Today, February 6, is Mewtwo’s birthday: this is how the most powerful Pokémon in Kanto came to be

February 6 marks the birth of Mewtwo, one of the most iconic and powerful Pokémon in the entire franchise, which debuted in the Red and Blue editions. Taking advantage of this anniversary and in the context of the saga’s 30th anniversary in 2026, we review the origins of this terrifying creature, delving into its background since its original appearance in the first generation video games, as well as its evolution in remakes and subsequent installments over the years. Happy birthday, Mewtwo!

Mewtwo’s birthday is February 6: this is how the terrifying experiment that created it unfolded in Pokémon Red, Blue, and Yellow

In the canon of first-generation video games, originally released in 1996, it is well known that Mewtwo was born on February 6. This information was introduced in Pokémon Red, Blue, and Yellow, through a specific note found in the Pokémon Mansion on Cinnabar Island. It read, “Diary: February 6. MEW gave birth. We named the baby MEWTWO.” In other words, Mewtwo was presented as a child of Mew, its direct descendant.

In the lore of these games, Mew was discovered in the jungle of Guyana, South America, and although it was not explicitly stated, various documents from the Pokémon Mansion suggested that it was captured and brought to this location to conduct experiments on its DNA. In the present—when players arrived at this site—the building was in ruins, and here we could face scientists and thieves as trainers to fight against. In addition, the presence of abandoned high-tech facilities in the basement revealed the true nature of the place: the Pokémon Mansion was actually a cover for a secret laboratory where an experiment took place that ended in the worst possible way.

However, in the 2018 Switch remakes Pokémon Let’s Go Eevee! and Pokémon Let’s Go Pikachu!, these specific lines of text were modified to remove any hint of doubt. This, in turn, may suggest that in both the Red, Blue, and Yellow editions and in FireRed and LeafGreen, the translation was not the most accurate or precise.

In these more recent video games, it is clarified that Mew is not Mewtwo’s “mother,” at least not in a strictly biological sense. Instead, Mew was used as the genetic basis for creating Mewtwo. The relevant note from the Pokémon Mansion revealed the following: “Diary: Feb 6. We obtained a new Pokémon from Mew. We have named it Mewtwo.”

Since we later encountered Mewtwo in the Celadon Cave—a place only accessible once we have completed the Pokémon League—everything seemed to indicate that the Pokémon was created from Mew’s DNA in the Pokémon Mansion laboratory, but its power was uncontrollable, and it fled, destroying the place. Searching for a new home, Mewtwo finally decided to settle in the depths of the cave near Celadon City, where it lived in peace until Red arrived to capture it.

For many years, the immeasurable power of Mewtwo—whose base stats made it indisputably the most powerful Pokémon of the first generation—gave rise to a new theory that was plausible but never officially confirmed by Game Freak. According to this rumor, Team Rocket had raided the Silph Co. building to steal the Master Ball, with which they intended to capture Mewtwo and use it for their own purposes. Giovanni intended to seize the creature’s enormous power for himself.

However, with the passage of time and the release of new installments and remakes that revisited the Kanto region, the original myth was rewritten, giving rise to several different versions of the true origin. Game Freak has reinterpreted the old canon in the most recent video games, so that Mewtwo is now represented not as the son of Mew, but as an enhanced clone.

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