Okay guys, I figured I'd just put this into one relatively lengthy theory post. To cut straight to the point, I believe that there may be some very circumstantial evidence pointing toward Celica being a DLC character.
As I said, this is, of course, mostly circumstantial evidence. It could all just be a bunch of silly coincidences that happen to line up. But hey, what's the harm in speculation?
For this theory to stand, one major assumption does need to be made, and that is that having a spirit in the base game eliminates the chance of a character becoming DLC. Some may point out that Lucas and Mewtwo had trophies in Smash 4 but still became DLC, but a major difference is that trophies don't affect gameplay while spirits do. This, in my mind, makes them relatively incomparable.
This is further bolstered by the presence of Fighter Spirits, or spirits of playable characters. These spirits are not able to be equipped, and seem to be the equivalent of fighter trophies here.
However, it should be noted that Piranha Plant, a confirmed DLC character, does NOT have any spirits dedicated to itself. As well, some may point out that certain fighters have regular spirits based on themselves. These include a Mario Tennis Aces version of Luigi, Kaptain K. Rool, and the Wii Fit Trainer doing various yoga poses. However, these are considered variants separate from the fighter spirits. It's not listed as "Luigi," but as "Luigi (Mario Tennis Aces)." It's not "King K. Rool," it's "Kaptain K. Rool." It's not "Wii Fit Trainer," it's "Tree." It's not "Delivery," it's "DiGiorno."
In essence, this theory assumes that if a character's spirit is listed as it's normal name, and not a variant, the character is out of the running for DLC.
Now that we've established the ground rules of the theory, let's move onto the character in question: Celica.
For those unaware, Celica is one of the Fire Emblem franchise's main lords. She stars alongside Alm in the second game in the series, Fire Emblem Gaiden, as well as its remake, the fifteenth game, Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia. As of now, the latter is the most recently released mainline Fire Emblem title. She utilizes both offensive and support based magic, as well as swordplay, though she is far more adept at the former, and, save for Warriors where she was a last minute addition, she has always focused more on magic over swordplay.
Additionally, her magic is very unorthodox when compared to other mages in other games in the franchise. Gaiden and Shadows of Valentia didn't have its magic users cast through the use of tomes; the casting was done freehand. Instead, magic used its caster's own life force as its fuel. The stronger the spell, the stronger the toll it would take on the caster's health. This further accentuated the glass cannon status mages had in the series.
So, what points to Celica being DLC?
Simply put, there's a veritable dearth of Shadows of Valentia content in the game, which is odd for the most recent entry in the series. The game came out only five months after Pokémon Sun and Pokémon Moon, and a good amount of time before ARMS, Splatoon 2, and Xenoblade Chronicles 2, all of which have considerably more content in the game.
And it's not as though Fire Emblem itself was hurting for content in general. The franchise received a whopping new ten remixes, numerous spirits, and even a newcomer in the form of Chrom as an Echo Fighter. And yet, Gaiden and Shadows of Valentia received almost nothing.
The games received only two spirits, being an evolving spirit set: a joint spirit of Young Alm and Celica, and the evolved Alm and Celica joint spirit. In the music department, the games got the Brawl remix of With Mila's Divine Protection and the Smash 4 remix of the Gaiden Fight Theme, as well as four ported songs from Shadows of Valentia. These were March to Deliverance, Lord of a Dead Empire, The Scions' Dance in Purgatory, and Those Who Challenge Gods. Notably missing is the fan favorite final map theme, Twilight of the Gods.
But...the choice of music to port over is incredibly suspicious. March to Deliverance is Alm's first map theme, mirroring Celica's, With Mila's Divine Protection. Lord of a Dead Empire and The Scions' Dance in Purgatory are the fight themes for Emperor Rudolf and Berkut, respectively...two bosses on Alm's side. The final song, Those Who Challenge Gods, is the variant of the fight theme that plays in Acts V and VI, making them not tied to either Alm or Celica.
In other words, three of the four songs ported from Shadows of Valentia are specific to Alm's route, with the fourth song being neutral. None of the songs are tied to Celica specifically. The Shadows of Valentia version of With Mila's Divine Protection is absent, as well as another fan favorite song, The Sacrifice and the Saint (Celica's second map theme), both of which are integrally tied to Celica.
Why does this matter?
One big reason why this matters has to do with what each DLC pack contains. Each of the five packs of DLC in the Fighter Pass contains one character, one stage, and several songs. It's entirely possible that the "missing" songs are not present because they are tied to Celica's DLC pack. We could very easily get, say, a music pack that includes With Mila's Divine Protection, The Sacrifice and the Saint, and Twilight of the Gods, all fan-favorite songs, as well as maybe The Ark of Dawn and Unity to round it off to a nice five.
But what about the Alm & Celica spirit?
As stated above, this would be considered a variant spirit. There is an "Alm & Celica" joint spirit, but NOT a "Celica" spirit. If one assumes that spirits cannot become DLC, then Celica is still in the running.
Why would Nintendo, who is picking the DLC, pick Celica over someone from Three Houses?
There are two main reasons why a Three Houses character, like Edelgard, Byleth, Dimitri, or Claude, may be skipped over. The first of which is that, like with Rex in Xenoblade Chronicles 2, a Three Houses character may, in fact, be too new to make the cut. If a late 2017 release got a mere consolation prize, then it's possible that a game that won't release until spring of 2019 may also be far too late.
The second reason is one of popularity. Putting in a character from an unreleased game could be considered a gamble. There is no guarantee that the game or character will be well received. And with something like DLC, which needs to stand and sell on its own, it's better to go for something with proven popularity.
...And Celica is INCREDIBLY popular. According to the second Choose Your Legends poll held for Fire Emblem Heroes, in which players could vote for their favorite characters so they could get special alternate variants in the game, Celica received an astounding 36,302 votes. This put her first in the Women's Division, and second over all, only behind Hector by about 2,000 votes. While Ike, Lucina, Lyn, and Roy were excluded from the second poll due to winning the first poll, Celica managed to out-score Marth, Chrom, Robin, and Corrin, all of whom are in Smash already. She also received nearly double the amount of votes that her costar, Alm, did.
This was likely not due to Recency Bias, either, as Alm and Celica were the exceptions, and not the rule. Most other Shadows of Valentia characters scored comparatively lower, as the poll was conducted more than half a year after the game released. The poll was also held in January of 2018, long before Ultimate was even announced, for reference. Celica also has three versions of herself playable in Heroes: the normal version, her Choose Your Legends fan-voted variant, and a Fallen Heroes variant. Comparatively, Alm only has his normal version playable, and no other Shadows of Valentia-based character has an alternate version. As a gacha game, the developers know that popularity sells, so Celica having additional variants is proof of her popularity.
And most notably of all, this wouldn't be the first time Celica was added to a crossover roster by Nintendo's request. During an interview focused on Fire Emblem Warriors, the developers specifically stated that certain characters were added late into development at the request of both Intelligent Systems and Nintendo themselves. In a later interview, it was revealed that Celica was a last-minute addition, which is seen by her utilizing Marth's moveset with magical special attacks and how she has no story presence in the game, as well as a few unpolished animation quirks.
By connecting the dots, we can see that Nintendo specifically requested that Celica be added to Fire Emblem Warriors. Seeing as Nintendo is also picking the DLC characters, and that Ultimate has, thus far, been seemingly avoiding things relating to Celica and Shadows of Valentia in general, this is a point in her favor.
So in review, Celica:
Is a proven popular character
Is not disconfirmed by the Spirits DLC theory
Has been added to a game at Nintendo's request in the past
Is from a game that has little content in Ultimate, especially in the music department, and even more so in music related to her specifically
Add onto all of these that Shadows of Valentia has numerous locales that can be used as stages, such as Duma Tower, the Temple of Mila, the Zofian Seaway, Grieth's Citadel, Ram Village, the Sluice Gate, the Swamps of Duma, Fear Mountain, the Altar of Duma, and Zofia Castle, and I think Celica is a prime candidate for DLC.
As stated above, all of this is based on, admittedly, circumstantial evidence. Celica is far from a lock for DLC, but at the very least, I believe she is a strong option, even with my obvious biases aside. I do think she's a character people are heavily sleeping on.
And hey, if all of this is just a series of coincidences, that's fine. Speculation is all in good fun, after all.
Thoughts?
