The Lady

'' 'A Watchful Eye' ''With graceful restraint, The Lady casts the hypnotic spell that keeps the engine running. Amidst the chaos of the world outside, The Maw is the only place that makes sense, and now this rumor of an escaped child threatens everything. Nothing can be allowed to interfere. The guests must eat. The Maw must survive. - Official Description'' The Lady (also referred to by fans as The Geisha or The Governess) is the final antagonist of Little Nightmares, who first appears in the beginning of Six's nightmare in Chapter 1 before making a more prevalent appearance in Chapter 5. She is encountered in The Lady's Quarters, where she resides.

Appearance and Powers
The Lady is an unnaturally tall, slender woman with raven-black hair that she keeps partially wrapped in a bun. She is adorned in a long dark brown kimono, which seems to trail moderately behind her when she walks. Her face is perpetually covered by a white porcelain mask that conceals her true appearance, through which two lifeless black eyes stare out. In spite of nearly all of her body being covered, the skin on her neck seems to be a pale demitasse color. She is intimidatingly poised and proper in disposition, carrying herself with a sinister purpose.

Unlike the other frightening inhabitants of the Maw, who appear to be monstrous humanoids driven by an unspeakable hunger, The Lady is implied to be an ancient being of dark magic; a facet supported in that she is the only denizen aboard the resort ship who possesses supernatural influence, and there are several mysterious shrines that can be found throughout the Maw in her honor. Upon being confronted by Six, The Lady is able to vanish in a plume of pitch-black smoke and reappear anywhere of her choosing - regardless of distance or blockages, such as rooms whose entryways are locked. She can control matter with her mind, as displayed when she lifts Six off the ground merely by gazing at her and reaching a hand in her direction, and can hover opposed to walking, blowing out all nearby light sources and casting entire rooms into darkness in the process. She can rearrange the anatomy of children to turn them into Nomes, manipulate shadows into taking on physical forms imbued with some degree of sentience, as displayed by her creating several child-like figures with porcelain faces similar to her own, and is implied to have the ability to feed on the souls of those trapped in the Maw. Interestingly, her presence brings a deathly cold, as Six and the Runaway Kid can both see their breath in her midst. During her chase of Six, an angry, rasping wheeze can be heard emanating from her, implying either an inhuman nature, birth defect, or mutilation beneath her mask.

Personality
From what we can infer, it would seem that The Lady is extremely vain and egotistical in nature, to the degree that she is willing to resort to trapping and starving children in the Maw in order to fulfill the needs of its denizens - and, by association, herself. She is obsessed with her physical appearance, and is oftentimes seen gazing at her reflection via several cracked mirrors in her bedroom, humming an alluring, unsettling tune to herself while brushing her hair. In spite of this, she is strangely incapable of looking at her reflection in mirrors which are unbroken, as she will become burned and/or blinded by a scorching light emanating from behind the glass. It can be assumed that this greatly weakens her powers, forcing her to retreat into the shadows. As a result, every mirror in the Maw has been shattered, save for a single mirror she has kept hidden under lock and key - the only thing which can destroy her and end her wrath.

Summary
The Lady is a mysterious woman who controls The Maw.

She is first seen in the beginning of Little Nightmares in Six's dream, standing in a dark haze before slowly turning around, which causes Six to awaken in a gasp of terror.

In Chapter 4, she can be seen watching the arrival of The Guests from a deck overlooking the entryway of the dining hall, her mask simultaneously emotionless yet off-putting in the pale daylight. While The Guests feed, she retreats back to her private quarters, where she proceeds to stroke her hair and gaze at her reflection in one of her broken mirrors, humming an eerie melody over and over. When Six smashes a vase in order to acquire the key to a peculiar locked room in her quarters, The Lady is startled and vanishes. It seems as though she is nowhere to be found, until Six uses the key to unlock the room and begins to explore its perimeter, only for the door to slam shut behind her with a sudden gust of wind. The Lady materializes from the murky darkness, hovering toward Six at an unnatural speed and voiding a frightful shriek at her. She continues to draw closer until Six escapes through a small grate in the wall, which takes her to an abandoned room full of mannequins. The Lady, unable to follow, vanishes in a puff of smoke.

After Six uncovers The Lady's one unbroken mirror, hidden away behind disintegrating wooden boards blocking a lonely room, The Lady is seen awaiting Six amidst the mannequins, her back turned to the girl but well aware of her presence. Upon being approached, she vanishes once again, and a darkness consumes the room save for a few scant traces of light, which Six stands in to protect herself; The Lady, interestingly, seems unable to cross into this light. She appears and disappears all around the girl, intent on getting close enough to harm her and reclaim her prized mirror, but is driven away with a scream of pain each time she gazes upon her reflection. She decides to hover around the child in a circle, watching the girl's every move, and attempts to throw Six off by appearing behind her and grabbing her when she least expects it. This proves to be her undoing, as Six once again turns her reflection against her, causing The Lady to wail in agony as the mirror explodes into shards of glass, knocking both she and Six into unconsciousness.

When they both awaken, Six finds The Lady panting weakly on the floor, her mask broken from the impact but her face still concealed by the long hair that has come undone from her bun. Overcome with her growing hunger, Six approaches the dying woman and, to The Lady's shock, sinks her teeth into her neck, consuming her flesh while she is still alive. With her death, her powers are transferred to Six, who becomes immersed in a thick black mist swirling all around her.

The Hideaway
The Lady's only scene is at the end of the second chapter, when the Runaway Kid ends up on the roof of the elevator she is riding in. Whether or not this takes place while Six is nearing the end of the Guest Area is unknown.

The Residence
After sneaking into The Lady's Quarters unnoticed, the Runaway Kid manages to pass a room she is currently in, where she can be seen playing with porcelain dolls and listening to the sad melody of a music box. After uncovering many secret passages and libraries of mysterious books, the Runaway Kid returns to this room, where he is greeted by The Lady's porcelain dolls since brought to life by her magic for unknown reasons. After the Runaway Kid escapes them, he finds The Lady gazing at herself in a full-body mirror from the seclusion of her personal abode, seen for the first time without her mask. Strangely, this mirror appears to have no ill effect on her, and does not burn or blind her like the mirror Six uses to defeat her. Although in reality The Lady appears to be young and beautiful, her reflection depicts another self: a hideously deformed old woman with white hair and sagging, melted-looking skin, baring a physical resemblance to The Wax Bellman or The Granny. It can be assumed that the mirror is reflecting her true age, or what she would look like if not for her feeding on the souls of the Guests to subsist her youthful appearance. After noticing the Runaway Kid trying to sneak behind her via the mirror reflection, she screams an inhuman shriek at him, causing the lights go out and shattering the mirror. She then stalks the Runaway Kid from the shadows, hovering all around him with her mask back on. After catching him, she levitates him into the air and begins to distort his anatomy with magic, ultimately re-configuring him into a Nome.

Possible Theories

 * The most popular theory among Little Nightmares fans was that The Lady was Six's mother, who either dropped Six into The Prison for meat or because, in The Lady's opinion, Six was prettier than her. Around the Lady's Quarters, many portraits of what appears to be Six can be found, and there is a large portrait in the Guests' dining quarters of what appears to be Six and The Lady standing together.
 * It has since been confirmed by Tarsier Studios that Six and The Lady are not related. This may mean that portraits of what were previously believed to be Six could in fact be the Runaway Girl, or another unidentified child. It is also possible that while not family to each other, Six and The Lady had some type of relationship prior to the events of the game, as demonstrated by Six dreaming of The Lady and becoming visibly distressed in her presence. However, this may not necessarily be true either, as the Runaway Kid had a similar dream of The Granny moments before encountering her for the first time, which could suggest that Six had a similar premonition of The Lady prior to their first encounter.
 * It can be inferred from the game's final scene, in which Six possesses The Lady's powers after consuming her, that The Lady was using her magic to take the Guests' souls away after they were fattened and fed. It is assumed that the more they ate, the more life force she gained from them and the younger she stayed.
 * The Lady's aversion to mirrors may be connected to the Little Nightmares comic series, where they are established as showing each viewer their deepest wish; on account of The Lady already achieving her desire through magic, this affect may be reversed for her, showing The Lady her greatest fear instead: growing old.
 * In The Kitchen, Six can come across a hidden room containing many portraits of The Lady. One portrait in particular appears to be The Lady with one large eye at the center of her face. Not much is known about this picture, though it has since been confirmed that this is not The Lady's true appearance. It is possible that this photo is merely a representation of how she sees everything in The Maw, via the enchanted eyes which guard the Prison and petrify escapees into stone.
 * In "The Residence", the Runaway Kid comes across many old portraits, statues, and dolls depicting various versions of The Lady's image, long since hidden away in her private quarters. These works of art appear to have existed for quite some time, as they are covered in cobwebs or are broken (indicating that for The Lady to still be alive, she would have to be equally as archaic as these compositions of her). They presumably show The Lady at a time long before her current state, and this can be supported via a large painting at the heart of the Residence which shows The Lady as a human woman without a mask; frowning, pale-skinned and eerily beautiful, matching the appearance of these other artistic likenesses of her. This seems to strongly indicate that The Lady was once greatly revered for her beauty and was a muse for painters and sculptors, until something happened that caused her to be forgotten.
 * The Runaway Kid also comes across many secret passageways and hidden rooms in The Lady's Residence; interestingly, all of these rooms have their own libraries, with books strewn about the floor or left open on a particular page, and are not part of the library that Six travels through as she attempts to escape The Janitor. When asked about The Lady's powers in a Playstation interview, Tarsier responded: "The Lady has been in the Maw for a long time. She's learned all sorts of unpleasant things during her residence. It's best that we don't scratch the surface". This could indicate that the books in The Lady's private collection are what allowed her to teach herself magic, at the cost of paying a terrible price.
 * This is further supported by the fact that one of the books in The Lady's Residence has a white mask depicted on its cover, baring a heavy resemblance to the porcelain mask The Lady herself wears as well as those worn by the Shadow Children she creates. It's possible that wearing this porcelain mask is what grants her magical abilities, but also prevents herself from being able to look in mirrors while donning it since a white light will blind or burn her. When the Runaway Kid sees The Lady staring at her true reflection, she is not wearing her mask and the mirror is not harming her, unlike the mirror Six uses to defeat her when The Lady is wearing her mask; this may mean that mirrors possess some form of white magic that contradicts The Lady's dark magic.
 * In "The Residence", it is revealed that The Lady possesses many porcelain dolls which resemble children; she uses her magic to animate them and bring them to life. The melody she listens to while doing this strongly resembles a lullaby, which could suggest The Lady has a hidden fondness for children that contrasts her own treatment of them and the purpose of The Maw itself. It is possible that The Lady is either incapable of bearing children of her own, lost a child of her own at some point, or tries to create makeshift children because her duties to the Maw - and thus, retaining her own beauty - comes first above anything else.
 * In “The Residence”, The Lady turns the Runaway Kid into a Nome. It can be assumed that she is responsible for creating all of the Nomes in the Maw. Her reasons for doing this are unknown, though it's possible that all children that have been turned into Nomes are children that saw her without her mask, and therefore were transformed by The Lady to prevent them from revealing to anyone what they saw.
 * Controversially, it is also possible that The Lady turns children into Nomes because she is actually trying to protect them, as children largely seem to be despised, imprisoned and/or tortured in the world of Little Nightmares. If The Lady does in fact actually love children beneath her cold facade, it is possible that she chooses to alter their physical state with magic so that they are no longer recognizable as children and, thus, can avoid this world's monstrous beings. Portraits of Nomes can be found hanging in portraits all throughout The Maw, and levers and door handles within the ship seem to be tailored to their short stature, which may mean that The Lady employs Nomes as staff.
 * It is possible that The Granny is the mother of The Lady, as the two bare a striking resemblance to each other. The Granny may have been the geisha who controlled The Maw prior to The Lady, but could have been overthrown and banished to the sewers by her daughter for unknown reasons - possibly because the Granny posed a threat to The Lady retaining her eternal youth.
 * The Lady may be related to The Teacher, as there is a portrait of her in "The Residence".

Trivia

 * It takes Six exactly six times to defeat The Lady with the unbroken mirror.
 * The Lady only has four fingers and a thumb on each hand, which may mean she herself isn't human. This may be further supported in that her blood is an oily, ink-black color, as displayed when she is being eaten by Six.
 * Six, despite being confirmed not to be The Lady's daughter, may still have some relation to her. Evidence of this may be shown in concept art, where a picture of five children can be seen. Six may be the sixth child.
 * In "The Residence", the Runaway Kid can come across a secret room (close to where he first enters the Lady's Quarters) by placing two books next to each other that depict The Lady's face. Inside this hidden room, a large reddish-orange portrait depicting several tortured, screaming faces hangs on the middle of the wall. A table with a glass vase atop it, decorated with the symbol of an eye, rests at the center of this room; next to this table is a single petrified child, similar to the children petrified by the enchanted eye in The Prison. If the Runaway Kid climbs on the table and pushes the vase to the floor, it will shatter to reveal that it is actually an urn, as ashes will float across the room upon it breaking. The player will then earn the achievement "Ashes to Ashes". It is unknown whose ashes these belonged to.
 * There is a photo in The Lady's Quarters of The Lady standing in front of four other geishas turned facing her direction. Not much is known about this photo.


 * The Lady's actions bare somewhat of a resemblance to the Evil Queen from Snow White, who wanted Snow White (Six) dead in order to become the "Fairest of them All". These similarities are further elaborated on in "The Residence", where The Lady views her reflection in a mirror (which may be a magic mirror) and it reveals that she isn't the fairest.