I'm gonna be honest, I feel Sora was planned to be the final character pretty early on, it'sa crazy tinfoil hat theory, but Lifelight's opening lyrics fit perfectly with the visuals used for Sora's trailer and I think the whole 'everyone becomes a trophy' part is meant to represent the ****ing Waking stuff from 3D and III.
You know, I don't like Sora but I sure do know a ****ton about his series. Weird.
Also when I said bottom of the barrel last night, I'm not saying every first party is bottom of the barrel, just that the days where people could get excited over Starman from Urban Championship, Trax, Custom Robo, Muddy Mole, Komurasaki, Mike Jones and more could cause genuine excitement across the fanbase beyond "Oh, isn't it so fun to learn of these obscure oldschool games that have no future even after getting characters in Smash". They're a hard sell and I don't think it's an exaggeration that most people just prefer characters they're actually familiar with, especially, and here's the big one, if we have to pay extra to get them. I don't think it's unreasonable to assume everyone who bemoans how 'oversaturated' third parties are has also played at least what, 20 games that aren't owned by Nintendo? Besides, for DLC, we already went through **** like ATs which hurts the perspective of characters so when we get Super Smash Bros Kerfuffle for the Nintendo Z in 6 years, you just know characters like Isaac and Waluigi will become the biggest characters discussed until we see their fate, it's not like first parties are a dying breed