Pokémon’s Newest Movie Is Fascinatingly Meta
He’s a real wild card.
Trading cards have been a cultural staple for well over a century, commemorating everything from baseball players to key figures in Operation Desert Storm. But many iconic trading cards tend to feature fictional characters, and you can’t mention cards without mentioning Pokémon, the video game, card, and anime franchise that has celebrities dropping millions on rare cards and stores implementing purchase limits to combat scalpers.
Pokémon’s Trading Card Game (TCG) has been a pillar of the franchise since its inception, but aside from a couple of video game adaptations, it’s never really intersected with other Pokémon media. But an upcoming movie — the first Pokémon movie since 2021’s animated Secrets of the Jungle — will bring the cards face to face with the creatures they depict.
According to Variety, the closing ceremonies of the 2026 Pokémon World Championships in San Francisco featured the announcement of Pokémon: Wild Card, set for a 2027 release. A short teaser was shown featuring presumably the main character and his Pokémon, Mimikyu.
This teaser starts with something brand-new for Pokémon movies: a Pokémon card shown with the classic Japanese card back, including the gold border (the English version has a simpler design and a blue border). We then see Mimikyu on a wall below the moon, and then the release date. Finally, we see a TCG player wearing a hoodie with markings to mimic Mimikyu. Who is this, and what does the TCG scene look like within the Pokémon universe itself?
The in-universe TCG cards look identical to the real-world Japanese cards.
The Pokémon TCG has technically been seen in-universe thanks to the Game Boy Color’s Pokémon Trading Card Game, but that was limited to a single island of dubious canonical status. Wild Card presents some strange canon questions, as while the cards are just like the ones in our world, they’re now more like sports trading cards, reflecting real-world figures and stats.
There are a lot of questions to answer here. How was the TCG created in the Pokémon universe, and is it as popular in their world as in ours? Are their celebrities and scalpers going nuts for it, too? We’ll get some answers next year.
