Harrington: The Director Who Resigned for His Students

A piano teacher posted at the gate of an entrenched camp. Harrington waits for the player outside the Ruchbah Squad's Base, just after giving his student a lesson. The battle he agrees to is only a warm-up: this minor Scarlet and Violet character holds the full story of Team Star's past, along with the explanation for a detail the player would never have noticed — Paldea's academy replaced its entire teaching staff at once.

Contents

• Ortega's Private Tutor
• The Team Star Affair, Told a Year and a Half Later
• A Resignation, and an Academy Without a Memory
• A Face Recycled Elsewhere in the Game
• Harrington at a Glance
• Frequently Asked Questions

Ortega's Private Tutor

You run into Harrington outside the Ruchbah Squad's Base, the hideout of Ortega. He isn't a member of Team Star: he has just finished giving a piano lesson there, and he's only on site because of his student.

It's Ortega who asks him to take on the player, and he agrees. The battle takes place in front of the base's entrance, before the showdown with the squad boss himself, and it comes across as a mere formality on the way in.

Once Ortega is defeated, the man reappears and introduces himself in a new light. The piano teacher was the former director of the school the player attends — Naranja Academy in Scarlet, Uva Academy in Violet. The conversation that follows changes how you see all of Team Star.

🎒 Paldea's academy has its own section: see the selection Back to school.

The Team Star Affair, Told a Year and a Half Later

The story he tells goes back eighteen months before the player's arrival. Team Star had stormed into the academy to confront a group of students. No battle took place that day, but the school was left shaken for a long time.

The consequences came quickly: students left the school — including several of the ones Team Star had just targeted — and rumors began to spread about the group. Without knowing the full story, the director took the simplest route and expelled every member of the team.

Penny, who leads Team Star, came to see him to plead her friends' case and take the blame alone. It's through her that Harrington learns the truth: the students who had been confronted were the bullies. He cancels the sanctions and lets the group's leader go back to her home region to rest, dressing up her departure as a temporary suspension.

A Resignation, and an Academy Without a Memory

The story could have ended with that course correction. Harrington then discovers that the incident has vanished from the administration's servers: his deputy had erased the traces to clear himself of any blame. The deputy director is punished, but the punishment fixes nothing.

What Harrington blames himself for isn't the erased records; it's failing to see his own students' distress. He steps down, and the teaching staff resigns right after him. That void explains the completely new staff led by Clavell when the player arrives.

Then comes the most twisted consequence: none of this appears in the school's records. The staff hired after the wave of departures never learned the details, so no one on campus can tell the player about it. It took finding the former director outside a Team Star base for the file to resurface.

A Face Recycled Elsewhere in the Game

One technical curiosity rounds out his profile: Harrington's model is also used for other non-player characters in Scarlet and Violet. It's common practice for populating an open region without creating ever more characters from scratch.

The clearest example is at the Alfornada Gym: its Gym Trainer is the same model, recolored and without the glasses. Which means you can come across a resigned director's lookalike in the middle of a Gym Test without ever making the connection.

Harrington at a Glance

Frequently Asked Questions

• Who is Harrington in Pokémon Scarlet and Violet?
  Ortega's piano teacher, and above all the former director of Paldea's academy. He preceded Clavell as head of the school and introduces himself to the player outside the Ruchbah Squad's Base.
• Where do you battle Harrington?
  In front of the entrance to the Ruchbah Squad's Base, Ortega's hideout. He has just given his piano lesson there, and it's his student who asks him to battle the player.
• Why did Harrington resign?
  Because he blamed himself for failing to see his students' distress during the Team Star affair. He had first expelled every member of the group without knowing the full story. The entire teaching staff resigned shortly after him.
• What happened between Team Star and the academy?
  Team Star stormed into the school to confront a group of students who, in reality, had been bullying its members. No battle took place, but students left the school and rumors spread. Penny came to plead her friends' case, and the sanctions were lifted.
• What is the connection between Harrington and Clavell?
  Clavell succeeded him as director. Like all the staff hired after the wave of resignations, he never learned about the incident, which the deputy director had erased from the administration's servers.

In short

Harrington fills just two wiki sections, and yet he alone carries the explanation for Team Star's past. His story is about an adult's mistake rather than a Trainer's triumph: an expulsion handed down too quickly, a truth learned from a student's own mouth, and a voluntary departure that empties an entire school of its teachers. The witness to a file his successor could never read.