After almost 30 years of monster catching and battling, there are dozens of unsolved mysteries in the Pokémon universe. One that has literally haunted fans for over a decade now is the “Ghost Girl” who appears in the 3DS games Pokémon X and Y. This mysterious Hex Maniac character shows up in Lumiose City, says some ominous stuff to the player, and slides off-screen without an actual walking animation. This odd occurrence has never been explained, and when Kotaku asked X and Y producer Junichi Masuda about it back in 2014, he was playfully evasive. Well, thanks to the spooky-ass Mega Victreebel trailer Game Freak put out, fans now suspect that this ghost girl may reappear in Pokémon Legends: Z-A.
The found footage-style video shows two curious Pokémon trainers exploring a seemingly abandoned house, only to find it crawling with creepy Pokémon and being used as a training area for a Mega Victreebel. It’s not just Pokémon hiding out here, however. At about the one-minute mark, you can see what looks like a girl dressed in a dark purple outfit hiding outside a window.
This looks pretty similar to what appears to be the new Hex Maniac design in Legends: Z-A, seen in the game’s official art, leading fans to theorize that this could be a nod to the ghost girl from X and Y, or maybe even a hint that we might finally learn more about this enigmatic trainer after a decade of theorycrafting. Legends: Z-A takes place entirely in Lumiose City, where the ghost girl appeared in the 3DS games. So, if Game Freak wanted to finally provide some answers to fans’ long-running questions, this would be the game to do it.
All that said, this could just be nothing more than an easter egg for fans to spot in the trailer, and it could go nowhere. After all this time, do you really need to have all the questions answered for you? Can’t you just enjoy the terrifying whimsy of knowing this world is sometimes vast and unknowable? No? Well, we’ll find out for sure when Pokémon Legends: Z-A comes to the Switch consoles on October 16.