Wattson: the Mauville City Gym Leader who almost called it quits

Wattson runs the third Gym of the Hoenn League, in Mauville City, and its floor is a maze of electric gates. An Electric-type specialist, he awards the Dynamo Badge to anyone who gets the better of him. The character comes down to three traits: a laugh he works into everything, a team that long stayed loyal to earlier generations, and a loss to Ash that very nearly cost him his job.

Contents

• The Dynamo Badge, the Third Stop in the Hoenn League
• An Old-Generation Team, Six Pokémon at the World Tournament
• The Badge Ash Should Never Have Won
• New Mauville, Team Magma and the Battle Against Kyogre
• His Place Among Electric-Type Specialists
• Wattson at a Glance
• Frequently Asked Questions

The Dynamo Badge, the Third Stop in the Hoenn League

Wattson holds the third of the region's eight official Gyms. The Dynamo Badge he awards is therefore the third in a set of eight, and you need the whole set before you can take on the Hoenn League's Elite Four in Ever Grande City. His Mauville City Gym can't be crossed in a straight line: it's built as a maze of electric gates.

You can recognize his silhouette at a glance. White hair and beard, a yellow jumpsuit, a brown jacket covered in lightning-bolt patterns and matching shoes: the Gym Leader wears his specialty for all to see. His name comes from the same field, too: the English Wattson borrows the watt, a unit of electrical power, while his French name, Voltère, borrows the volt, the unit of electrical voltage.

His tone, on the other hand, never changes. Wattson introduces himself with a laugh, happily repeats that laughing is good for your health, and sums up his strategy in a single line: he chose electricity, and his opponent always ends up getting a shock. His favorite Pokémon, he says, are the ones he shares a real spark with — and that quip is about all he reveals of his method.

An Old-Generation Team, Six Pokémon at the World Tournament

In Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire, the Gym Leader has a quirk none of his colleagues share. He is the only Hoenn Gym Leader without a single Pokémon introduced in the third generation: his lineup is made up entirely of older species, which makes him the Hoenn Leader who least reflects Hoenn's own Pokémon.

Pokémon Emerald sets things right. In it, the Gym Leader picks up an Electrike and a Manectric, two third-generation species, and his team stops being a retrospective catalog.

Pokémon Black 2 and White 2 bring him out of Hoenn and invite him to the Pokémon World Tournament, a competition that gathers the best Trainers. You can face him there in the Hoenn Leaders Tournament and in the Type Expert Tournament for Electric types. The format sets the size of his team: three Pokémon in Single Battles, four in Double and Rotation Battles, and all six in Triple Battles, with a gender and an Ability that can change from one battle to the next. Beating him earns you 1 BP.

The Badge Ash Should Never Have Won

On screen, the Gym Leader makes his entrance in the episode "Watt's with Wattson?" (AG040). Ash wins the Dynamo Badge there after a completely one-sided display: Pikachu tears through Magnemite, Voltorb and then Magneton, and Wattson never gets back in the game.

The rout has a cause nobody knows about at the time. An incident involving the Gym Leader's robot Raikou had set off an accidental electrical overload, which made Pikachu far more powerful than it really is — at the cost of its health, put at risk by all that excess current.

The fallout hits the loser harder than the winner. Stunned by the scale of the defeat, Wattson seriously considers stepping down as Gym Leader, and only changes his mind once the incident has been cleared up. He still chooses to let Ash keep the Badge, then gets an Electrike and promises him a rematch as soon as he has trained it enough: the rematch does take place, in a later episode titled "Manectric Charge" (AG059).

🔥 The Pikachu that took the Dynamo Badge from him has its own section: see the collection Pikachu.

New Mauville, Team Magma and the Battle Against Kyogre

The manga gives him a much bigger role. There, Wattson has spent years tracking down New Mauville, a city buried underground, together with the Trick Master. The two men start by following the trail of a wild Donphan that has been pestering the Gym Leader for a while, and it leads nowhere; it's Sapphire who confirms that the underground city really does exist, and they all head there with the Donphan.

The descent goes wrong. The city's generator is completely out of control: it powers up, detects the presence of Electric-type Pokémon, then attacks and captures Wattson. Sapphire and her companions get him out, and the Gym Leader hands the Dynamo Badge to the girl. He turns up later at the meeting of Hoenn's Gym Leaders called over the Team Aqua and Team Magma situation: he sides with Team Magma, on the grounds that there isn't enough dry land to go around. When Norman leaves the room, he is the only one who tries to talk to him, as a man who knows what his colleague's past is hiding.

The awakening of Groudon and Kyogre puts him on the front line. Wattson opens New Mauville to everyone in Hoenn, then sets off to face Kyogre with Flannery — none of their moves has the slightest effect on the Legendary. When Team Aqua comes to the Pokémon's aid, the Gym Leader ends up facing Amber: the battle is close, but his opponent's Shedinja gets the better of him. Knocked to the bottom of the sea, he owes his rescue to Sapphire's Wailord, before Winona sends him off to rest aboard the Pokémon Alliance airship. He doesn't reappear until the very end of the arc.

His Place Among Electric-Type Specialists

Electric-type Gym Leaders form a small family with recurring traits, and Wattson stands out as the exception in looks. He is the only one of them who has never been blond in any version. He does, however, share with Lt. Surge and Iono the same place in the journey: all three are their region's third Gym Leader and field Pokémon of this type.

He also has something else in common with Clemont. Both of them run the Gym in their region's largest city, and those two cities are sister cities: Mauville City and Lumiose City therefore share an official bond, which the Gym Leader himself brings up once the game is over.

That sister-city bond leads straight into a post-game scene. In Pokémon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire, once Primal Kyogre or Primal Groudon has been defeated, you find Wattson in front of the Square Tower, in the center of Mauville City: he explains the sister-city link with Lumiose, then asks the player to go check that everything is fine in New Mauville, because the Square Tower is lighting up — exactly the signal it's designed to give when the underground city has a problem. The anime leaves him one last distinction: along with Crasher Wake, he is the only Gym Leader Ash has beaten without losing a single Pokémon.

Wattson at a Glance

Frequently Asked Questions

• Which Badge does Wattson award, and at what point in the journey?
  The Dynamo Badge, the third of Hoenn's eight official Badges. All eight are required before you can take on the Hoenn League's Elite Four in Ever Grande City.
• Why does his team change between Ruby, Sapphire and Emerald?
  In Ruby and Sapphire, he is the only Hoenn Gym Leader without a single third-generation Pokémon. Pokémon Emerald fixes this by giving him an Electrike and a Manectric.
• How did Ash win his Dynamo Badge in the anime?
  Pikachu beats Magnemite, Voltorb and Magneton one after another, but it was abnormally powerful because of an accidental electrical overload caused by an incident with Wattson's robot Raikou. The Gym Leader let him keep the Badge and promised him a rematch.
• How many Pokémon does Wattson use at the Pokémon World Tournament?
  Three in Single Battles, four in Double and Rotation Battles, and all six on his roster in Triple Battles. You can face him there in the Hoenn Leaders Tournament and in the Type Expert Tournament for Electric types.
• What does Wattson do in the manga?
  He searches for New Mauville with the Trick Master, gets captured by the city's malfunctioning generator, gives the Dynamo Badge to Sapphire, backs Team Magma at the Hoenn Gym Leaders' meeting, then takes on Kyogre alongside Flannery before being beaten by Amber.

In short

It's easy to write Wattson off as a minor Gym Leader, because he laughs a lot and shows up early in the journey. Yet the games and the manga make him the keeper of a regional secret: the underground city he spent years searching for, and that he still sends the player back to once the story is wrapped up. His most famous defeat, for its part, is a victory stolen by an electrical accident — and he chose to let his opponent keep the Badge rather than take it back. That may be the truest portrait of the character.