Sailor Cosmos

Everything about her design leans white and gold. Twin heart-shaped buns crown a head of long, pale hair, and even her bangs curl into an exaggerated heart. The dress reads as a sailor uniform pushed toward the ceremonial: a white collar striped three times in yellow, short winged sleeves, and a fan of colored ribbons at the skirt that stand in for her comrades, running black, purple, pink, red, yellow, green, navy, teal, and blue, with two long whites for Cosmos and Moon. Two matching brooches, each a winged eight-pointed star, sit at her collar and her hips.

She adds white heeled shoes tipped with small wings, rings on every finger but the thumbs, a starred tiara and choker, earrings, and winged bead ornaments in her hair. A long cape drapes her back and can trade itself for a great pair of wings, and she carries a winged staff taller than she is, capped with stacked spheres that echo the star on her chest. In the film her eyes read silver, and the pale beads throughout her outfit may well be meant as pearls, one of Usagi's birthstones.

For all her power, Cosmos carries a startling lack of confidence. In the same way Neo-Queen Serenity looks up to the girl she used to be, Cosmos idolizes her own younger self and shrinks from any comparison to her. She is ashamed of having fled from Sailor Chaos and brands that retreat plain cowardice. What steadies her is a stubborn, humble hope: she wants to grow into someone worthy of the name she carries, even while doubting she ever can.

In the far future she inhabits, Sailor Chaos rises out of the Galaxy Cauldron and turns the cosmos into a running disaster. Cosmos fights to hold back the endless dying but cannot bring the enemy down, and hope slips away from her. She keeps returning in her mind to a much older moment, a first clash with Chaos at the Cauldron, convinced that finishing them both right then would have spared everyone the horror that followed. That regret finally moves her to act, and she travels into the past as the child Chibi Chibi, meaning to nudge her earlier self toward the choice she wishes she had made.

The plan turns inside out. Standing beside Eternal Sailor Moon before Chaos and the Cauldron, Chibi Chibi expects to argue for destroying it, but Usagi argues the opposite, insisting the original decision was the right one and refusing to let Cosmos abandon hope. In tears the child agrees, sheds her disguise, and promises they will not lose. She then watches Usagi repeat the very act she once performed: drawing together every Sailor Crystal within the Cauldron and beyond it, reaching out to hold Chaos rather than strike it, and dying in the attempt. From that sacrifice the Cosmos Crystal's Lambda Power blooms, rebuilding the galaxy along with Usagi and her friends and washing Chaos back down into the depths.

Afterward the Sailor Quartet find Cosmos near the Cauldron and hear the whole account. When Ceres names her Sailor Moon's ultimate form, she will not accept the praise. She does not think herself equal to Usagi, nor deserving of the title or the crystal she holds, and instead hands the name True Sailor Cosmos to Sailor Moon, whose courage forged that crystal in the first place. She sends the Quartet home to the thirtieth century to guard their princess, then returns to her own era carrying fresh hope. Whether she ever defeats Sailor Chaos, and what becomes of the universe, is left open.

Her strength is enormous and mostly unspoken, since she rarely names her techniques. At its core is the Lambda Power of the Cosmos Crystal, the same energy Eternal Sailor Moon used to cleanse the Cauldron and revive stolen Star Seeds, described as the power to hold a universe steady. Usagi also gives back to her a forgotten gift, the courage to release everything and accept anyone. Beyond that she can transform and sustain a month-long Chibi Chibi guise, complete with its own staff and a decoy phrase; rewrite and travel through time without a Space-Time Key; rework memories while staying immune to such magic herself; raise barriers akin to Saturn's Silence Wall; and reach across vast distances to sense and use magic. She quietly helps an unconscious Usagi call up the Holy Moon Chalice, and she turns Galaxia's assault on Earth aside by undoing the damage and sending her away.