Every Gym Leader in Pokemon Generation 8 (Galar)

Four of Galar’s eight Gyms have two people attached to them, and they arrive there by two different routes. Two are split by cartridge – buy Sword and you fight one person, buy Shield and you fight somebody else, in the same building, for a different badge. At the other two nobody is split at all. The job simply changes owner, once while you are still playing and once after the credits, and the games make remarkably little fuss about either.

Pokemon Sword and Shield arrived on November 15, 2019, in Japan, North America, Europe, Australia, Korea, Hong Kong and Taiwan on the same day, and their first structural decision was to put the Gym back. The generation before had abolished it, replacing the whole apparatus with island trials and grand trials fought against trial captains and island kahunas. Galar reinstated the Gym and then inflated it: ticketed crowds, floodlights, live commentary, and a buried Power Spot that swells a Pokemon to roughly the height of the stands. Shigeru Ohmori has said the region is modelled on the United Kingdom because these games were about strength.

What follows is every person who holds one of those eight posts, in circuit order, across both cartridges. Two of them do not appear on the roster the official site prints.

Milo

Bulbapedia records Milo’s level 20 Eldegoss as the highest-level Pokemon any first Gym Leader in the core series has fielded – the same job Brock held among Kanto’s eight original Gym Leaders, where the ceiling was a level 14 Onix. Milo opens with a level 19 Gossifleur, then Dynamaxes the Eldegoss and swings ordinary Max Moves with it, because Eldegoss has no Gigantamax form to reach for. His League Card supplies the in-universe reason he was put first: born the son of farmers, he cannot bring himself to go hard on anyone weaker than he is.

Before the battle there are sheep. Twenty Wooloo have to be driven through four consecutive sections onto mats laid in front of straw bale blockades, with a Yamper obstructing the flock everywhere but the first stretch and two working in tandem at the end. His rare League Card notes that those hay bales weigh over 770 pounds apiece, and that the sight of the whole town chasing Milo, who is chasing a stray Wooloo, with a Yamper alongside, has stopped surprising anybody in Turffield.

The hillside carving above the town appears to be modelled on the Cerne Abbas Giant in Dorset, a chalk figure known chiefly for an 11-metre anatomical detail. Galar’s version declines to reproduce it and has the figure firing an attack from its mouth instead.

Nessa

The line everyone repeats about Nessa’s Drednaw – that its jaws can crush a boulder in a single bite – comes from the wrong game. That is Pokemon Scarlet’s entry, written for a different region three years later. The Pokedex she actually appears in says the jaws shear through steel rods, which is arguably worse, and the official Sword and Shield site adds that some trainers give up and release the species back into the wild once they realise what they have taken on. This is the signature Pokemon of a working fashion model.

Hulbury is Gym 2, and the mission is a maze walled off by pillars of falling water that the player switches on and off with colour-coded controls. Nessa sends out Goldeen at level 22, Arrokuda at 23, and the Drednaw at 24, which she Dynamaxes as soon as the game allows. Beating her produces TM36 and the Water Badge, and raises the ceiling on what can be caught in the wild to level 30.

Her own rare League Card records that plenty of people assume the Gym Leader Nessa and the model Nessa are two separate women, because her manner changes completely between the two jobs. The animated short Early-Evening Waves, which aired on April 17, 2020, has Chairman Rose advising her to pick one. She has not.

Kabu

Kabu is the only person on this list who is not from Galar. His League Card says he was invited over from Hoenn, and the detail sits there unremarked. What the card also records is that he lost the Motostoke job at one point and spent years getting it back – the official site says he gloriously reclaimed it.

He is the third Gym on the circuit and the one reference sites and difficulty rankings tend to name as the first real wall. His mission is a scoring exercise rather than a puzzle: a Gym Trainer fights alongside the player against a single wild Pokemon, catching it is worth two points and knocking it out one, and five points opens the door. Behind it, Ninetales and Arcanine arrive at level 25, then a level 27 Centiskorch Gigantamaxes into G-Max Centiferno, which binds whatever it hits for four or five turns and, unlike Fire Spin, does not let go early if Centiskorch faints or switches out. His is the first mandatory Gym battle in the game where a Pokemon Gigantamaxes rather than merely Dynamaxes. The Fire Badge and TM38 follow.

The player meets him beforehand training in Galar Mine No. 2, where he explains that he spars against the wild Water types living down there, on the grounds that they are the thing most likely to beat him. His rare League Card preserves an old interview with a younger Kabu, in which he admits to a bit of a losing streak.

Bea (Pokemon Sword Exclusive)

Bea has trained in martial arts since she was very small, and the official material makes a point of her stoicism – she very rarely shows what she is feeling. Her rare League Card turns that into an open question: who has seen Bea smile, her family, her Pokemon, or somebody else entirely. The anime eventually answers it. She smiles halfway through losing.

In Sword she holds Stow-on-Side, and reaching her means a fairground ride. Three sloped courses, a giant teacup, steering by spinning the control stick, and spring-loaded boxing gloves along the edges of the second and third that fling the teacup away like pinball bumpers whenever it drifts too close. Hitmontop and Pangoro come out at level 34, Sirfetch’d at 35, then a Machamp at 36 that Gigantamaxes. TM42 and the Fighting Badge change hands.

Splitting one Gym between two people by cartridge was not a Galar invention. Black and White had already done it at Opelucid City, where Unova’s Gym Leaders included a Dragon specialist whose identity changed with the version, and both of them handed over the same Legend Badge. Galar is where the split started producing two different badges instead. Bea’s age, incidentally, has never been confirmed anywhere: Bulbapedia lists it as unknown, and the strategy guide’s concept-art caption only puts her in school clothes.

Allister (Pokemon Shield Exclusive)

Nobody knows how old Allister is. The official material gives ages for other people in this region readily enough, and for him it says only that he became a Gym Leader very young. The one age ever attached to him is four, when he says an accident left him able to see deceased Ghost-type Pokemon, and that is a thing that happened to him rather than a statement about now. Descriptions putting him at roughly ten are inventing it.

He holds Stow-on-Side in Shield, which means the same teacup and the same three courses, with ghoulish hands along the walls in place of boxing gloves. Galarian Yamask and Mimikyu open at level 34, Cursola follows at 35, and a level 36 Gengar Gigantamaxes into G-Max Terror, whose flavour text explains the mechanic with unusual literalism: the Pokemon stands on its opponent’s shadow so the opponent cannot leave. The Ghost Badge and TM77 come with the win.

His promotional tagline is the silent boy of mystery, and the official bio is careful to say the mask goes on around other people generally, rather than because of anything particular underneath. He keeps at least a hundred spares of the identical design in case the one he is wearing comes off in public.

Opal

“Question! All righty then… How old am I?” The honest answer is 88, and if you give it she concedes the point – you are not wrong, she says, but you could have been a little more sensitive. The answer the game rewards with a stat boost is 16. Bulbapedia’s walkthrough table explains the discrepancy without embarrassment: 88 is correct, but Opal prefers the other one.

She inherited Ballonlea from her mother at 18 and has run it for 70 years, which makes the mission she designed less eccentric than it looks. She says outright that it doubles as an audition for a successor. Six questions are put to challengers in all – three by her Gym Trainers Annette, Teresa and Theodora during the mission, three by Opal herself at the ends of turns one, four and eight of the fight – and a wrong answer does not merely fail to help, it lowers your stats. Leon once got one out of three. Sonia got all three and was failed anyway, for giving up too easily.

Galarian Weezing and Mawile appear at level 36, Togekiss at 37, and a level 38 Alcremie Gigantamaxes to use G-Max Finale, which heals the Pokemon on its own side of the field. In a one-on-one battle that is nobody but itself. TM87 and the Fairy Badge follow, and Opal goes back to inspecting challengers for signs of pink.

Bede

Somebody interrupts the final of the Champion Cup to demand a battle, and it is the boy the league threw out. Bede spent the first half of the story collecting Wishing Stars for Chairman Rose at the request of Rose’s secretary, borrowed Rose’s Copperajah to speed the work along, and used it to knock a chunk out of the ancient mural at Stow-on-Side. Rose disqualified him and took the Copperajah back. Opal, watching him sulk about it in Hammerlocke, decided he was exactly what she had been auditioning for.

The switch reshaped his team around a type he had never used. As a rival his Pokemon were Psychic; as a Gym Leader he fields Mawile, Gardevoir, a Galarian Rapidash and a Hatterene that can Gigantamax, most of them now carrying Fairy typing alongside the Psychic they already had. His trainer class changes to Gym Leader once the player holds all eight badges, and the game keeps him there through the post-game and into the Crown Tundra’s tournament.

One point is worth being exact about: no player ever receives a Fairy Badge from Bede. Opal is the badge’s only giver, and beating Bede produces his rare League Card rather than anything a challenger could put in a badge case. He holds the post without ever handing out the thing the post exists to hand out.

Gordie (Pokemon Sword Exclusive)

Circhester is a spa town modelled on Bath, and in Sword its Gym is run by a man whose mother runs the same Gym in Shield. Gordie chose Rock rather than inherit Melony’s Ice, and the argument that followed is described in-game as having divided the town.

The mission is three mazes floored with invisible pits, navigated using a dowsing rod called a Trap Detector; falling drops you back to the last solid platform rather than the start, and the third maze is additionally blotted out by a sandstorm. Barbaracle and Shuckle wait at level 40, Stonjourner at 41, and a level 42 Coalossal Gigantamaxes into G-Max Volcalith, which carries on taking a sixth of a non-Rock opponent’s maximum HP at the end of each of the next four turns. TM48 and the Rock Badge come with it, and the catch ceiling moves to level 50.

Pokemon Masters EX later built an entire event around the family rift and called it Severely Strained Relations, which is a remarkable amount of attention for a quarrel about type coverage. In Shield, Gordie cannot be fought at all – not the story, not the post-game tournaments, not the Galarian Star Tournament – and appears exactly once, as a figure in the background of his mother’s League Card photograph.

Melony (Pokemon Shield Exclusive)

Most published accounts of Melony’s team include a Beartic. It is not hers. The Beartic belongs to Gym Trainer Alexander, who fields it at level 39 in the third maze of the mission. What she actually brings is Frosmoth and a Galarian Darmanitan at level 40, an Eiscue at 41, and a Lapras at 42 that Gigantamaxes into G-Max Resonance – Aurora Veil in all but name, halving incoming physical and special damage for five turns, or eight if the Lapras is holding a Light Clay. The Ice Badge and TM27 follow, on the same catch-cap rung her son’s badge occupies.

She is the only Gym Leader on record to have beaten Raihan, who is otherwise treated as the strongest Gym Leader in Galar.

Her Normal League Card frames the business with her son as hearsay rather than fact: many quietly speculate, it says, that her harsh battle style comes from a fight with him. The rare card goes further and then immediately retreats, reporting that the two of them hardly see each other now, that Melony supposedly became the first member of Gordie’s fan club anyway, and that his complicated expression in their photograph together may just be one’s own imagination. Official concept art gives her five children. The games name one.

Piers

Every stadium in Galar is built over a Power Spot, and Spikemuth is not built over anything. There is no arena, no floodlit turf, and no way for a Pokemon to grow to the height of a building. Chairman Rose offered to relocate the Gym somewhere that could manage all three. Piers declined, and became the one leader in the region who never uses the mechanic the region is famous for.

His Gym mission is accordingly not a mission but a street fight: a gauntlet of Team Yell grunts strung down an alley, with the town’s main gate shuttered behind them. He fights with Scrafty at level 44, Malamar and Skuntank at 45 and Obstagoon at 46, none of them enlarged, and hands over TM85 and the Dark Badge. His refusal is not merely characterisation: the Galarian Star Tournament’s rules exempt exactly three competitors from the compulsory Dynamax, and Piers is one of them, listed alongside the two men who spend the post-game causing the crisis.

His rank within Team Yell is Captain, a title nobody says aloud – it survives only in the name of his personal battle theme, which is itself unusual, since he is the one Galar leader who does not share the standard Gym Leader music. He is a singer-songwriter with a band called the Maximizers. Obstagoon is in the band.

Marnie

She turns the job down. Piers offers Spikemuth to his younger sister the moment his own Gym battle ends, and her answer is on the record: “I love you, but my answer is a big, fat ‘NO’! I mean, when I end up becomin’ Champion, I won’t be able to be a Gym Leader!” She then loses the Champion Cup semifinal and reconsiders. Only after the player takes the title does she turn up at home asking whether she looks suitably wicked as a Gym Leader, with a standing offer of a match.

Team Yell, who spend the entire story barricading the town gate and heckling rival challengers, are revealed to be the Spikemuth Gym’s own Gym Trainers in costume, thinning the field on her behalf. The town they are defending has a population of 29. Her Morpeko was caught by Piers and given to her when she was five.

The odd part is what the game never does. Battle her at Spikemuth and her trainer class still reads Pokemon Trainer, with her old rival sprite; she is labelled a Gym Leader only in Wyndon, at tournaments held somewhere else entirely. She does not inherit her brother’s principles either. At Wyndon she Gigantamaxes her Grimmsnarl and says so plainly – he might not use it, but she will.

Raihan

Ten matches against Leon, ten defeats, and his own League Card calls it a ten-nil losing streak. Raihan holds Hammerlocke, the eighth and last Gym, and his badge fight is a Double Battle, which no other Galar Gym asks for – the first since Tate and Liza to demand one for a badge, and the last until Ryme, in the Paldea region where all eight of Paldea’s Gym Leaders can be visited in whatever order a player fancies.

The mission sets three named trainers on him first – Sebastian, Camilla and Aria – each fought in a Double Battle and each running a different weather condition, a warm-up for what Raihan does with it. Only two of the four Pokemon he brings are actually Dragons. Flygon comes in at level 47 and Duraludon at 48, Gigantamaxing into G-Max Depletion, which cuts two PP from the last move its target used. Gigalith and Sandaconda both arrive at 46 to run a sandstorm, and only Gigalith collects the special defence bonus, because that goes to Rock types and Sandaconda is pure Ground. Beating him produces TM99, the Dragon Badge, and the end of the catch limit.

He posts constantly. His rare card says he started taking selfies so he would never forget how losing felt, and the normal one notes that occasionally the photo is just a sandstorm. His Rotom Phone puts Hammerlocke Stadium in the background of his Gigantamax selfie even when the battle is at Wyndon.