Correct. As said above, each major alt costume (Koopalings as an example) takes up one of these slots, and it could also be future-proofing just in case they do announce a season 2. There's a lot this could mean, which is neat, and it's cool to have some extra info there.
Interesting. But even with this potentially increased chance, I'd rather have Elma revealed/added to the roster sooner rather than later. I know that that is probably pretty much everyone's opinion around here. But I personally would also like this since it'd undo
some of the sour taste that 2 has left in my mouth.
But hey, at least some of our arguments, such as Caitlyn
(I can never remember how to properly spell her first name) Glass' NDA role point towards it happening sooner.
It's possible they wanted to keep all the lesser known spirits from the more obscure series because those series only had 1 or 2 spirits, but with the entire main party of XC1 and XC2, that's already around 10 spirits in the "Xenoblade Series", which maybe they thought was enough. (I know there were something like 20+ FE spirits in WoL, but Sakurai's team seems to have a huge bias towards FE and the numbered Xenoblade games.) It also could be because WoL overall had a more fantasy theme and they felt none of the settings particularly fit X spirits more than others. I'm sort of making up arguments for what could've happened under the assumption the X spirits weren't late additions, I actually like your argument more. I won't be surprised if the X spirits were last minute additions...
They also had a decently large number of party members from Golden Sun placed on the WoL map, when just Isaac, Felix and Matthew would already have sufficed. The obscurity of party members from a relatively lesser-known seems hardly like a hindrance.
As for the theme, claiming that WoL has generally a fantasy theme is a really shallow reading. There were plenty of contemporary non-fantasy areas on the map, such as the various towns, as well as sci-fi-like areas, such as the base where you fight Galleom or the space section with Geno at the end. Beyond that, plenty of Spirits are placed in locations that thematically don't really make that much sense.
And really, trying to come up with hypothetical counter-points is fine and all, but we're slowly getting to a point where these mental gymnastics are just silly. Between the lack of presence in WoL, the lack of music and the omission in the internal listing, it really seems just a lot more likely that any X content was added last-minute.
