I was a bit dubious about this episode when I saw it, since it wasn't too far off from when Ash had let his Charizard go, and it seemed to me that the writers were just manufacturing excuses to get rid of as many members of Ash's present team as possible in order to make room for the newer Johto pokemon (the really glaring thing being that Ash's pokemon-catching pattern in Johto proved to be pretty much a carbon copy of that of Kanto - the grass, fire and water starters for that particular region, a bug type which was good as dropped fairly early on, and a normal/flying type, whose only real distinction was being a shiny). Without having read any spoilers in advance, I knew the second that the rest of the old Squirtle Squad showed up that Squirtle would be on his way out too. I'm actually surprised that Ash wound up keeping Bulbasaur with him for as long as he did. That said, it was nice that this episode acknowledged the special kinship that Squirtle had shared with Bulbasaur in particular for all that time (it was touching when they said their goodbyes), and on the plus side, Charizard and Squirtle didn't end up falling off the face of the Earth after their respective farewells, the way that Butterfree, Primeape and Pidgeot all did.