Me: "Alright, I'm going to chill now and not pay as much attention to speculation."
Also me: -types a small essay on Spirits-
(I typed this earlier but forgot to click post because I'm tired. Oops. Maybe it's still useful to someone anyway.)
It's also worth noting that there is a Spirit of Kirby with the Robobot Armour. (14:49 in the direct.)
Kirby is
deconfirmed obviously still in the game, and is literally the only character who was not killed off today. That said, it's not yet clear if all alternate "forms" are actually separate Spirits. Some Spirits can turn into an "enhanced" form, which can greatly alter their appearance. (At 14:00, Dixie Kong's Spirit turned into one with Dixie
and Kiddy, for example.) Characters with more than one Spirit shown could be the result of that. We don't know how they work for playable characters yet, assuming they all have ones as they did for Trophies.
Regardless, with only five slots left, there is an unfortunately high chance that Spirits soft disconfirm many characters. I feel as though Mii outfits and Assist Trophies definitely do, as there would have been no reason to show off Rex as they did otherwise. Why work on the costume if he's going to be DLC anyway? There's no reason that they can't upgrade them, but at the moment it seems like they're there because it was the only way to get them in. The dev team still has a limited budget and a timeline, afterall, so they can't add everything as playable.
Dee may have dodged the lights today, but release day is the next big hurdle. We'll get our hands on the game and find out exactly how Spirits work, which ones there are, if playable characters have ones that match their fighter form, and if any characters have more than one Spirit that isn't from enhancing. If he still doesn't have one by then (and if the base Waddle Dee doesn't have an enhanced form of him), he's either potential DLC or they skipped him for some unknown reason.