Why is Team Rocket Returning? [Leak Discussion + Speculation]

WARNING: This thread may contain spoilers for Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon, if the theory discussed ends up being true. Reader's disgression is advised.

So, for those of you who are wondering why Team Rocket is seemingly making their second comeback in Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon, boy do I have something to share with you.

A while back, some internet rumours began spreading about content in Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon. Now, I won't share all the details, just what's relevant here. In the leak, it was stated that:

• A “returning” Team will take over the Aether Paradise and steal Lillie’s Cosmog/Cosmoem
• In order to secure the building more executives and team members will be brought in (possibly from another dimension) as you progress

Now, even before this new reveal of Team Rocket, the "returning Team" was speculated to be Team Rocket under a new name, which people have been calling "Team RR", or "Rainbow Rocket". I wasn't able to find the reasoning behind this, but I believe it comes from combining Team Rocket and Project Rainbow, which is what Pokémon Sun and Moon were known as internally. This seems to line up with two pieces of evidence we can see from the Ultra Sun download card that appeared online not long ago.



If we look at this image of the Pokémon Ultra Sun download card that I've edited, we can see the two Team Rocket hints hidden within in. (The Ultra Moon card also has these hints, but the right side is cut off in the image and you can't see the focal point of the hint in it.)

The first hint is obvious, in the bottom-left, with a splash-screen of a battle starting against a female Rocket grunt. In the image, we can also see that there is a rainbow hue in the background, which solidifies the "Rainbow Rocket" connection.

Over to the middle-right is where the bigger clue lies - a screenshot of the player standing in front of a large black building with a rainbow symbol on the front. Even though the symbol is being covered by Decidueye's wing, it is very clearly a rainbow-coloured Team Rocket R. This seems to be the building that needs to be secured, according to the leaks.

Now, what does this all mean? Well, the popular theory going around is that Team Rocket has reformed in the Alola region, where they work in the shadows to track down Cosmog/Cosmoem, a Pokemom capable of opening Ultra Wormholes. They successfully capture Cosmog/Cosmoem, and when the threat of the player arrives, (who Giovanni knows should not be taken lightly from his experience in the Gen I games) they use it to bring the evil team leaders from other regions into Alola. But they're not just your normal team leaders - they're from alternate timelines where they were able to triumph over the player, and as such are much more power-crazy. An alternate version of this theory keeps everything above the same, except the evil team leaders are just their normal selves, possibly from a timeline where the player doesn't exist, or from the timelines we know in the games, but at a point before the player began ruining their plans.

"But Pixel," I hear you cry in agony as you shake your electronic device wildly with your rapid typing, "these are just leaks. How can we know if this is real!?"

Well, for my final point on why I think this leak is very likely to be true, the person who leaked it is the same person who leaked the designs of Decidueye, Incineroar, and Primarina, months before their official reveal. If that's not a sign that this guy knows what he's doing, I don't know what is. Note that this person was told to stop leaking by the Pokémon Company after the first infraction, but this leak was tweeted out by this person's friends, who he'd told instead of leaking outright.

So, what do you think about these leaks? Please note that everything I've said here is pure speculation based on what we have and what we've been told.

 

This is a valid point, and has been brought up to argue against this theory before. However, there is a counter to this in the form of a screenshot that was included with the leaks. In it, we see the player, Lillie, Lusamine, Guzma, and Phyco (URS) all standing together at the Altar of the Sunne/Moone. This seems to be from the same point in the game where Guzma states "Maybe when you bring out the best in others, it helps you find the best in yourself, too, huh?", as seen in the trailer "Darkness Approaches the Alola Region". Since the Japanese version of this trailer words Guzma's line a bit differently, with something along the lines of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend", it is believed that, although Team Skull and the Aether Foundation are still evil teams to begin with, they team up with the player and the URS, in order to take down a larger threat, which could be Rainbow Rocket.