After letting it roll around in my head for a bit, here's my take.
For starters, I think people need to stop taking the presence or absence of Spirits for new games so seriously, and that goes for myself as well. People are quick to point out how suspicious it is that Three Houses and Astral Chain have nothing, but they tend to forget that other notable games that likely won't be netting a newcomer any time soon didn't receive any Spirits either, such as Yoshi's Crafted World, Mario Maker 2, and Luigi's Mansion 3. There's not really any noticeable pattern in how they're choosing these Spirits, and it seems like Nintendo picks and chooses whatever the heck it feels like advertising. This ranges from Tetris and Daemon X Machina to Link's Awakening and SwSh.
Second, no, I do not think this deconfirms a Gen 8 rep. I'm not even sure it's as lethal to Zacian and Zamazenta's chances as we initially thought it was. The entire purpose of these new Spirits was to promote the release of SwSh, and the Tweet that brought us the announcement practically says just that. The popular belief is that any franchise/game that has a chance of getting a newcomer would have its Spirits held off until the associated character released. The only problem with this belief is that it doesn't really make sense if Nintendo wishes to promote these games. What good does it do to save every SwSh Spirit for the release of a new character if the earliest possible time that character could get added is four months after their games launched? It would still promote the games, yes, but it's not nearly as effective as releasing them close to launch.
As for Zacian and Zamazenta, all I'm gonna say is that they along with the starters are the most recognizable faces of Gen VIII. Any kind of Spirit event focusing on SwSh was bound to have the starters, and the boxart Legendaries are a close second. It's not that surprising seeing them here. As always, it depends on whether or not you think Spirits fully deconfirm a character.
I could be wrong, but this doesn't feel like a compensation for possibly not getting SwSh content in Ultimate. This feels like more of a quick ad for a new game, and that's exactly how I'm going to interpret it for now. I'm not giving up just yet, and if you're someone who truly wants one or even both of these Legendaries in Smash, then I would implore you to keep supporting them. Giving up only ensures that the dream never comes true.
The timing of all this is a bit of a bummer, as we were just about to start discussing these two more seriously. Regardless, I hope there's still plenty of you left who are interested in sharing ideas and other concepts related to Zacian and Zamazenta.
