I’m very early in Pokémon Legends: Z-A, but I just found something in Lumiose City I had to tell somebody about, or I might explode. The RPG’s map is small, but if you’re not looking in every corner, you might miss a hole-in-the-wall establishment that could enrich the game for you. That’s what nearly happened to me, but luckily, I did stumble upon the Lumiose Museum in the northeast corner of the city.
If you’ve played Pokémon Legends: Arceus, you’re gonna want to stop by this place and check out one of this museum’s exhibits. As I passed by, a citizen remarked that it had a showcase of artifacts from the Hisui region, which was enough to make me spin on my heel and beeline into the building. Arceus players will know that Hisui is the previous name of the Sinnoh region from Diamond and Pearl, and the historical setting of the last Legends game. Anyone who played Arceus to the end knows it ended on a bittersweet cliffhanger that seemingly doomed its isekai’d main character and others to a primitive point in history, even while they had friends, family, and Pokémon waiting for them in the present day. However, the Lumiose Museum’s exhibit may give us at least a few details about what happened after Arceus’ conclusion.
Once you’re there, head to the second floor and you’ll see several familiar artifacts from the Hisui region. There are hieroglyphics of legendary Sinnoh Pokémon, hand-crafted early Poké Balls, and a few outfits previously worn by characters like Arceus’ protagonist, the surprise villain Volo, and Commander Kamado, an ancestor of Professor Rowan from Diamond and Pearl. While we don’t see anything belonging to him, one of the displays mentions a man named Ingo who would train people in Jubilife Village in the ways of Pokémon battles, but long-time fans will know that he was much more than that.
Ingo made his debut in Pokémon Black and White as an elite trainer at the Battle Subway alongside his brother Emmet. His appearance in Arceus indicated he’d been shot through time just as the protagonist had been, only to have gradually forgotten his previous life in the modern day. It was an incredibly dark and tragic fate for a Pokémon character, and because Arceus ended without either of these displaced trainers going back home, fans have spent the past three years assuming they lived out the rest of their lives in Hisui and never saw their loved ones again. In the case of Ingo, at least, that doesn’t seem to be the case.
The diagram of Ingo’s old training grounds has an accompanying text that says Ingo one day “simply vanished” after telling the people of Jubilife that it was “time for [him] to return.” Though we haven’t seen Ingo in any games since, it sounds like he did get to go home to his brother and friends eventually.
The long-lost time traveler isn’t the only character we get an update on in the exhibit. Volo, the ancestor of Diamond and Pearl champion Cynthia and a surprise religious zealot intent on usurping Arceus’ power for himself, also gets an epilogue of sorts in Legends: Z-A. You can find his final boss outfit in a glass case next to statues of legendary Pokémon Palkia and Dialga, and one of the museum’s patrons says that the person who wore it donated it to the exhibit personally. He also apparently looked at some of the sketches on display “with this nostalgic air,” implying that Volo has, somehow, persisted into the modern day. Is he time-traveling? Is he immortal? Will we see his crazy ass again? I have so many new questions.
Whatever happened to Volo and Ingo, it also stands to reason that Arceus’ protagonist was likely able to return to the modern day as well, though I haven’t been able to find any direct mention of their whereabouts. Their uniform is on display here, though. So one way or another, history has not forgotten them and what they accomplished in Hisui all those years ago.
