Ever since the May 10 trailer revealed the three starters for "Pokémon Sun" and "Moon" - Rowlet, Litten and Pipplio - fans began to question what comes next: their final evolutions.
Fortunately for fans that wait is over - somewhat. Thanks to some data mining on the official Japanese Pokémon website, we finally have part of the puzzle: the final evolutions types. While we have no idea what the starter Pokémon will look like when they reach their final form, we may very well know what type they'll have once they reach it.
The discovery comes to us courtesy of YouTuber pdwinnal, who said in a video that he learned about the types when he inspected the code on the Japanese site and noticed some of the fields were left blank, prompting him to examine the issue in greater detail.
He noticed the first two were Grass and Flying, which refer to Rowlet's type, while Field 3 was left blank with Field 4 being Fire (Litten's type) and Field 5 being Water (Popplio's type) with Field 6 also left bank.
However, upon changing the URL of the site, he discovered that the types were actual PNG images rather than text, revealing that Field 3 had an image for Ground type while Field 6 had one for Fighting type.
If we take this all as fact, considering that the Pokémon Company has yet to officially confirm anything about the matter, then we can assume that Litten will become a Fire/Ground type, Popplio will become a Water/Fighting type, and Rowlet will remain a Grass/Flying type.
Here, however, is where things get a bit messy. As mentioned before, the image for the Ground type appeared in Field 3, which would mean that Litten would become a Ground/Fire type when it evolves. This flies in the face of the precedent Pokémon had set at that point where the primary types of all the starters are either Grass, Fire or Water. Pdwinnal acknowledged this in an annotation at the end of the video and said it's possible Rowlet would gain the Ground type instead. This would mean that Rowlett would go from a Grass/Flying type to a Grass/Ground type, while Litten would retain its Fire type throughout all of its evolution stages.
Unfortunately this makes things even more messy; what would happen to Rowlet? Rowlet is an owl, and the only conceivable way for "Pokémon" to translate that clearly while allowing it to have a Ground type would be to give the final evolution the Levitate ability. However, as any fan can tell you, the starters have always had their standard ability set as Overgrowth, Blaze or Torrent. Does this mean that Pokémon will change that precedent in each of the starters' final evolutions, or will Levitate be Rowlett's final form's hidden ability?
Honestly, this Ground-type situation seems like a mistake on the Pokémon Company's part, the very same type of mistake that caused this information leak to begin with. In the end, all this really confirms is that there will be evolutions with more than one type - which is by no means groundbreaking. As always, we'll just have to wait until there is an official announcement.
If this does turn out to be be true, though, it will be interesting to see how this will impact which Pokemon players will choose to start with once "Pokémon Sun" and "Moon" arrive in November.
Check out the video below:
