Mohn: the Poké Pelago Manager Is a Vanished Researcher

The game presents him as a park keeper, and that's not wrong. Mohn welcomes the player to Poké Pelago, hands out Poké Beans and talks about his residents with endless good cheer. Then the story moves forward, and the man in the Raft Hut turns out to be the scientist whose disappearance threw the entire Aether Foundation off balance. He is the only one in this story who doesn't know who he is.

Contents

• The Manager of Poké Pelago
• Five Isles, Three Kinds of Poké Beans
• What the Game Eventually Reveals
• An Absence That Threw Everything Off
• The Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon Scene
• In the Anime: a Nihilego and Years in the Crown Tundra
• Mohn at a Glance
• Frequently Asked Questions

The Manager of Poké Pelago

In Pokémon Sun and Moon, Mohn runs Poké Pelago, an archipelago he develops for the Pokémon left in the PC Boxes. He welcomes the player, explains how the isles work and then stays on to help develop them and keep the Pokémon that settle there happy.

Access unlocks after the trial of Kiawe, at the same time as Charizard Glide, and the place is accessed from the menu. Mohn built his Raft Hut himself, the little house where isle development, Poké Bean exchanges and expeditions are all handled.

He states his motivation plainly: the Pokémon a Trainer catches but doesn't take along stay shut away in a Box. Poké Pelago exists to give them a place to spend that time, and the archipelago starts out with a single tiny isle that will need to be expanded.

Five Isles, Three Kinds of Poké Beans

The archipelago has five isles in all. Each one requires a certain number of Pokémon in your Boxes and a stock of Plain Beans before it can be developed, and can then be expanded twice more. Isle Abeens, the first one, serves as a gathering ground: a Poké Beanstalk you shake, and a Poké Bean crate that also draws in passing wild Pokémon.

The other four each have their own function. Isle Aplenny is a Berry field that grows to as many as eighteen plots, Isle Aphun sends Pokémon off to search a cave on expeditions, Isle Evelup is a playground where they train together with drinks on the house, and Isle Avue turns a hot spring into a spa where Eggs also end up hatching.

The currency behind all of this is Poké Beans, which come in Plain, Patterned and Rainbow. At his counter, Mohn takes back the rare Poké Beans the player has no use for, giving three Plain Beans for one Patterned and seven Plain Beans for one Rainbow — and seven Plain Beans are also enough to fill a Bean Bottle to toss into the sea, once a day. Along the way, he admits to eating them himself, a habit he freely owns up to after all his years on the archipelago.

😴 Isle Avue at home: check out the Pokémon plushies.

What the Game Eventually Reveals

As the story progresses, the character's status changes. Mohn is a former professor at the Aether Foundation, described as highly intelligent, and above all he is Lusamine's husband — and therefore the father of Gladion and Lillie.

Years before the events of the game, he was one of the first to study Ultra Wormholes and Ultra Beasts. A mission went wrong: an Ultra Wormhole swallowed him up, and he vanished from the Foundation, leaving behind his work and the thesis he had written.

He came back to Alola under circumstances the game never explains, his memory completely wiped: not his family, not the Foundation, not his research. What survived was his concern for the well-being of Pokémon — and that's what he built Poké Pelago on.

An Absence That Threw Everything Off

Lusamine never let go. To find her husband, she immersed herself in the work he had left behind, until scientific interest turned into an obsession with Ultra Beasts. The president the player battles is the direct product of that research.

The second casualty has a name: Gladion. He holds a stubborn grudge against his father, whom he blames for what his mother has become. The family the player meets at the Foundation was built around someone absent, not someone dead.

The irony fits in a single sentence. The only member of the household who is doing fine is the one who remembers nothing, busy planting Berries and handing out beans on the Poké Pelago archipelago.

The Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon Scene

Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon add a conditional scene: once Gladion has been beaten at the League, the player can run into Mohn at the Aether Foundation, which he has decided to visit out of curiosity.

He compliments the facility, introduces himself to the president without recognizing her, and explains that he looks after Pokémon on an archipelago. The conversation quickly drifts to what they have in common: the fate of the Pokémon that stay in the PC Boxes. He even allows himself a polite reservation about the way the Foundation treats its residents, which is more regimented than his own approach.

Lusamine eventually asks him whether he has ever been to Aether Paradise. He says no, and that answer confirms everything. She smiles, thanks him for his visit and lets him go; when Gladion is surprised, she simply replies that she saw that man's smile.

In the Anime: a Nihilego and Years in the Crown Tundra

The anime takes a different route: his family mentions him over seasons 20 to 22 before an episode of Sun & Moon shows him in a flashback, alongside his Zoroark. His first appearance in the flesh has to wait for the Journeys series.

The accident is finally told there. Hurled into an Ultra Wormhole, Mohn was rescued by a Nihilego in its Shiny form; too weak to say anything but his daughter's name, he was brought back to his own world by the Ultra Beast. The two of them landed in the Crown Tundra, in the Galar region, where the Nihilego watched over him all those years — to the point of playing the role of Lillie for the amnesiac.

Once found, and helped to piece his memories back together, Mohn decides with his family to catch the Nihilego and keep it with them, in return for what it did for him. The return to Alola is celebrated with a banquet, and when Gladion is knocked out of the Battle Royal, his father can't hold back his pride in the Trainer his son has become.

Mohn at a Glance

Frequently Asked Questions

• Who is Mohn in Pokémon Sun and Moon?
  The manager of Poké Pelago, the archipelago set aside for the Pokémon in the PC Boxes. He explains the isles to the player, exchanges Poké Beans and helps develop the five isles from his Raft Hut.
• Is Mohn Lillie and Gladion's father?
  Yes. The story reveals that he is a former professor at the Aether Foundation and Lusamine's husband, and therefore the father of Gladion and Lillie.
• Why doesn't Mohn recognize his family?
  Because an Ultra Wormhole swallowed him during a mission. He came back to Alola under unknown circumstances, completely amnesiac, with no memory of his family or of the Foundation.
• What happens to Mohn in the anime?
  A Shiny Nihilego saves him and brings him to the Crown Tundra, in Galar, where he lives with amnesia for years. Once his family finds him, he recovers his memory and returns to Alola.
• Which Pokémon does Mohn own?
  A Zoroark, shown at his side in a flashback from the Sun & Moon series. His family later adopts the Nihilego that had looked after him.

In short

Mohn is that rare character whose gameplay role and personal drama never intersect. The player spends dozens of hours shaking a beanstalk alongside a man who has been erased, and the game never truly reunites the family: it settles for a visit, a question asked in a low voice and a smile that's allowed to walk away. The anime, for its part, chose to give him back his memories.