There goes my hope to see them return to 5E, maybe get a miniature at long last...
They keep their eyes closed? They wear masks? They are immune to the stare of those they truly love?
I am pretty sure Medusae are immune to petrification. Even in movies like Clash of the Titans, the reflective shield is used to see the Medusa in it, not to have it reflect her gaze.
The problem here is Medusa wasn't the only gorgon. She had two sisters who could also turn people to stone. Nothing prevents her parents from having other gorgons, or even the three gorgons giving birth to other gorgons.
I mean, Medusa had two offspring posthumously (a winged horse and a male humanoid with a golden sword) in one of the weirdest forms of cesarean births possible, via the neck. Is it less plausible she could have given birth to other gorgons?
And hilariously, then D&D went and used the Gorgon name for a completely unrelated bronze-scaled Bull creature that can also petrify things... The idea taken from an old book on animals (that has a lot of made-up fantastical ones).
I think since Stehno and Euryale were immortal, they could possibly go on and have more offspring. The game Titan Quest explain the presence of a lot of Gorgons this way.
Consider the tarrasque. It was stated in older lore that there was only one in existence. But that leads to some odd lore issues. If you have a group of players fight and kill it, no other group could. And if there is only one, where does it live? So it became "every D&D world has a tarrasque" which defeated the purpose of making it only one in existence. Pretty soon, things like "tarrasques wander the hinterlands of the Outlands, beyond the gate towns" or "there is a crystal sphere with Planet Tarrasque in it" was implied in the lore. Still, canonically, the idea that there was one tarrasque in all of creation became an unknown number across multiple worlds that has been killed an unknown amount of times.
There is still only one Tarrasque. As far as I know, it can regenerate from even a loose scale of it, the only way to kill it would be to destroy all the remains and cast Wish on it. Even so, it usually comes back, much like the Godzilla that it is partially based on. Usually, parties can only hope to trap it, cause it to go back to sleep, or - more likely - use some sort of powerful teleportation or plane-shift magic to take it somewhere else, so it becomes some other unfortunate universe's problem.
It wasn't just implied. The planet Falx, as detailed in SJR4: Practical Planetology, explicitly has several hundred tarrasques living on it!
I am pretty sure that was implied to be a joke. (Probably Volo is responsible for that...
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I don’t have anything against turning creatures from mythology/folklore that were supposed to be one of a kind into the name of their entire species in D&D (Minotaurs, Goliaths, Tritons, et cetera). What bugs me about the name “Medusas” is that there was already a term for the type of creature Medusa is in Greek Mythology; Gorgons. Calling all Gorgons “Medusas” is like calling all Centaurs “Chirons,” all Wizards “Gandalfs,” or all Dragons “Smaugs.” That just seems weird to me.
Feels kinda odd to get angry about this NOW, when D&D is like, 50 years old. You are a bit late to the party.
They could have also been called Stehnos and Euryales... and funnily, there ARE fantasy games where those are also not names, but subspecies of Medusae.
Thing is by now, it is not just D&D that calls Gorgons Medusae, but several video game franchises and other RPGs. JRPGs in particular, but Heroes of Might and Magic as well.
And the name Gorgon has been used for another, unrelated but also petrifying monster by D&D, so they cannot really re-use that. (See above). And Pathfinder and Heroes of Might and Magic has got those as well!
Even Magic the Gathering calls them Medusae. At least they were that in Theros.
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About a decade ago, I participated in an Inktober challenge. Can't remember the theme. Anyways, I did an illustration of a male Gorgon Medusa resembling Idris Elba (imagine those golden eyes from his time as an Asgardian in the MCU).
Got a few responses like "Hm a male medusa eh? I suppose that could work" or "I never thought of that!".
It's so ingrained that certain monsters are always male or female. It's like those people who are, like, "Dogs are boys, cats are girls". GROAN.
The funny thing is, D&D 5E did have a male "Medusa" since Princes of the Apocalypse... The Elemental Earth Cult prophet, Marlos Urnrayle! He even got a Nolzur's miniature, bundled with the Medusa.
Mind you his snake hair and petrification powers were a gift from Ogremoch, and he was a Human originally, but he looks the part.
