Today's Pokemon Presents showcase was relatively light on updates for the big mainline games, but it did give us a few new details about the upcoming Pokemon Legends Z-A, including the surprising return of a side character introduced more than a decade ago.
The main city of Pokemon Legends Z-A, Lumiose, is home to a Pokemon Research Lab, and as today's Pokemon Presents narrator revealed, a blue-haired woman named Mable "is the acting director of the Pokemon Research Lab. By catching Pokemon, you can aid her research. In return, you can receive useful items for your adventures in this game." A separate press release says Mable "analyses Pokémon habits and the reasons behind their growing populations."
As a snippet of gameplay showed, those useful research items include the handy TM discs, which can teach specific moves to Pokemon, as well as exp-boosting candy. You'll unlock new rewards as you increase your research level by completing specific requests, it seems. The research menu showed that Thunder, Fire, and Ice Fang discs are available at lower levels, while level 11 unlocks a Light Screen TM and level 12 unlocks Giga Drain, with plenty more where those came from.
Pokemon X and Y players may recognize Mable from her distinct looped hairstyle. She was originally a scientist for Team Flare back in the 2013 games. Her design has changed a bit, and her outfit has changed a lot, but her Team Flare days haven't been forgotten. She has a Team Flare racing-style chair now.
As Bulbapedia notes, Mable was previously a trainer encountered and defeated fairly early in Pokemon X and Y. Her original fight wasn't particularly memorable or difficult, though she does appear later on at Lysandre Labs during a weightier story moment. Even so, Mable was never more than a "forgotten, uninteresting character from Pokemon XY," as one Pokemon fan put it in one of the hotter Twitter reactions to come from today's showcase.
Rather fittingly, Mable made her Pokemon anime debut in a 2015 episode titled "From A to Z!" as part of the X, Y, and Z arc. 12 years after her game debut, and a decade since her animated series debut, Mable now leads one of the core features of Pokemon Z-A, which has got to be one of the bigger glow-ups in the series' history.
Pokemon Legends: Z-A launches on Switch and Switch 2 on October 16, 2025.
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