>>54975601Orthworm and the other Titan Pokémon were specifically created to be bosses for the Path of Legends story. They are single stage Pokémon with a special gimmick designed to make them harder to take down in battle.
They also had to be new Pokémon because nobody would give a shit if older Pokémon were made into Titans.
Orthworm is also implied to have been a scrapped ecologically similar variant of Gyarados as there were plans for those two Pokémon to get one. (The Toedscool line was added last minute which explains why Tentacool and Tentacruel were not in the Paldea dex at first, but the Magikarp line is.) We don’t know if Orthworm is that Pokémon specifically but it is the closest of the newest Pokémon to physically resemble Gyarados and include some of its features, like its serpentine body with cream colored segmemts and the colored spots on its neck and stomach.
