Pokemon Journeys Humbles Ash with His First Big Loss

Pokemon Journeys: The Series‘ newest episode surprised fans by humbling Ash with his first big loss in the World Coronation Series. The newest series has forgone the traditional Gym Leader route this time around in favor of having Ash taking on a number of different trainers across the various regions in the hopes of taking on his new rival for the series, Galar League Champion Leon. But while Ash Ketchum has seen major victories through other regions in the past, it’s clear that Galar’s trainers are going to be a much tougher challenge than he might have expected.

Episode 34 of the series sees Ash take on another notable member of Galar’s Gym Challenge, Bea, and Ash goes all in on the battle with the expectation that he’s going to win considering that he has been on a hot winning streak in each of his battles in the World Coronation Series thus far. But soon after challenging Bea officially, Ash Ketchum realizes how over confident he truly was as Bea hands him a pretty decisive loss.

Taking on Bea’s Hawlucha and Grapploct in the newest episode with his Riolu and Galarian Farfetch’d, Ash Ketchum is unable to do any critical damage against the fighting type Stow-on-Side Gym Leader, and ultimately it leads to a decisive loss against her as neither of his Pokemon is able to make a dent. It’s such a bad loss that Ash really can’t help but sit in it for a moment shortly after the battle.

We have seen a much different Ash Ketchum in this series as it’s been confirmed as a direct continuation from his adventures in the past, and he went into the battle with Bea without much thought. He believed he would get another easy victory after defeating Korrina in a previous episode, but now it’s clear he needs to go back to the drawing board.

Did you expect to see Ash Ketchum break his winning streak in the World Coronation Series? Were you surprised to see this loss was handed to him by another Galar trainer? Where do you think Pokemon Journeys: The Series will take Ash Ketchum from here? Let us know your thoughts in the comments or you can even reach out to me directly about all things animated and other cool stuff @Valdezology on Twitter!