Wurmple Is Pokemon Go's Greatest Mystery Yet

An unlikely Pokemon is at the heart of Pokemon Go's latest conspiracy theories.

When Pokemon Go came out in 2016, a large portion of the fanbase spent a disproportionate amount of time looking for missing Pokemon. Perhaps Ditto could be unlocked by tapping buttons in a specific order. Or maybe Mew was hiding out in the South American country of Guyana, its alleged birthplace in the original Pokemon games.

Of course, all of these turned out to be fantasies, but Pokemon Go has stuck plenty of other Easter eggs into the game. For instance, you can catch Pikachu as a Starter Pokemon, and you can trigger Eevee evolutions (one time) by naming Eevee after certain trainers from the anime series.

Now, Pokemon Go sleuths are pondering a new mystery: how to make Wurmple evolve into one of its two potential forms. In the main series games, Wurmple evolves into either Silcoon or Cascoon based on its personality value or encryption content, randomly generated numbers that determine a Pokemon's various characteristics. Players can't see a Pokemon's personality value, so Wurmple's evolution is basically random in the main series games.

However, many fans are convinced that there's a way to guarantee that Wurmple will evolve into one of its two forms. But no one can figure out how to do it. Players have tried changing Wurmple's name to May and Jessie (two anime characters who owned Wurmple that eventually evolved into different Pokemon) to no avail. They've also tested evolving Wurmple in different types of weather, or using Wurmple with different IVs, or even at different longitude and latitude coordinates. But so far, nothing has worked.

Our money is on Wurmple's evolution being completely random, just like it was in the games. And since it only takes a few candies to evolve Wurmple, it shouldn't take too much effort to get both of Wurmple's evolved forms. However, our skepticism won't stop many Pokemon Go players from searching and guessing...at least until the next mystery comes along.