself, and the bottled city of Kandor, a possession of Superman's.
- Mother Mae-Eye keeps styling Robin's hair in the form that his Silver Age/Earth-One counterpart had worn before shaking it out.
- In the episode Titans Together, Mother Mae-Eye was seen in the final battle, however she just vanished after one of Jinx's hex blasts.
- In the episode Mother Mae-Eye, she said that her little one must be surrounded by "sugar and spice and everything nice", which is a reference to the Powerpuff Girls.
Mother May-Eye
