>>55796063There is no "canon protagonist" period outside of Red, and that's because he was the ONLY protagonist when they decided to introduce him as a character.
The reason why we haven't seen anyone from Gold onward appear as characters in the mainline GameFreak games is because they don't want to create a dissonant disconnect with the player's own personal playthrough and experience of the game that character comes from. It was already confusing enough for kids when the boy who looked exactly like their character showed up with the name "Red" and used Pokemon that they probably didn't aside from one of the starters, but it would've been even stranger once RS set the precedent that the player characters will take on completely different roles if they aren't selected. A girl who played as May, thus the daughter of Norman, and became champion would no doubt be weirded out if Hoenn's protagonist appeared as a character later, but instead it was Brendan, who she clearly remembers being the son of Birch, not the son of Norman.
Even now you see them tiptoe around past protagonists entirely, Galar's current champion is completely unnamed and irrelevant but people still idolize Leon enough that in SV, someone in Unova's Blueberry Academy offers to teach you how to emulate Leon's signature ball throwing style under the notion of "a former champion's throw" with zero mention or reverence for who dethroned him.
