>>53540785It didn't start with Lusamine, it started with Lillie.
Lillie's introduction trailer screamed "that mysterious JRPG girl who's secretly a dragon or something". And shortly after that they revealed a weird jellyfish creature that looked like Lillie and had no details beyond "acts strangely like a young girl". It seemed blatantly obvious that they were the same being.
I could believe that the character designs are a relic of an earlier story concept where they had more connection (see also Mallow/Tsareena).
Because there are definitely relics of other things in there. See Lillie's calling her new outfit her "Z-Powered Form", and the official art where Nihilego transforms because of Lusamine feeding it Z-Crystals (they're still visible inside its limbs, just never called attention to). Before the game came out, people pointed to the Z-Crystal in the logo as looking like a Burst Heart from the Pokémon ReBurst manga (an item which could fuse humans with Pokémon).
