Madison Russell
"You said that you were gonna be careful. That you'd release them one at a time, that you would restore balance!"
Portrayed By: Millie Bobby Brown, Alexandra Rabe (young)
Appears In: Godzilla: Aftershock | Godzilla: King of the Monsters | Godzilla vs. Kong
Emma and Mark's daughter, and Andrew's younger sister who survives after him.
open/close all folders
A-H
- Action Girl: Downplayed. A deleted scene shows Madison sparring one of Jonah's men in boxing practice, unleashing all of her frustrations, true to Emma's claim that she "trained [Madison] to survive". In the novelization, when Madison tries to steal the ORCA, she's confronted by a particularly imposing mercenary, who she catches off-guard and manages to incapacitate with a stun gun.
- Admiring the Abomination: She's pro-Titan like her mother, though she still grows increasingly horrified by her mother's and Jonah's plot to inflict millions of deaths. Notably, she was audibly amazed when she saw Godzilla during the San Francisco Incident when she was seven or eight years old. Averted with King Ghidorah, whom she screams defiantly in rage at after everything the three-headed sadist monster has done when he's about to kill her.
- All of the Other Reindeer: The Godzilla vs. Kong novelization indicates she's a social outcast at school and the victim of bullying. Pretty shitty of those other kids, considering how she directly helped save the world during the crisis with Ghidorah.
- Armor-Piercing Question: When things escalate out of control after Ghidorah wakens the other Titans, Emma tries to claim to Madison she can fix this. In response, Madison queries that she thought she was doing it all for Andrew's memory — would he have wanted any of this? It renders Emma totally silent as her daughter storms off.
- Be Careful What You Wish For: Her Godzilla: King of the Monsters Monarch Sciences bio says she wants to be a normal teenager. Come Godzilla vs. Kong, and she's now attending a public school, but doesn't fit in and is miserable, and she can't get her stubborn and controlling Fantasy-Forbidding Father to listen to her and let her go back to homeschooling.
- Berserk Button: Downplayed, but the novelizations show that it really fiddles her button when people treat her like she's Just a Kid who isn't equipped to get involved in Monarch/Titan matters.
- Betrayal by Offspring: After renouncing her mother for betraying Monarch and killing millions of people, Madison takes it upon herself to abandon her mother's plan and help Monarch and her dad. Emma is visibly stung when she learns what Madison has done, as she seems to realize just how severely her own actions have nuked what remained of her family.
- Big Damn Heroes: Madison's first act of defiance against her mother has her snatching the ORCA from Emma and using it to distract Ghidorah in a bid to save her father. After witnessing the destruction Emma and Jonah's plans have caused, Madison steals the ORCA, sneaks out of a bunker full of armed terrorists, hikes miles to Fenway Park, and uses the ORCA to disrupt Ghidorah's communication with the other Titans, meaning she pretty much singlehandedly helps save the world.
- Big "NO!": She screams a frantic string of them when her mother moves to make a Heroic Sacrifice.
- Brainy Brunette: She's apparently inherited her father's brown hair, and supplementary materials note that she's an exceptionally academically-smart kid – she's also, despite her young age, one of the gutsiest human characters in the entire MonsterVerse period when it comes to using her intelligence to help the world at large. In Godzilla: King of the Monsters, Madison demonstrates that she knows how to operate the ORCA thanks to her mother, and she has the smarts to steal it from Jonah's eco-terrrorists and navigate her way out of their bunker undetected. In Godzilla vs. Kong, Madison is well-aware that they have to work out why Godzilla is rampaging whilst everyone else is either easily condemning Godzilla or operating on a "shoot first and ask questions later" mentality, and to that end, Madison single-handedly tracks down the enigmatic and paranoid Mad Truth podcaster's real identity and address.
- Break the Cutie: She already went through the first stage starting from the age of seven, when her older brother died and her parents' marriage collapsed soon after. Despite this, she's still a Wide-Eyed Idealist at the start of the movie with a profound awe for Titans such as Mothra and concern for her parents' welfare (especially her father's). Then she gets dragged by her mother's manipulations into an Eco-Terrorist plot where she's forced to watch Monarch operatives she grew up around get massacred by the dozens, she watches her own mother knowingly leave her father to die while unwittingly unleashing a world-ending force which triggers a global apocalypse, she suffers a Near-Death Experience while caught in the crossfire of a city-destroying Titan battle, and finally she helplessly watches her mother die under very similar circumstances to her late brother. The Godzilla vs. Kong novelization reveals that Madison has PTSD from her up-close experiences of Jonah massacring Monarch outposts and her close brush with Ghidorah when the monster was actively hunting her.
- Broken Tears: She's reduced to tears when Emma sticks to and enacts the deathly next stage of her plan by awakening Rodan whilst hundreds if not thousands of islanders are in the line of fire after Madison profusely and desperately pleaded with Emma not to. Madison's tears continue rolling when she calls her mother a monster after Ghidorah, one of the Titans Emma earlier awakened as part of her plan, has overturned her plan entirely, and also when Madison subsequently calls her mother out on how Andrew would be horrified by what she's done. It's subtly implied that Madison's tears are not helped by the knowledge that she was complicit for a while in the mass death and destruction her mother has unleashed due to her blind obedience to the woman before her Heel Realization.
- Calling the Old Woman Out: She raves at her mother over how the latter's plan has spiralled completely out of control after Ghidorah takes over the Earth's Titans, for not thinking of a better way to prevent the government from trying to kill the sleeping Titans than eco-terrorism and sacrificing millions of lives, and most of all, for doing all this in Andrew's name when any sane person in Emma's position should know that their child would never have wanted this.
- Censored Child Death: Downplayed when she has a Near-Death Experience in King of the Monsters. She gets crushed by the rubble of a collapsing house offscreen, before she's dug out by her parents and the G-Team in the midst of an NDE and resuscitates.
- Child Prodigy: Her official profile lists her as one. Not entirely surprising, given she's the daughter of two brilliant scientists, though she would rather learn through hands-on experience outside of a classroom much like her outdoorsman father.
- Conspiracy Theorist: Played With. In Godzilla vs. Kong, she's a regular listener to Bernie's Mad Truth podcasts to the point of avidly reading between the podcasts' lines as it were, and she's wholly convinced that Bernie is barking up the right tree by investigating Apex Cybernetics. The novelization specifies that Madison is well-aware most of Bernie's conspiracy theories are hocum, but she's listening because he tends to bark up the right tree when it comes to Titans.
- Cowardice Callout: In the Godzilla vs. Kong novelization, she rightly chews out Mark when the latter attempts to use pity for himself to emotionally blackmail her into obeying him; pointing out that Mark's authoritarian and insensitive parenting style isn't motivated by legitimate concern for her welfare, but by him being completely wrapped up in his self-pity and his terror of losing her to the point that he would rather helicopter his daughter into helplessness (or unwittingly sabotage his relationship with her while trying) than put what Madison needs (support, encouragement, and thoughtfulness from a father) ahead of his own insecurities and self-absorption.
- Damsel out of Distress: In King of the Monsters, she proves herself to be this. It isn't obvious how well she can take care of herself at first, due to subservience to Emma making her stay with the latter and Jonah's goons, and everyone — from Emma to Mark to Jonah — assumes she's Just a Kid who can't do much about her de facto hostage situation on her own. But after Madison realizes how low Emma has sunk and that they're on the wrong side, and she gets an idea about how to stop the Titans' global massacre; she proceeds to steal the ORCA out from under the eco-terrorists' noses, escape through a ventilation shaft, and walk on foot away from the bunker and into Boston to save the world, with her actions ensuring that the devastating Final Battle occurs in a relatively-empty city.
- Deep Breath Reveals Tension: Invoked just after the massacre of Outpost 32, when Emma tells Madison to take deep breaths "just like we talked about" to keep herself calm, when they're walking with Jonah's mercenaries past dozens of fresh corpses.
- Deer in the Headlights: In Godzilla vs. Kong, when Skullcrawler Number Ten is being released from its paddock, Madison at first freezes up while Bernie and Josh immediately make a break for it. The novelization confirms this is due to the sight of the Skullcrawler triggering her PTSD from her experiences in King of the Monsters.
- Defiant to the End: When Ghidorah has her cornered with no escape and is about to blast her with all three heads' worth of Gravity Beams, Madison just screams at the dragon in defiant rage. Fortunately, Godzilla shows up just in time to ensure this doesn't end up being her final moments.
- Deuteragonist: She's the Kid Hero version where she takes up the last act of the second film luring King Ghidorah to Boston. She takes the protagonist role on Godzilla's side of the story in order to figure out why Godzilla's sudden attacks are directly towards Apex and not humanity as a whole.
- Didn't Think This Through:
- Luring Ghidorah to Fenway Park using the ORCA's signal, and then staying put and looking out for signs of the pissed three-headed monster's arrival instead of getting the hell out of dodge, wasn't particularly smart. The novelization explains she remains put both to prevent anyone else finding and turning off the ORCA (at which point the Titans will fall back under Ghidorah's control) and because she incorrectly guesses that Jonah's forces will be out in the city looking for her and the ORCA.
- When Ghidorah arrives at Fenway Park, Madison unplugs the ORCA from the stadium's PA system but doesn't turn off the device itself, which leaves the signal that had originally been broadcasting over the PA speakers now coming from the ORCA's own speakers in her hands. Which allows all three of Ghidorah's heads to almost instantly zero in on Madison's exact location, staring through the windows right at her. Additionally, because she did unplug the ORCA and leave it on, the three heads catch her red-handed at the source of the Alpha frequency, and they correctly conclude that she's Ghidorah's new challenger for dominance which has disrupted their global Titan control, prompting Ghidorah to go all in trying to vaporize his tiny new rival.
- Did You Just Flip Off Cthulhu?: Her response to Ghidorah cornering her and preparing to blast her with all three heads' Gravity Beams at once? She just screams defiantly right up at the 500-foot monster as he's charging his Gravity Beams.
- Distress Ball: She's sharp enough and brave enough to use the survival training her mother taught her to steal the ORCA, sneak through ventilation shafts, and be miles away from the eco-terrorists' base before they even know where's gone, with a plan in place to help the heroes to hinder Ghidorah and his Titan army's global rampage whilst luring Ghidorah to an empty city for the Final Battle. But once she starts broadcasting the ORCA to lure Ghidorah in, Madison doesn't have any plan to avoid being vaporized by the incensed hydra when he arrives, nor does she even seem to see the need to: she stands outside on Fenway Park's rooftops, looking for signs of Ghidorah coming with a pair of binoculars. This leads to Madison almost getting fried by Ghidorah's Gravity Beams once he catches her red-handed, holding his bio-acoustic Berserk Button, before Godzilla arrives.
- Don't You Dare Pity Me!: Downplayed, but both the Godzilla: King of the Monsters and Godzilla vs. Kong novelizations show that Madison doesn't appreciate being treated like she's Just a Kid, and she refuses to be a victim no matter what she's been through.
- Et Tu, Brute?: She's hurt and horrified to the point of tears when she discovers what kind of a person her mother really is, with the latter going through with awakening Rodan despite both Mark and madison's conscientious pleas to at least give the desperate islanders time to get to safety. The novelization has this to say about Madison's feelings in this moment:Maybe her mother hadn't lied to her, not exactly. But she felt fundamentally betrayed, in a way she never had before.
She'd thought she knew her mother.
She knew now that she did not. - Famed In-Story: In Godzilla vs. Kong, she's apparently somewhat well-known in powerful and influential circles, due to her mother's world-changing and controversial legacy and her father's high-ranking job in Monarch. Bernie has heard of both her parents, and corporate billionaire Walter Simmons quickly recognizes her as Mark Russell's daughter by having seen her face somewhere before (possibly in a news report).
- Flipping the Bird: When Jonah attempts to amuse her while they're going down in an elevator, an unimpressed Madison responds to the ruthless killer's display with a middle finger thinly veiled as an eye-rub.
- Foil:
- To Bernie Hayes. They've both lost people close to them under tragic circumstances, but Madison still has her father after losing her brother and mother, whereas Bernie apparently had no-one after his wife died. Madison is on the receiving end of Underestimating Badassery after the events of King of the Monsters, while Bernie is a Cloudcuckoolander who uses Obfuscating Stupidity to make others underestimate him, and both of them prove to be quite skilled at wiling their ways around security and sinister organizations to get what they want. Bernie is quite a silly and goofy-seeming grown man though not quite a Manchild, while Madison is a teenager who's Wise Beyond Her Years. Madison is somewhat Famed In-Story as Mark and Emma Russell's daughter in Godzilla vs. Kong, while Bernie is an unassuming Apex employee in real-life and a somewhat well-known anonymous podcaster on the internet.
- And to Ren Serizawa, something which is slightly highlighted by the Godzilla vs. Kong novelization. They're both cases of Like Father, Unlike Child. Both of them were raised by their respective fathers in a way which worked for said father but not for their child and caused strain in their relationship (My Beloved Smother with a dash of Fantasy-Forbidding Father from Madison's father and Parental Neglect from Ren's father), and it leads to both of them respectively rebelling against their fathers' beliefs (Ren on a much more massive scale than Madison). They also both lost their mothers at a young age. It can be argued that Ren and Madison are both somewhat reckless in regards to their self-preservation: Madison tends to head towards danger when she sets her mind on helping, and though she has succeeded in being a massive help, she's also twice almost been killed by a Titan and saved by sheer luck; while Ren is an Evil Genius who commits to a horrifically arrogant and Too Dumb to Live method of achieving his Evil Plan which ultimately leads Ren and his allies to their destruction. Where Ren and Madison differ is that Madison still has her father, whilst Ren implicitly went dark-side as a result of his father dying before they could reconcile. Madison has a profound connection to the Titans but is highly compassionate when human lives are endangered, while Ren is a Muggle Power supremacist who callously and hypocritically puts thousands of innocent lives in Godzilla's warpath without a second thought.
- Friendless Background: The Godzilla: King of the Monsters novelization confirms that outside of Monarch staff, Madison doesn't have many friends due to traveling a lot with her mother. According to the Godzilla vs. Kong novelization, this hasn't changed much since Mark made her start attending school: she's an outcast among her school peers and hasn't made any friends her age except for Josh.
- Friend to All Children: In the King of the Monsters novelization, she takes a moment to flash a terrified child a reassuring smile at the Fenway Park evacuations.
- Friend to Bugs: She shows signs of forming a profound connection with the lepidoterran Mothra, and her Monarch Sciences bio and the King of the Monsters official novelization both furthermore state that Madison likes to spend free time studying insect ecosystems generally.
- Good Angel, Bad Angel: In King of the Monsters, she and Jonah form a metaphorical version of this ensemble, with Emma as the person they're trying to influence. Madison is the Good Angel, positioned by the cinematography on Emma's right shoulder and trying to convince Emma to not allow Rodan to be awakened while there are still people caught in the way, while Jonah is the Bad Angel on Emma's left who is trying to get the latter to stick to their plan. The Bad Angel wins.
- Hair-Contrast Duo: Ultimately inverted between her and Emma. Madison has inherited her father's dark-brown hair color, and she's firmly the Light Feminine and the good one of the two: starting out as a Wide-Eyed Idealist who's trying to please her mother, and being utterly horrified by the atrocities her mother orchestrates to the point of eventually turning on Emma in disgust. On the other hand, Madison has a sneaky, rebellious and intelligent streak of her own.
- Heel Realization: In King of the Monsters, Madison is distressed from the very beginning by Jonah's merciless slaughter of people in Monarch who Madison knew (something which Emma had neglected to mentally fortify Madison against whilst indoctrinating her), but Madison begins to seriously doubt the Eco-Terrorist plan her mother has pulled her into going along with during Ghidorah's awakening; realizing from the sight of the awakened hydra that this is a Titan humans can never coexist withnote , and being horrified when her mother forces her to leave her own father for dead and at Ghidorah's mercy. Madison's doubts increase after she overhears Mark's scathing deconstruction of Emma's grief and his criticism of her deciding the fate of the world for everyone, and it pushes Madison to try talking Emma out of releasing Rodan whilst people are still in danger. When Emma doesn't listen, and when Rodan's awakening is shortly thereafter followed by Ghidorah taking control of the other Titans, this is the final straw which makes Madison realize her mother is not the hero she thought she was and she's on the wrong side.
- Held Gaze: Antagonistic type, in the King of the Monsters novelization. When Madison is trying to convince Emma that they don't have to do what Jonah expects them to, Jonah responds to Madison directly telling him to bite her by locking gazes with her and gesturing to his gun, which briefly cows Madison.
- "Hell, Yes!" Moment: This is written all over her face when Godzilla shows up to battle King Ghidorah at Boston.
- Heroic BSoD: According to the production crew, and more expressly spelled out in the novelization, her retreating back to her parents' house in the heat of a city-destroying kaiju battle is this. As Godzilla and Mothra fight Ghidorah and Rodan, Madison tries to flee the battle to avoid being unwittingly stepped on, only to realize that no matter how far she runs the Titans can cover that same distance in a heartbeat. Panicking, she runs to the one place she associates with safety — the home where she grew up — and then breaks down upon realizing that it's no safer than anywhere else in the city.
- His Story Repeats Itself: Though she's coped with her brother's death and the San Francisco destruction in a much healthier manner than either of her parents, it's still implied that Madison developed her "Well Done, Daughter!" Girl tendencies at the start of Godzilla: King of the Monsters amidst the initial fallout among the family. Madison outgrows this as she becomes disillusioned with Emma and realizes how heavily the woman has manipulated her, before she finally watches her family's original home city get destroyed by another Titan battle that involves Godzilla, and she loses another member of her family to the destruction. Godzilla vs. Kong shows Madison has become a much stronger person for what she went through, in contrast to Mark who has only exchanged his old shortcomings for new ones or has failed to shed them at all.
- Homeschooled Kids: She received this kind of education during the years she was living with her mother and traveling the world with her and Monarch. Come Godzilla vs. Kong, Mark has enrolled her in public school, but she would much rather return to homeschooling, except she can't, due to Mark's unmoving stubborness and refusal to seriously listen to her.
I-S
- I Just Want to Be Normal: According to her King of the Monsters Monarch profile, despite her natural scientific prowess and curiosity, Madison wants to be a normal teenager and live a normal life. She appears to have changed her mind after finding herself less than satisfied with her father's somewhat overbearing attempts at normalcy in the Godzilla vs. Kong novelization.
- Idiot Ball: Even though she knew that being with her dad was safer, Madison still decides to stay with Emma Russel, despite knowing that they’re with dangerous people in a dangerous place.
- The Insomniac: Somewhat downplayed, but in Godzilla vs. Kong: The Official Novelization, she has frequent sleeping problems due to PTSD from her experiences in the previous movie.
- Interspecies Friendship: She forms a fledgling bond with the giant insectoid Titan, Mothra. In the novelization, Madison has something like an out of body experience and her connection with Mothra and her memory of the Titan somehow resuscitates her after she's buried by her house collapsing.
- Jumped at the Call: In Godzilla vs. Kong, she has no interest in staying in school as Mark wants of her when Godzilla starts rampaging, particularly when she realizes no-one but her is actually going to have the basic common sense to investigate the targeted Apex facilities before it's too late. The novelization expands on this, showing that Mark has become a smothering and helicoptering Fantasy-Forbidding Father who wants Madison to have as normal a life as he can imagine, but Madison would much rather return to being homeschooled as she'd been for most of her life before ending up in Mark's custody.
- Just a Kid:
- It's never said to her face, but in the King of the Monsters novelization, Dr. Mancini feels this way about Madison's presence, which inwardly irks her. It's also implied this trope causes Madison's parents and also Jonah and his goons to underestimate her capabilities.
- In Godzilla vs. Kong, Mark doesn't say it outright, but it's fairly clear part of the reason he's so condescending and dismissive of her when she tries to approach him about Godzilla's attack is because he still sees her as the little girl he left behind almost a decade ago rather than an equal, despite ALL evidence to the contrary. Things between Mark and Madison are even worse in the novelization's Adaptation Expansion, where Mark is shown to be a smothering and over-authoritative Fantasy-Forbidding Father who doesn't listen to anything Madison has to say nor give much thought to her feelings if they run counter to his own wants, and he acts like Madison knows less than him about what's best for her. In the novel, Madison also attempts contacting other Monarch operatives after she's unable to talk any sense into her father, but all of them respond to her about the same way Mark did.
- The Leader: Of Team Godzilla. She leads a team consisting of herself, her friend Josh, and a Titan conspiracy theorist named Bernie as they go to the Apex bases and try to find out why Godzilla has been attacking them.
- Light Feminine and Dark Feminine: She's the Light Feminine to her mother's Dark Feminine in King of the Monsters, which is ironic considering Madison's darker brown hair comparative to her mother's light blonde hair. Madison has an intimate connection to benevolent Titans including an almost maternal link to Mothra, yet she's far more compassionate and empathetic than Emma when it comes to people's lives. Madison also starts the movie as a little bit of a Wide-Eyed Idealist due to her mother's manipulation, but she proves to be much more emotionally mature than Emma once she catches on to just how dangerous some of the Titans are and how serious the stakes are.
- Like Father, Unlike Son: In the Godzilla vs. Kong novelization, she and her father differ in that Madison has no interest in being normal following her early upbringing with her mother in a Limited Social Circle at Monarch, and her experiences in King of the Monsters which turned her into a Shell-Shocked Veteran. Mark on the other hand has implicitly rejoined Monarch solely out of a sense of duty, and he would be all too happy to never deal with Titans again if it could be helped, and unfortunately; he's implicitly projecting his own longing for a normal life onto Madison. The Godzilla vs. Kong novelization also notes that Madison vehemently refuses to be seen as a victim (despite what her father thinks of her), which stands in stark contrast to Mark's chronic self-pitying tendency.
- Limited Social Circle: Given how she was homeschooled and traveled a lot growing up with both her parents in Monarch, Madison doesn't have many friends outside of them and other Monarch employees, as confirmed in the King of the Monsters novelization. In the novelization of Godzilla vs. Kong, Mark attempted to defy this trope for Madison by enroling her in a public school and expecting her to make normal friends her age, but the only friend she's made is Josh whilst being an outcast among the rest of her school peers.
- Little Miss Badass:
- When a 12-year-old girl steals a high-tech gadget from a ruthless terrorist group right under their noses because it's the right thing to do, and then uses it to pacify a host of giant monsters and in doing so incur the wrath of what is basically the Satan of Titans in order to save mankind from certain annihilation, you know she's got balls the size of Ghidorah's heads. Best of all, she succeeds where all the militaries on Earth would've failed miserably, effectively saving the world.
- Three to five years later as a teenager, she's practically the only human on Earth who has the basic common sense to ask why Godzilla attacked the Apex facility, acts an Amateur Sleuth by tracking down Bernie Hayes, break into Apex, discover their plans to create a Titan-killing death machine in the form of Mechagodzilla, gives Walter Simmons a Reason You Suck speech, and is basically responsible for her team being in a place to help Godzilla and Kong take down Mechagodzilla. At this point the girl deserves a medal for basically saving the world twice.
- Loud of War: In King of the Monsters, she tries to distract Ghidorah in order to save her father's and the Monarch top brass's lives by activating the ORCA and seemingly amplifying its bio-acoustic signal massively (based on how its pulses are much more rapid), an act which causes Ghidorah to outright scream in pain. It only works until the ORCA is turned off just before Ghidorah can try to shut the noise up himself.
- The Meddling Kids Are Useless: Subverted by her and the rest of Team Godzilla in Godzilla vs. Kong. Their investigation into Apex doesn't affect the plot and it merely serves as a plot device and P.O.V. for the audience to uncover Apex's true intentions. Until the battle against Mechagodzilla, where Bernie and Josh both being in the right place at the right time due to Madison bringing them along in her investigation was pivotal to Mechagodzilla's downfall – if Josh and Bernie hadn't been there at that moment to short out Mechagodzilla's computer and cause it to briefly stall when it was in the middle of trying to kill Kong, then Mechagodzilla would have likely won.
- The Millstone: Justified when she's on the villainous team in King of the Monsters. She's basically just being dragged along by a mother whom she initially wants to please; a mother who failed to do anything to properly condition Madison for the horrors they were going to partake in (much to Jonah's ire), meaning Madison is struck by horror at the atrocities she's complicit in by association, and she only ever takes an active part in what's happening when it's to the eco-terrorists' detriment. Madison uses the ORCA against her mother's and Jonah's demands in order to save her father and the Monarch brass's lives by disorienting Ghidorah, at the price of almost getting herself and all the eco-terrorists shot out of the sky by the hydra; later on, Madison argues with her mother against awakening another Titan while their time window to continue with the group's plan is rapidly closing.
- Missing Child: She's kidnapped by Alan Jonah and his mercenaries alongside her mother (in reality, she was manipulated by her mother into going along with their plot willingly). From there, Monarch's and especially Mark's objective is getting Madison and her mother back. After Emma is revealed to be Evil All Along, finding Madison alone becomes Mark's main focus, with the G-Team accompanying him into Boston to look for her and the ORCA.
- Mouthy Kid: She nonchalantly flips Jonah — a murderous eco-terrorist who kidnapped her and her mother — the bird, and isn't afraid to stand up to her mother. She flat-out rhetorically asks Emma if Andrew, whose name she's dedicated her actions to, would be pleased knowing what Emma has done, which sends Emma into tearful introspection. In the novelization, after Jonah condescends Madison for buying into a completely sugar-coated version of the eco-terrorists' plan which her mother told her, she gives him this reply:Madison: Bite me, dickhead!
- Must Make Amends: The King of the Monsters novelization shows that after Madison has completed her Heel Realization, she's motivated by making up for her own part in helping Emma and Jonah to unleash Ghidorah on the world and indirectly jump-start the global apocalypse when she steals the ORCA and disrupts King Ghidorah's global Titan control.
- Nature Lover: She's had a fascination with nature and the outdoors (particularly the entomology of insects), not unlike her father's, since her childhood.
- Near-Death Experience: The novelization confirms she has one when she's buried under debris while hiding in her home's bathtub before awakening. It also indicates Mothra's intervention is responsible for resuscitating her.
- Nice, Mean, and In-Between: She's firmly the Nice among the three Russells who survived San Francisco, possessing all the best traits and none of the worst traits of both her parents. She passionately and selflessly cares about other people as human beings (unlike her mom), and she lacks her father's bull-headed tendencies and his self-centered streak.
- Not Now, Kiddo: She's on the receiving end in Godzilla vs. Kong. She's pretty much the only person in the world besides Bernie who's not being selectively oblivious to the obvious pattern when Godzilla begins attacking population centers and concentrating the destruction on local Apex facilities, but Mark (and multiple other people in Monarch whom Madison tries to alert in the novelization) dismiss her out of hand.
- Obfuscating Stupidity: In the King of the Monsters novelization, she pulls the "innocent kid" act when caught by a Mook trying to steal the ORCA, before she tazes him.
- Oh, Crap!:
- When she realizes Ghidorah has zeroed in on her at Fenway Park, all she can do is slowly turn around to see Ichi, Ni and San are looking through the window right at her, and the middle head is visibly pissed. She promptly says "Oh shit!" and makes a run for it.
- The King of the Monsters novelization's version of Madison's first scene in the present shows that she's inwardly dismayed and cursing when Emma arrives in the kitchen, realizing that her mother is all the more likely to catch her trying to contact Mark given Emma's perception skills as a paleobiologist. Madison also inwardly curses in panic the moment she realizes her mother is about to risk going into an aggravated Mothra's chamber in an effort to calm the Titan down herself. During the battle in Boston, she quickly realizes that she's in danger of being unwittingly stepped on and flees through the city in terror back to the only place she instinctively thinks of as safe: her childhood home.
- In Godzilla vs. Kong, her face fills with horror and she says "Oh, my God!" when she comes across Ghidorah's wired-up skull in Apex Cybernetics' headquarters. When Bernie promptly identifies the creature, Madison is visibly on the verge of dread-fueled tears, whispering the name of the dreaded nightmare dragon which almost ended the world, tried to kill her, and caused her mother's death.
- Only Sane by Comparison: She has shades of this amongst the three-man Team Godzilla in Godzilla vs. Kong. She's debatably the most intelligent of the trio, if one subtracts intelligence points from Bernie due to him being a hardcore Conspiracy Theorist and Cloudcuckoolander, despite him having more resources than Madison at the movie's start. She's also a lot more serious than the other two team-members, with their comic relief tendencies. That being said, Madison still has no compunctions against going head-first into probable unknown danger if it'll get her closer to the answers she seeks; a trait she shares with Bernie, but the cautious Josh notably lacks, so ultimately this trope is Played With between her and Josh.
- Only Sane Woman: In Godzilla: King of the Monsters, she's effectively this among her surviving family: between her father the cynical Titan-hater and her mother the pro-Titan radical Eco-Terrorist, Madison is by far the most well-balanced and well-adjusted of the three surviving Russells. She lacks her father's hot-bloodedness and rage against the Titans, yet she's far more moral and empathetic than Emma when it comes to bloodshed and sacrificing millions of innocent lives; and she's delighted by benevolent Titans such as Mothra, but she realizes far sooner than her mother does that an awakened Ghidorah is bad news for humanity.
- Parental Neglect: She was on the receiving end of this after her brother's death: her mother became a workaholic, while her father turned to drinking, divorced Emma and became estranged from Madison. It's hinted in Godzilla: Aftershock and outright stated in the King of the Monsters novelization that the presence of Madison's Honorary Aunt Vivienne Graham was a source of stability for her during this period. Five years after Andrew's death, Madison and Mark have only sporadic contactnote (although it's subtly hinted, and further implied in a deleted scene and the novelization, that this is partly due to Emma trying to alienate Madison from her father out of spite), and even Emma is somewhat distant. It's revealed to be horrifically downplayed in Emma's case: she's been giving Madison survival training, trying to bond with her by letting her participate in Emma's Monarch work, and she's indoctrinated Madison into her and Jonah's Eco-Terrorist plot without doing anything to in any way give Madison the mental fortitude to expect and bear the plan's bloodshed; causing Madison to be traumatized when the plan starts, whilst Emma seems to take a very long time to twig the seriousness of this due to her mental instability. By the time of the Final Battle, both of Madison's parents have come to regret the way they've treated their surviving child.
- Pursuing Parental Perils: She's just as passionate about and drawn to Titans (particularly Godzilla and Mothra) as her mother whilst having none of Emma's more... unsavory qualities, despite Madison's brother and mother being casualties of Titan attacks which she and her family got caught up in. In Godzilla vs. Kong, she's determined to do anything and everything she can to get stuck in and work out what's provoking Godzilla's attacks. This is a source of friction between Madison and Mark in Godzilla vs. Kong, as Mark wants her to stay away from Monarch and the Titans partly because of the loved ones they've lost to the creatures.
- Really Moves Around: As noted on her Monarch Sciences profile, she's been moved around the world for most of her life due to her mother's job at Monarch before the events of Godzilla: King of the Monsters. In the Godzilla vs. Kong novelization, it's stated that after Emma's death left Madison in Mark's custody, the latter's re-employment with Monarch led to them moving around the world, until Mark insisted on settling down in Pensacola a year before the main time frame.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Delivers an absolutely brutal one to her mother; calling her out for killing millions if not nearly causing the extinction of mankind, all in the name of her deceased brother when she knew fully well Andrew wouldn't have wanted that and Emma was doing all this for her own delusional misguided reasons.
- Gives Walter Simmons the same, if briefer, treatment when she confronts him about building Mechagodzilla as a weapon to protect humanity, when doing it so actually endangered it.
- Rebellious Rebel: She ends up rebelling against a rebel group in King of the Monsters. She's been manipulated by Emma into joining her and Alan Jonah's anarchist plot to set the Titans loose on the world in the name of creating a utopia, but Madison becomes disgusted and disillusioned when she realizes just how happy Emma and Jonah are to murder billions of innocents, just how little control Emma really has, and just how dangerous the Titans are under King Ghidorah's control. It culminates in Madison betraying Jonah's faction by stealing the ORCA out from under their noses and slipping away after she overhears Jonah refusing to try and combat the threat of Ghidorah.
- Rebellious Spirit: Somewhat downplayed. Madison is a consistent rule-breaker who doesn't care much for listening to authority if she doesn't agree with it. Her Monarch Sciences bio notes that she's committed more than one security violations while growing up in Monarch, she doesn't hesitate to defy Dr. Mancini by stealing his I.D. card and using it to access Mothra's inner sanctum when her mother is in danger, and she chafes the entire time she and Emma are around Alan Jonah despite the fact this is Jonah we're talking about. To say nothing of when Madison steals the ORCA from Jonah, her mother and the other eco-terrorists of her own initiative, nor when Madison rebels against Mark's smothering shtick in Godzilla vs. Kong; in order to do what's right both times.
- The Runaway: Madison runs away with the ORCA from the Monarch bunker that Alan Jonah and his mercenaries are in by sneaking through the air ducts so that not even Emma can hear it.
- Shared Family Quirks: A Daughter variation regarding both her parents. Despite being much less Hot-Blooded, egocentric and distrustful of the Titans and being more sound-minded than her father, Madison does share Mark's love for outdoors field work. Compared to her mother, Madison is much more moral and compassionate with a far better sense of right and wrong, but the Monarch Sciences website reveals Madison does share her Rebellious Spirit with Emma. One thing Madison has inherited from both her parents (particularly her father) is a keen connection to the Titans.
- Shell-Shocked Veteran: The Godzilla vs. Kong novelization confirms that she has PTSD after her traumatic experiences at Outpost 61 and Boston during the events of Godzilla: King of the Monsters.
- Short Teens, Tall Adults: In Godzilla: King of the Monsters where the character is supposed to be a preteen (but is portrayed by the then mid-teenage Millie Bobby Brown), Madison is notably shorter than most of the adults around her including her mother, but only by half a head. Due to Godzilla: King of the Monsters and Godzilla vs. Kong being filmed back-to-back with each-other, Madison appears to be about the same height relative to adults in Godzilla vs. Kong despite the narrative's Time Skip meaning she's now seventeen.
- Sins of Our Fathers: A mild case in the Godzilla vs. Kong novelization, which mentions that her mother's infamous actions in King of the Monsters are one of the reasons why she's bullied and ostracized at school.
- Socially Awkward Hero: Madison can summon up the courage to steal the ORCA single-handedly out from under the noses of murderous eco-terrorists, she can scream defiantly in Ghidorah's three faces whilst Ghidorah is lazer-focused on murdering her specifically, and she can get a high-schooler and a conspiracy theorist to help her break into Apex Cybernetics... but, as revealed in the Godzilla vs. Kong novelization, she can barely stand enduring the snickers, ostracism and ugly looks of kids in high school, not helped by the fact she was completely homeschooled for several years of her education before Mark decided the best way to get her social skills refined was by throwing her in the deep end and making her stick to it.
- Stress Vomit: The novelization mentions she had one offscreen in response to seeing the massacre's aftermath at Mothra's temple.
- Strict Parents Make Sneaky Kids: Both of Madison's parents have proven to be restrictive with her in their own ways: Emma tried to restrict her security access within Monarch and even worse she brainwashed Madison into blindly serving her Eco-Terrorist agenda without question, whilst Mark after gaining custody of her has been a helicopter parent who refuses to have any trust or faith in her (''especially' in the novelization, where he projects his own wants in life onto her and refuses to communicate mutually with her). Not only has this failed to temper Madison's independent streak in any way, but it's taught Madison to go behind either parent's back when she needs to, and she has a knack for this: successfully stealing the ORCA and escaping without Emma knowing what's happened until Madison is far away, and rebelling against Mark's efforts to keep her at home and under watch by convincing Josh to steal his brother's truck so she can sneak out with it and investigate Apex Cybernetics.
T-Y
- Tagalong Kid:
- Due to her Limited Social Circle when growing up as a homeschooled Monarch kid and forming friendships with her mother's co-workers, and also due to being a Child Prodigy; Madison was essentially a tagalong kid to Monarch in the years before the events of King of the Monsters
- After she and her mother are kidnapped by Jonah – actually, Emma and a manipulated Madison were both in on Jonah's plan and being "picked up" – she gets pulled along with Emma, Jonah, and the latter's paramilitary troops as they go around the world to free the Titans. More than that, due to Madison's mother indoctrinating her into the plan yet doing absolutely nothing to mentally condition her to deal with the horrible side of it, Madison deliberately makes herself The Load among the eco-terrorists while trying to sabotage some of their worst acts (snatching the ORCA and nearly getting the Osprey they're all on shot out of the sky by Ghidorah in a desperate effort to save her father, and trying to stop her mother from releasing Rodan while there's people in danger); much to Jonah's ire, although he's forced to keep lagging Madison around in order to maintain Emma's cooperation, until Madison bails.
- Token Good Teammate: She ends up being this among Jonah's paramilitary. A deleted scene which depicts Jonah and several mercs watching Madison's kickboxing lessons seems to indicate the organization officially consider Madison one of them. Yet she's expressly horrified and disgusted by all the slaughter that Jonah and his mercenaries commit and by Emma's willing complicitness in it. Jonah for his part seems to be quite annoyed (particularly in the novelization) that he has to drag around a conscientious liability in order to maintain Emma's cooperation. It ends with Madison jumping ship on the organization.
- Tomboy: Specifically an Effeminate Tomboy. She's scientific-minded, she swears a lot, and she has very few known traits that would be traditionally considered "girly".
- Trauma Button: In Godzilla vs. Kong, when Team Godzilla first see Number Ten emerging, if one looks closely, Madison temporarily freezes up whilst Bernie and Josh are already running for their lives. The novelization confirms the movie's hint that the sight of the Skullcrawler triggered Madison's PTSD, causing her mind to briefly go back to her nightmarish encounter with King Ghidorah at Fenway Park.
- Uncanny Family Resemblance: She technically looks like her mother, Emma Russel. Due to their similar hair shapes. The only difference being that Madison’s hair has darker shades.
- "Well Done, Daughter!" Girl: It's implied in King of the Monsters that a desire to please is part of the reason why Madison went along with her mother's plan for the ORCA and has been so easily manipulated by Emma until the bodies start dropping – the novelization outright confirms it, saying that Madison felt she needed to please both her parents after Andrew's death, then that she had to please her mother after Mark left them. It rapidly goes away as Madison rapidly realizes just how far her mother has fallen and that Emma doesn't know nearly as much about what they're doing as Madison thought she did, Calling the Old Woman Out and turning her back on her.
- What Is Going On?: In the Godzilla vs. Kong novelization, she asks her father this question over the cellphone when he calls her cellphone and orders her to prepare to be picked up and have an overnight stay. He doesn't give her a straight answer to the question, and Madison finds out herself when we next see her that Godzilla is lashing out.
- What the Hell, Hero?: Early on in Godzilla vs Kong, she doesn't hesitate to call her father out, for just jumping out of hand to the conclusion that Godzilla's attacks mean he's turned against humanity without any evidence and without even trying to find a cause, insisting there has to be a cause after what they both saw of Godzilla's heroic actions during the events of Godzilla: King of the Monsters.
- Wide-Eyed Idealist: At the start of King of the Monsters, she admires the Titans, but her mother has only given her exposure to highly-benevolent ones such as Mothra, and she furthermore sugarcoated the other Titans' temperaments while indoctrinating Madison into the eco-terrorists' plan. As a result, Madison initially doesn't think there'll be much of a problem with the other Titans awakening. She rapidly begins realizing how wrong she was when she has her first encounter with a hostile Titan, specifically the evilest Titan of them all: just seeing Ghidorah when he rises, and witnessing the carnage he quickly inflicts out of pure malice and hatred, makes Madison realize that some of the Titans might not be nearly as nice as Emma led her to believe.
- Wise Beyond Their Years: Despite frequently being on the receiving end of the Just a Kid trope, Madison in both her movie appearances has displayed courage, ingenuity and independence that goes well beyond her age (she's only twelve years old in Godzilla: King of the Monsters and seventeen in Godzilla vs. Kong), and it's implied in Godzilla vs. Kong that her traumatic experiences have increased her toughness and resolve. Her capabilities, intelligence and strength of character have enabled her to work her way around Alan Jonah's paramilitary and escape their base, on foot, with one of their most prized assets in hand, and they've also enabled her to succeed where adult so-called professionals around the world failed at catching onto Apex Cybernetics' role in Godzilla's rampage. That being said, Madison still displays signs of her true age at times: in Godzilla vs. Kong, she shows slight Jumped at the Call tendencies, and her close brush with death by Ghidorah's Gravity Beams isn't enough to stop her feeling anxious of school bullies in the novelization.
- You Monster!: After Emma makes the call to awaken Rodan in spite of Madison's protests, which escalates into Ghidorah forcing Rodan into submission, Godzilla accidentally being taken out by the military's Oxygen Destroyer missile, and the other Titans awakening to go on the rampage at Ghidorah's command; Madison hits her mother with this.
