The main antagonists of the upcoming Pokémon Scarlet and Violet are Team Star, but they might be a red herring that will distract players from a greater evil. Team Star is the latest in a long line of evil Pokémon Teams, though they’re hardly as evil as the villainous Team Rocket or Team Flare. Pokémon SV is set to release on November 18, so it shouldn’t be long before players discover whether this is true or not.
In Pokémon Scarlet and Violet, Team Star is a group of students from one of the version-exclusive schools that players will attend, Naranja Academy or Uva Academy. They’re delinquents who cut class and give their school a bad name, and will presumably impede players on their journey through Paldea as other Teams have in the past. One of Scarlet and Violet‘s three storylines, Starfall Street, focuses on battling them in timed waves of Pokémon that will see players making generous use of the new Let’s Go auto-battling feature. Once players have cleared their base, they will face off against its boss and their specialized vehicles known as Starmobiles, which look to be powered by one of Pokémon Scarlet and Violet‘s rumored Pokémon, a Poison/Steel-Type engine Pokémon. Only one of these bosses, Mela, has been revealed so far, but there will presumably be quite a few more.
Ever since Gen 6, the evil Teams of the Pokémon series have been growing less and less wicked. It’s rather irritating, and has contributed to the overall feeling of the mainline games becoming too easy. However, it’s possible that there’s a good reason behind it. The less evil Teams make players lower their guards and distract them so that they don’t see the true evil lurking behind them. Being reduced to red herrings may not be very dignified for one of Pokémon‘s longest-standing traditions, but it is undeniably clever. While this is still only a theory for now, the thought of another group of villains hiding behind Pokémon SV‘s Team Star is an interesting one, and could make for a great twist near the end of the game.
Scarlet & Violet’s Team Star Could Follow A Recent Pokémon Trend
Gen 7’s Team Skull was the first of Pokémon‘s evil Teams to be less so than those that came before it, being comprised of petty criminals. Team Yell followed in its footsteps, having no evil ambitions whatsoever beyond sabotaging the League Challenge so that their preferred challenger would win. Both were red herrings for far more evil organizations, the Aether Foundation for Skull and Macro Cosmos for Yell. Since Team Star appears to be continuing the tradition of increasingly-harmless evil Teams, it’s entirely possible that it will have its own greater evil, one that they may even join forces with the player to fight like Team Yell did.
If Team Star does end up being a red herring for another foe, it would make Gen 9 the third Generation of Pokémon games in a row to do so. This could mean that it will be a new trend for Pokémon, and that the Team in each new Generation going forward will be a distraction for a bigger and badder organization working behind the scenes. Hopefully, this is not the case, and Gen 10’s evil Team will be the sole antagonist. This twist may be a good one, but it can only be used so many times consecutively before it becomes predictable and stale.
If Team Star is a red herring, it brings into question who the greater evil in Scarlet and Violet is. In Gen 7 and Gen 8, both of the true antagonist organizations were introduced innocuously fairly early in the story. In addition, the leader of Pokémon‘s evil organizations behind the Teams was an authority figure who acted friendly at first to the main character. With this in mind, it’s entirely possible that Pokémon SV‘s true villains are the faculty of Naranja or Uva Academy, and that their leader is the school director, Clavell. This could be an even better twist than the previous two Generations, and add a level of humor to Team Star and their rebellion against the Academy, however, it’s still possible there’s another antagonist in Pokémon Scarlet and Violet that hasn’t been revealed yet.
