No one: ...
Literally no one: ...
Not a single soul: ...
So, about the concept of bonus/promotional characters... I'm thinking about the Amiibo thing we were talking about earlier. Joker and Hero are coming together in September, Banjo and Terry are likely coming together in November, and then, because of the six month gap between Byleth and Min-Min, Byleth will probably be the male and female versions like Corrin was. I just want to focus on this front half so I'm not overly concerned with 10 or 11 in this bit of theorycraft.
A quick history on promotional characters:
Roy- Fire Emblem: the Binding Blade came out a little more than three months after Melee released.
Corrin: Fire Emblem: Fates North American release was the same month that Corrin came to Smash 4.
Byleth: Fire Emblem: Three Houses DLC came out about two weeks after Byleth came to Ultimate.
Now back to the regularly scheduled program:
Obviously, 7 is the first opportunity for the concept of promotional/bonus characters to come up. We already know that 7 is coming in September thanks to Amiibo theory. September is also the 35th Mario anniversary. As we've talked about in the past, a vast majority of third party characters are promotional themselves or commerate some kind of anniversary. Under this string of thought, it potentially suggests not one but two Mario characters in September. As I've talked about before, Waluigi and Geno make the most sense to me with Waluigi being the promotional character and Geno being 77 and pack 7.
Fast forward to November. Earlier we talked about how the X Box Series X was releasing in November and how releasing Chief during this time would make logical sense, especially with the Banjo Amiibo. But wait... Isn't this super heavy handed advertising to a competitor? Exactly so Nintendo would likely want to balance this out. This is where the hypothetical promotional character comes in. This character would likely be used to promote Nintendo's big upcoming holiday game. As I said the other day, I think it's going to be DK related and, honestly, Dixie would fit this bill pretty well.
Now for the current stopping point, Byleth in probably December or January. Thanks to Imran Khan, we know that Byleth was supposed to be a December 2019 announcement that was delayed for some unknown reason. Based on this, another December announcement (or even release) is totally possible this year. If the new Amiibo release is only one character (both versions of Byleth), I feel this potentially suggests 9 wouldn't have a bonus/promotional character. Because Nintendo already has had it's own pack this Season with Min Min, this suggests to me that this is a Namco rep. Coincidentally, Byleth is a medieval fantasy RPG swordsman and the most likely Namco rep is one too: Lloyd. Beyond this, December is the 25th anniversary of Tales, making it an ideal time to release him.
As of right now, my other predictions for the rest of the pass are, of course, Dante and Crash. If Nintendo were to fill the full four hypothetical remaining dummy slots, this would suggest that both would have a prrrrrrromotionial Nintendo character tied to them as well but I don't think there's enough clues just yet to suggest who they may be or with who. Like I covered the other day, the other three franchises that would potentially have promotional characters under this model are Mother, Kid Icarus, and Kirby but, without more information, we're kind of stuck until Nintendo gets off its ass and actually announces their future plans.
