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Legendary Populations

One thing that has been quite controversial among fans of Pokemon is whether the legendary Pokemon are unique or if there are entire populations of them. I place myself among the former, but here I shall take a look at evidence given within the main series games to determine whether the official stance leans one way or another. Trying to make sense of the often contradictory in-game evidence is much like trying to fit a rectangular prism into a circular hole, but putting shapes where they don't belong has always been one of my hobbies.

Legendary Birds

Articuno, Zapdos, and Moltres, probably the trio with my favorite names (I can't help but love the use of Spanish numbers). There appear to be indications that there are multiple Articuno, Zapdos, and Moltres, what with them popping up in so many games in so many different chronologies. Let's take a look.

Originally, in RGBY, the instruction manuals stated that there was only one of each bird. This appeared to be true as in GSC, the birds could no longer be caught in their original locations. When we get to the fourth generation, however, things start getting screwy. In FireRed and LeafGreen, Moltres's location is changed from Victory Cave to the Sevii Islands. Just a little retcon, nothing paradigm-changing, right? Well, in Pokemon Emerald, which takes place at the same time as FireRed and LeafGreen, Pyramid King Brandon has all three legendary birds in his possession. How exactly is this possible? Perhaps, you say, Brandon could have just been the guy who originally caught all the birds. This would work as an explanation except for the fact that Pokemon Platinum screws it up: you can catch the legendary birds as they roam around Sinnoh after having beaten the game. You can try to squeeze your way out of this by saying that Brandon, for some bizarre reason, released the birds into Sinnoh where they proceeded to roam, though there is no evidence to support this theory. The final death blow is HeartGold and SoulSilver, where you can find Articuno, Zapdos, and Moltres. This little retcon changes quite a few things. Even though this game takes place as the same time as Platinum. In other words, there are legendary birds roaming Sinnoh at the same time as there are legendary birds just chilling out in Kanto and after the legendary birds had been caught by Brandon. What the hell is going on here?

Unless you come up with some incredibly convoluted theory, there is no evidence to back up the idea that there exists only one of each bird. It appears that the game developers have changed their mind regarding the uniqueness of the birds and have retconned it for the sake of... fun, I guess.

Mew and Mewtwo

There is very little evidence concerning Mew. The only evidence are the cryptic journals found in the Pokemon Mansion, which state "Guyana, South America. A new Pokémon was discovered deep in the jungle. We christened the newly discovered Pokémon Mew. Mew gave birth. We named the newborn Mewtwo." There is nothing for or against there being multiple Mew here - just the bizarre suggestion that Mew gives birth (a controversial statement in and of itself; some people interpret it as being a metaphor since no Pokemon are known to give live birth). Perhaps we need to look somewhere else, then...

According to the Pokemon mythology, Mew is the ancestor of all Pokemon. This explains why Mew can learn every TM and transform into every Pokemon. Let's try looking at it from a biological point of view: assuming this is true, one could interpret this to mean that the world was originally populated by Mew and that these Mew evolved to become the Pokemon of today, with one (or multiple) Mew remaining the original species. This is not farfetched and fits in very well the idea that Mew is the ancestor of all Pokemon. Once again, however, you can interpret this another way: could it be that Mew itself created all the Pokemon? Where does this leave Arceus, for instance? In addition, the Pokemon mythology is just mythology - who is to say that it's correct? As such, the number of Mew remains variable.

However, the evidence is strongly in favor of there being only one Mewtwo. Mewtwo was created as a clone of Mew, and there is no evidence that more than one Mewtwo was created, or that another Mewtwo was created after the original escaped. As such, we can be pretty sure that the Mewtwo in the Unknown Dungeon is the only one in the world.

Legendary Beasts

The legendary beasts are yet another example where the evidence is clear as mud. We'll start with their origin story: supposedly the Legendary Beasts were created when three Pokemon died in the Burned Tower and Ho-oh decided to be cool and bring them back to life. It is not stated if these Pokemon were Raikou, Suicune, or Entei before they died, or if they were changed after their resurrection. This is important: if Ho-oh merely brought them back to life, then it's possible that there were multiple Raikou, Suicune, and Entei (a possibility supported by later evidence). If, however, they were different Pokemon before their resurrection, then they would have been transformed into the new species of Raikou, Suicune, and Entei and there would likely only be one of each. This is never made clear by the games, so we must look at later evidence.

So in other words, the beasts were created a while before any of the games, and then they were just taking a break in the basement of the Burned Tower. That's how we found them in GSC, and HeartGold and SoulSilver don't contradict that at all. So what more is there to say? Well, Pokemon Colosseum begs to differ. I know we said we wouldn't look at the side games, but it's relevant here. Pokemon Colosseum appears to take place during Generation III, and there are three different admins that each have a Suicune, Raikou, or an Entei. So someone else had caught these Pokemon before they were woken up in HeartGold and SoulSilver... It gets worse when you consider that you can encounter them in Pokemon FireRed and LeafGreen. Once again, the evidence seems to lean towards "there are multiple legendary beasts."

Tower Duo

When it comes to the Tower Duo, the evidence doesn't contradict "there is only one of each." Lugia never shows up in bizarre contradictions like the legendary beasts; you can find it on Navel Rock in both Pokemon Emerald and FireRed/LeafGreen, and then in HeartGold/SoulSilver you can find it in the Whirl Islands. The only bit that doesn't fit is the Shadow Lugia in Pokemon XD. It's conceivable that it is the same Lugia that was captured, but this is just speculation. Ho-Oh has a similar story to tell. You can capture it on Navel Rock in Emerald and FRLG and on Bell Tower in HGSS. You can also encounter it on Mt. Battle in Colosseum. This does presume that Ho-Oh's very jumpy, moving from Navel Rock to Mt. Battle to Bell Tower... but there is no evidence for these two to disprove either hypothesis.