Pokémon’s New Era Is Great, But It Leaves 1 Big Question That Ash Ketchum Would’ve Avoided

May 18, 2025

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When Ash Ketchum was the star of the Pokémon anime, there was a certain level of predictability. When a new generation was on the horizon, fans could rest assured that Ash Ketchum would be there in the new region, challenging gyms and exploring as he always had.

With Pokémon Horizons, however, that formula has been utterly destroyed. Liko and Roy don’t challenge gyms or enter tournaments, like Ash did. Instead, they seem to be on track for a story that has a definitive ending. And now, with the timeskip that occurred at the start of Mega Voltage, Liko and Roy have done what Ash never did: age. There were several reasons why it was decided Ash wouldn’t age, but one of them was to keep him relevant and relatable to the series’ intended audience of children over a long period of time.

When Will Liko and Roy’s Time Be Up?

It’s Increasingly Likely Pokémon Horizons Will Be Finite

While it’s more or less guaranteed that Pokémon Horizons will continue on for at least another year, if not more, the timeskip has presented the idea that the new cast won’t be Ash’s permanent replacements. If Horizons is telling the story of Liko and Roy, and how they stood against the use of Laquium and prevented global disaster, then some day that story is going to come to an end, possibly around the time the 10th generation of Pokémon games is released. That immediately raises the question, though: just what comes after Horizons?

It’s possible that Liko and Roy could continue on as older protagonists, starting a new adventure in the way Ash did. However, is that really what’s best for their characters? Liko and Roy have already grown substantially more than Ash did in his entire career. As Horizons‘ story moves on and continues, they’ll keep growing, and eventually reach their fully realized “final” forms. Unfortunately, though, that doesn’t leave much room for a sequel series, at least not without timeskipping again and aging them up further. And if they’re just going to reuse the same characters, why even drop Ash at all?

Pokémon Horizons has absolutely surpassed Ash’s era in one key way, and that has to do with how the series has been written from the ground up.

With the way that Horizons is progressing, it only makes sense that Liko and Roy’s journey ends at the same time as the series does. That means that, in a few years’ time, the anime may be in for another reboot, following yet another new trainer on a journey that’s likely to be quite different from both Liko’s and Ash’s. This could wind up being the new format for the Pokémon anime going into the future, rebooting every few years with a new cast and a new storyline. At some point, Ash will just be the first of many lead characters that the anime has had.

What Comes After Horizons

The Series Could Set the Stage for the Next Hero

There are, of course, a lot of forms that a new Pokémon anime could take. It could go back to a simple echoing of the games’ plot, like it often was for Ash, sticking to one region and exploring its new features and Pokémon thoroughly. It could be a wholly original storyline, like Horizons has had, in which case it will be utterly unpredictable as to what the story might feature. It may concentrate more heavily on battling than Horizons, or it could move in a different direction entirely, moving the battle aspect even further out of focus. There’s simply no way to know.

One thing that would be fun, which fans never got to see with Ash, would be a passing-the-torch moment. If the series is to be handed from protagonist to protagonist, then it would be a lot of fun to let those protagonists meet up, if only briefly, to solidify that all these stories are set in the same world.

The uncertainty of the future of the Pokémon anime isn’t a huge problem right now, but as Horizons‘ story begins to wind down in a year or two, fans will no doubt be speculating about who the next hero after Liko is going to be. Hopefully, this will be the start of the series reinventing itself on the regular, and fans will never have to worry about Pokémon becoming stale again.