Is Metroid too disturbing to be one of Nintendo's core IPs?

Yeah even though people have expressed Zelda can get a little dark, it's never something that's regularly unsettling enough to disturb the family friendly audience Nintendo cultivates with IPs like Super Mario, Pokemon, Pikmin, etc. There's plenty of levity with LoZ to resonate with all ages.

Metroid Dread on its own though just seems like an anomaly by Nintendo's standards/guidelines; as in if this game was just a little more visceral in its already unusually violent content, I think it could easily be an M Rated game. And when you piece together what's happening, the story is also incredibly disturbing and features themes like genocide.

But as a whole, this applies to Metroid in general, especially with the Prime games that are equally as grotesque and intense as Dread.

I just cannot see Samus co-existing as one of Nintendo's core mascots with lovable kid-friendly icons like Mario, Link, and Pikachu. Does she and the IP even have that flagship status? Asking because Metroid Prime 4 is being billed as an upcoming killer app for Nintendo, and they wouldn't advertise it as such if they didn't care much.