I also keep getting these statements that they were “teased”. Besides hype fantasy scenes that included Lance and a bunch of other people he didn’t battle. What hints?
These are some of the teasers at the end of the PWC episodes
- The first teaser is shown right after Ash enters the Ultra Class, in the Iris episode. As you can see, there are two very recognizable trainers (Volkner and Bea), and Ash fought against both of them in the future episodes. The other three trainers don't see to represent any of the game trainers, they are probably just random background characters. There's a girl with some small Pokémon (Jigglypuff?), maybe it's a homage to Blue from Pokémon Adventures.
- The second teaser is shown right after Ash beat Volkner, who was shown in the previous teaser
- The third teaser is shown right after Ash beat Bea, who was also shown in the two previous teasers
- The fourth teaser is the most recent one, and was shown after Ash defeated Marnie
Six characters have already been teased as Ash's opponents, and he already defeated three of them (Volkner, Bea and Raihan). The three remaining characters are Lance, Cynthia and Leon, which suggests they were going to be Ash's three opponents during the M8 tournament.
As it turns out, Lance and Ash won't battle during the tournament, since the writers decided to throw a curveball and have Ash fight Steven, probably to make the tournament more unpredictable (or because Steven is more popular).
Also, it's not uncommon for Ash's rivals to battle each other in the league arcs (Paul vs Barry, Tierno vs Sawyer, Alain vs Trevor, Gladion vs Kiawe), so the writers are probably going for a Lance vs Leon rematch in the second round.
This leaves Cynthia and Leon as possible opponents for Ash. What do you think is more likely for the semi-finals? (1) Ash could fight Cynthia, a very popular, well stablished champion that appeared in multiple episodes and was shown in all the teasers since Ultra Class or (2) Ash could fight Iris, a trainer that have previosly appeared and been defeated in a single episode, and who has never appeared in any of the teasers.
Ash did interact with Iris in the tournament last episode, but they never expressed the intention of fighting each other again. Bringing Cynthia down to her last Pokémon and forcing her to Mega Evolve is a great achievement by itself, and everyone should be proud of Iris for that, but she's fighting Cynthia of all people. Iris just didn't get enough development to surpass Cynthia in an organic way, it would feel very unnatural for her.
