Super Smash Bros. Ultimate has been out for a full calendar year, yet the game is still a main topic of discussion among leakers and rumor-mill churners alike. Nintendo still has not revealed which character will take up the fifth slot of the Fighter Pass, having just released Terry Bogard from the Fatal Fury series in November. The timing of these DLC releases from Nintendo does fit somewhat of a pattern, which may help pinpoint when the new character will be revealed and released.
All four characters, so far, have been made available in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate roughly two to three months after each other. Terry coming out in November points to a release date for the fifth and final DLC pack for the Fighter Pass potentially at the end of January or somewhere in February 2020. This subsequently points to a potential announcement within the next two weeks, just before the end-of-year break. That announcement has a likely chance at showing up at The Game Awards 2019, just as Joker did the year before,
The first DLC character Nintendo announced for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate was Piranha Plant, which was during the November 2018 Direct broadcast. This character was announced as a pre-order incentive, which still left five character packs to be announced. During The Game Awards 2018, Persona 5’s Joker was revealed to be the first fighter in the Fighter Pass. These two character announcements created a basis of a timeline for the game’s DLC releases.
It became clear that Nintendo was planning to tease character packs at least a month before each pack’s official release date. Piranha Plant and Joker are the first and only characters to have at least three months between announcement and release date, most likely because Nintendo was still spending most of its time fixing bugs and glitches. After Joker was made available in April, Nintendo held onto its announcement of Dragon Quest’s Hero’s inclusion until its E3 2019 Direct, most likely because of the significance of E3.
Hero was then released a month later in July. During that same E3 2019 Direct, Nintendo had announced that Banjo and Kazooie would be added to Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. Little more than a month later, they were announced to be released during Nintendo’s September 2019 Direct. Not missing a beat, Nintendo then announced during that same Direct (as they did before) that Terry Bogard would be joining the roster two months later in November.
It would keep that promise, as Nintendo then released Terry early that month. However, this time, Nintendo chose not to leave its audience with a tease to the next character pack. It is possible that the team simply needed more development time and was not comfortable showing off the mysterious new character. Regardless of the reason, that all boils down to Smash Ultimate director, Masahiro Sakurai.
In any case, this leaves Smash Ultimate in an advantageous position, as Nintendo can now reveal the fifth fighter pack, potentially, during The Game Awards 2019. Not only does this line up well with the fact that Joker was announced at last year’s show, Joker was also the first of the Fighter Pass to be announced. It is only fitting that the Fighter Pass come full circle and announce their ultimate character to top off the five character packs at The Game Awards.
As for who will take up the coveted fifth character pack for Smash Ultimate, there is a strong interest from fans in Geno from Super Mario RPG, among others, but who it will ultimately end up being remains to be seen. Another possibility, whether in this DLC pass or the next one, is more Pokemon added to Smash Ultimate, but that's likely to come later. Of course, there will always be an endless source of rumors claiming to reveal the next new character.
It was only recently that Lloyd from Tales of Symphonia and Sora from the Kingdom Hearts series were de-confirmed by Twitter users who appear to be in-the-know, such as Sabi. Capcom has always had a great relationship with Nintendo, so DMC’s Dante is not out of the realm of possibility. With The Game Awards 2019 just around the corner, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate will most likely reveal the final character of the year soon.
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is available now for Nintendo Switch.