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Look, if Ash was coming back, they would be teasing it. They would be making sure people don't forget about Ash.
>b-but people won't forget a character who wa-
shut the fuck up retard. This is the modern era. If something is out of the news for even a couple weeks, people forget about it. It's bad PR optics to keep your product out of the eyes and thoughts of the consumerbase. You know how Mcdonalds still pumps out advertisements? Ask yourself: does anybody really not KNOW what Mcdonalds is? Is there anybody in the western world who HASN'T had Mcdonalds? The answer to both is no, virtually everyone knows what Mcdonalds is. So why do they still advertise?
Because if they didn't, people wouldn't be interested in the product as much. People would forget about it. They'd still see Mcdonalds, but it wouldn't be fresh enough in their minds to tempt them as strongly.
All of this to say, if Ash was coming back, they would NOT let us forget about him. There would be teasers. There would be merch. There would be promotions. Scarlet/Violet would be shilling us events with Ash pokemon in them. But they aren't. You know what this means? There is only one thing this can mean:
TPC has been heavily entertaining the idea of abandoning Ash entirely. Given the success of Horizons, and to a tangential extent the games, both of which not featuring Ash, their gamble has paid off. They have no plans on bringing Ash back as a major character.
They might have had a backup plan to bring him back, but if they were going to, they would have executed that plan weeks if not months ago. They would have executed it the instant Horizons didn't do iron man numbers. They would have deployed operation "remember Ash?" and engaged in maximum damage control. But they didn't.
Because Ash isn't coming back.
