Butler: The Team Magma Scientist Who Tried to Build Groudon

A dismissed scientist doesn't necessarily close the file. Butler studied Groudon on Team Magma's behalf before being cast aside for failing, and rebuilt a career on the stage, as a magician. Jirachi: Wish Maker catches up with him at the exact moment he can start all over again, with a sleeping Mythical Pokémon as his raw material.

Contents

• A Scientist Cast Aside for Failing
• From Lab to Stage: The Great Butler's Magic Show
• The Relapse: A Counterfeit Made from Jirachi
• Behind the Character
• Butler at a Glance
• Frequently Asked Questions

A Scientist Cast Aside for Failing

Before the stage tricks, Butler was a researcher. He worked for Team Magma alongside his girlfriend, Diane, on a program devoted entirely to the Legendary Pokémon Groudon.

His ambition wasn't to capture the giant, but to build one. The process relied on a fossil whose energy is released only once every thousand years: a one-time window that leaves no room for a second attempt within a human lifetime.

The experiment fails, and the organization doesn't forgive him. His failure gets him thrown out of Team Magma, which sets him apart among the group's ranks: he isn't an agent on a mission like Brodie, but a former member the organization left behind.

From Lab to Stage: The Great Butler's Magic Show

Without a lab, Butler reinvents himself as an illusionist. He performs under the banner "Great Butler's Magic Show", a title that, in Japanese, keeps the pronunciation of his own name — on the surface, the only thing he really held on to from his former life.

It's during one of these shows that Ash and his friends cross paths with him. Butler shows a fossil to Max, the youngest of the group: not a magic prop, but the casing of a Mythical Pokémon, Jirachi.

Picking the boy is no stage-show coincidence. When the millennium comes around, Jirachi awakens only beside the friend it is looking for, and Max may well be that friend. So the magician needs the boy as much as the fossil.

The Relapse: A Counterfeit Made from Jirachi

The Mythical Pokémon's awakening immediately puts Butler back on his original track. He sets out to seize Jirachi, and it takes a long chase before he manages it.

What he gets out of it is not the Groudon he hoped for. The creature he obtains only looks like one: a strange, monstrous thing that resembles the model without ever being one. The completed program turns into a counterfeit.

The movie ends on a change of heart rather than a punishment. Butler admits his mistakes and destroys his creature himself, with help from Ash and Max, then gives up his project for good. He's seen again briefly, with Diane, in the end credits of the eighth movie.

🔥 The original giant beats a botched copy: check out our Legendaries.

Behind the Character

His known team includes Mightyena, Kirlia, Dusclops and Salamence. Two Ace Trainers on Route 229, in Sinnoh, use exactly the same species and call out to the player about a "Pokémon show."

The Japanese version of the games settles the matter: there, these two Trainers are named Butler and Diane. So the couple from the movie gets, a few game generations later, a discreet cameo in a corner of Sinnoh.

The character's name is itself borrowed: it refers to Rhett Butler, the hero of Gone with the Wind. The manga, for its part, offers a mirror image of the scheme with Guile Hideout, who also uses Jirachi to shape a Pokémon-like creature.

Butler at a Glance

Frequently Asked Questions

• Who is Butler in Pokémon?
  A stage magician and former Team Magma scientist. He's one of the central characters of Jirachi: Wish Maker, where he appears with his girlfriend Diane.
• Why did Butler leave Team Magma?
  He didn't leave of his own free will. His work aimed to recreate Groudon from a fossil, and his failure got him pushed out of the organization.
• What's the connection between Butler and Jirachi?
  The fossil he displays during his show holds Jirachi. The Mythical Pokémon awakens only once every thousand years, beside the friend it is looking for, and Butler is counting on that awakening to relaunch his project.
• What Pokémon does Butler have?
  His known team includes Mightyena, Kirlia, Dusclops and Salamence. The movie's Groudon isn't one of them: it's an artificial creature, made by using Jirachi, which Butler ends up destroying.
• Does Butler appear in the video games?
  Not under his own name in the English version. Two Ace Trainers on Sinnoh's Route 229, named Felix and Dana in English, use the same Pokémon he does, talk about a Pokémon show and are called Butler and Diane in Japanese: the nod is very likely intentional.

In short

Butler holds a special place in Team Magma's orbit: he's a former member, not an agent, and his ambition outlived his dismissal. The movie makes him less an ordinary antagonist than a researcher unable to close a file, until his only success — a misshapen counterfeit in Groudon's image — finally shows him what he had been building. So he destroys what he had moved heaven and earth to obtain.