Madison

Madison is the main character in the films Splash and Splash, Too. She is portrayed by Daryl Hannah in Splash and Amy Yasbeck in Splash, Too.

History
Madison is a mermaid who twice saves her childhood love, Allen Bauer, from drowning. After kissing him, she dives into the sea and leaves Allen to return home.

Madison finds Al's wallet and shows it to the police. She later has a romantic relationship with Al. However Madison is publically revealed to be a mermaid when she is splashed by Walter Kornbluth outside a restaurant, and is summarily captured by scientists. At first Al avoids her, in shock that his beloved was a mermaid, but later he rescues her from the lab with the help of his brother and Kornbluth himself, because Freddie helps him to realize that he still loves her. They then escape the authorities by jumping into the bay, for mermaids have the special power to enable those close to them to breathe underwater. Al joins Madison in the underwater world, even though she tells him that he can never return to the human world. However, years later, they find it necessary to return to dry land for a while, as Allen becomes bored on their deserted island hideaway and admits he misses life in New York City and his brother Freddie.

Personality
Madison is the archetypical fish-out-of-water in the most literal sense. Based upon Hans Christian Anderson's Little Mermaid (albeit 8 years older than his original character), she is the forerunner to that especially-famous Disney Princess: Ariel; innocently curious about the human world and prone to fall in love with the first man she saves from drowning. Like Giselle two decades prior to Enchanted, she finds herself in the city which supposedly has no happy endings: New York. This city provides the backdrop to Madison's angst, her drama, and her many comedic contributions to the already-quite-humorous story. Out of innocence and necessity, she at first enters New York naked and then wearing Allen's clothes. She then gets said Allen into a number of awkward little situations as she is excited by everything she encounters, and names herself after Madison Avenue. She cries while watching "Bonanza" on television, thinking that a man shooting another man on-screen is in fact a real murder, and then receives a gift offered by Allen under the assumption that the package itself is the extent of the gift. She later is at a fancy restaurant and reveals that mermaids are not accustomed to cutlery....

Still, what endears the audience to Madison as a character is not that her deeds are done with ignorance, but that they are done with innocence. She is as likely to express herself by kissing as by speaking, swift to forgive even those who do the most horrible things to her, courageous in a preciously-gentle manner, and seems to be most motivated by love. As a very clever move on the part of the filmmakers, Madison is the only representative of merfolk in the movie and is thus a sort of goodwill ambassador. In the aquatic realm of the final film, there is no sea-witch, no petty political backbiting, nothing to convince the viewer that merfolk are merely humans with fins. Madison is so beautiful a being as to seem ethereal (and the film's lighting at times emphasizes this), and thus we are invited to view her world with the same childlike wonder with which she views ours; it is almost like having "the Little Flower" (Saint Theresa of Lisieux) as one's only exposure to France. Thus, when we see her descend into the dark depths with Allen in tow, the latter having lost his home and his family, we can nevertheless expect that he will live happily ever after (until the sequel). We just can't see how a world which values such wonderful things could be bad.

Hannah was chosen to play the role of Madison because she exuded a sort of innocence which seemed otherworldly, and it was because of this quality that the character has become so iconic. She is the sole reason that "Madison" has become a popular name for girls; a fairy-tale creature who somehow seems more real because she is so unreal. Madison is the exemplar from which all major Disney mermaids have since been drawn, from Ariel in 1989's The Little Mermaid to Syrena in 2011's Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, and she will remain an inspiration to those who wish to bring their own mermaids to life.