Mothra (モスラ Mosura) is a Titan who appears in the 2019 Legendary Pictures film Godzilla: King of the Monsters. She is the first incarnation of the character to appear in an American-made film.
A lineage of benevolent lepidopteran Titans, Mothra defended the natural world in the ancient past and was revered as a goddess by ancient human civilizations. Mothra possessed a symbiotic relationship with Godzilla, and aided him in battle against the extraterrestrial King Ghidorah long ago. In 2009, the scientific organization known as Monarch discovered Mothra's egg within an ancient temple in China's Yunnan Rainforest. She hatched in 2019, and subsequently escaped Monarch's Outpost 61 after a group of armed eco-terrorists raided it. Mothra cocooned herself under a nearby waterfall and emerged in her imago stage to help Monarch locate Godzilla so together they could stop Ghidorah from destroying the world. Mothra led Monarch to Godzilla's underwater lair in the Hollow Earth, where Dr. Ishiro Serizawa sacrificed his life to revitalize Godzilla using a nuclear warhead. Mothra joined Godzilla in Boston to confront Ghidorah, but the three-headed Titan summoned the winged Rodan to intercept Mothra. Despite being badly injured in the battle, Mothra incapacitated Rodan by stabbing him with her stinger. She then crawled onto the wounded Godzilla before Ghidorah could finish him off and defiantly flew at her enemy, who disintegrated her with his gravity beams. Mothra's energy flowed into Godzilla, triggering the final stage of their symbiosis in which Godzilla gained the ability to emit intense heat and generate pulses of nuclear energy which took the form of Mothra. In this empowered state, Godzilla easily destroyed Ghidorah once and for all, and took his rightful place as the King of the Monsters.
In the time after her sacrifice, Mothra posthumously gifted Godzilla newly heightened senses that allowed him to become aware of any disturbances or imbalances and react accordingly, which he then used to find a new home after his old lair was destroyed.
