Honestly, I don't think any regularly speculated character would raise the bar anymore. The big 3rd party floodgates have been opened since Brawl, and the direct competitor ones are now opened with Banjo. Master Chief, Kratos, Ratchet, any big 3rd party; the fact these aren't in the realm of impossible anymore kind of brings down the bar-raising aspect of it imo. Even characters with their own company-related barriers like Sora, while hype, would feel almost pseudo-expected at this point.
I think to truly raise the bar, Sakurai would have to go beyond his already established stated rules (as in not fan-made ones). The thing is the only one that would actually break the internet is the 4th party one, and I don't think he wants to do that, nor do a lot of people want to see Smash become that.
So what if he chose a character on the border? Someone that technically didn't originate in a game, but in a space adjacent to games and has since gotten several to the point a major gaming company has a stake in their ownership. A juggernaut of memes, music (to the point of getting invited to Coachella before it got cancelled), and advertising with some of the most unlikely cross-overs both in the game world and out. Someone with several places to pull a moveset from.
If you still don't know who I'm talking about, well....
She would ABSOLUTELY break the internet, but it wouldn't just be hype obviously. There'd be a lot of salt, a lot of "ew anime", a lot of "technically not a game character!", some "meme pick!" and other such toxicity. A character that would probably be more divisive than even the most controversial regularly speculated characters. And for the non-extremely online people, a character that would probably mean absolutely nothing to them.
It's not gonna happen, but I genuinely think there's no (game) character that would cause a bigger reaction, both good and bad and not just your standard loud hype like what Chief would give us. You'd have to start adding in characters like Goku to go beyond that.
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