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Pokémon Go is getting three mysterious new Team Rocket villains

Introducing three new NPCs

Artwork from Pokemon Go showing the new Team Rocket admins, Giovanni, and a group of shadow Pokemon Niantic/The Pokémon Company
Julia Lee (she/her) is a guides producer, writing guides for games like The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom and Genshin Impact. She helped launch the Rift Herald in 2016.

Following a tease from the official Pokémon Go Twitter account, three new members of Team Rocket have been revealed.

The three new characters are Cliff, Arlo, and Sierra, and they’re the admins of Pokémon Go’s version of Team Rocket. It’s unknown still what these characters will be doing, but the game’s loading screen updated last night to an image of these three trainers standing with Giovanni in front of the Viridian City gym, surrounded by Shadow Pokémon. A big fight is likely coming.

Team Rocket was added to Pokémon Go in July. The grunts take over PokéStops, and players have to defeat them in battle to win the stop back. After beating the grunts, players can get a chance to catch a Shadow version of one of the Pokémon used in battle by Team Rocket. At the time, it did seem weird that a bunch of grunts were running around with no one leading the charge, as the games typically have high-ranking admins to take on after clearing out a swarm of Rocket grunts. Giovanni has been hinted at, but has not actually appeared in gameplay.