How to Get Legendary Pokemon in Pokemon Go

Last week, ComicBook.com gave Pokemon Go players their first glimpse of the Legendary Bird trio and Mewtwo, via a datamine that revealed their Pokedex pictures. Yesterday, a Redditor posted code data from Pokemon Go on the subreddit /r/pokemongodev that revealed some new information about the Legendary Pokemon Articuno, Zapdos, Moltres and Mewtwo.

So how do you catch Legendary Pokemon in Pokemon Go? Here's what we know. Based on the information, the four will not appear in the wild. All of their data is missing a "Base Capture Rate", which indicates that they can't be caught in the wild. That's a pretty good indicator that all four Pokemon (plus Mew) are being reserved for special events or prizes of some kind.

So if you can't catch Mewtwo and the other Legendary Pokemon in the wild, how do you get them? Well, the popular theory is that they're being saved for "raids", a timed event in which players team up to take down a particularly strong Pokemon. We saw a glimpse of that in the first trailer for Pokemon Go, but Niantic has been tight-lipped on the subject since.

Some players are also speculating that the Legendaries could be reserved as some sort of reward for holding a gym or being a top ranked player on your team. Of course, Pokemon Go doesn't currently have a ranking system or way to track how long you've held a gym, so those theories seem more like fanciful speculation than hard fact.

What we do know is that Niantic Labs is hosting a Pokemon Go panel at SDCC next week. With a worldwide rollout underway, it's certainly possible we'll get more details on how and when the Legendary Pokemon will be revealed.