All Pokemon villainous teams and their goals, ranked from least interesting to most

The Pokemon franchise follows a fairly standard pattern for its main series of games. One of its recurring themes is the appearance of a villainous team with goals that you must thwart as the playable protagonist. These goals range from simple day-to-day disruptions to absolute obliteration of the world order. As the hero, you must go to great lengths to spoil the plans of these villains.

Unless you have played each game and know the storylines inside out, they might appear all the same. However, that couldn't be further from the truth. This article lines out all the villainous teams from the mainline games and ranks their objectives according to how unique they are.

Which is the most villainous team in the mainline Pokemon games?

9) Team Star

Region: Paldea
Goal: Delinquent students from the Naranja or Uva Academy who cause trouble and pressure other students to join their squads.

Team Star, as they appear in Pokemon Scarlet and Violet, is wasted potential personified, just like its members. A bunch of delinquent kids rebelling against the order of things could have been so much more, but the writers reduced them to glorified regional fakes of Team Yell from the Galar region.

The biggest problem with Team Star is the absence of any meaningful end goal. Despite having an interesting history and origin story involving themes of bullying and conflict with the school administration, the team's present motivations are not fleshed out well enough.

8) Team Yell

Region: Galar
Goal: Disrupt events on a small scale. Dedicated fans of Marnie, the Gym Leader of Spikemuth's Gym, and want her to become the Galar region Champion.

Team Yell's primary motivation is to disrupt Pokemon Sword and Shield's protagonist from succeeding so that Marnie has a better chance at becoming Champion.

The only reason this team isn't at the bottom of the list is because it has a clearly defined motive that it constantly works towards.

7) Team Magma and Aqua

Team Magma and Aqua Grunts (Image via TPC)

Region: Hoenn
Goal: Team Magma wishes to increase the landmass in Hoenn, while Team Aqua aims to fill the region with more waterbodies.

Team Magma and Team Aqua are the villainous teams of Pokemon Ruby and Emerald, respectively. Their goals are borderline absurd and unrealistic, yet they are unique enough to earn them a joint spot. Unlike Star and Yell, these are full-fledged organizations working towards a charted-out goal that bears meaningful consequences.

The teams provide sufficient resistance throughout the original titles, as well as in the Emerald and Omega Ruby Alpha Sapphire remakes, to be regarded as noteworthy adversaries.

6) Team Rainbow Rocket

Team Rainbow Rocket Grunts (Image via TPC)

Region: Alola
Goal: Create an army of Ultra Beasts to conquer all the worlds.

Team Rainbow Rocket ticks all the boxes for a quintessential villainous organization. They want to control Ultra Beasts to aid their global takeover schemes across the Multiverse.

Despite being capable of posing a threat, Team Rainbow Rocket remains rather vapid and underwhelming, only appearing for a very short while at the end of Pokemon Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon games. Hence, they receive only a mediocre sixth position on this list.

5) Team Skull

Region: Alola
Goal: Cause disruption and make enough money to survive. Composed of people who failed to complete the island challenge. Later, the team wants to open the Ultra Wormhole to bring their boss.

Team Skull is what Team Star could have been if the writers explored their potential. Failures from the past seeking to take part in a global takeover initiative is a classic trope that Pokemon Sun and Moon, and later Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon, featured.

Their seemingly random delinquency gains meaning later in the games, and once the main crisis is resolved, Team Skull gets disbanded, tying up the threads of the narrative.

4) Team Rocket

Region: Kanto and Johto
Goal: Generate profits through burglary and selling Fossils and other Pokemon parts. Later, controlling Pokemon using radio waves.

The OG villains of the Pokemon franchise are the ones most players are acquainted with. This also has to do with the fact that members of Team Rocket, Jessie, James, and Meowth, are popular in the successful anime.

Team Rocket's goals and ways are mediocre but well-executed in the main story of the original games. They are the perfect balance of good writing and devious yet unspectacular villainy to open up the top half of this list.

3) Team Galactic

Region: Sinnoh
Goal: Recreate the universe how Cyrus, the leader, imagines it should be using the power of Dialga or Palkia. In Pokemon Platinum, Cyrus wishes to summon both these Legendaries to create a world without spirit.

Team Galactic is set apart by the grandiose of its leader's vision. Unlike the other teams on this list, Cyrus (the leader) plans to reshape the entire universe how he imagines it. This plan not only exceeds the scale of other teams' plans but the literal limitations of time and space.

The fact that Team Galactic's plans tie in the God of all Pokemon, Arceus, makes the team eligible for the third spot on this list.

2) Team Flare

Region: Kalos
Goal: Initially, establish a more stylish and rich world. Eventually, the destruction of all life but members of the team since humanity is a race of "unproductive fools" that consume the planet's limited resources.

Team Flare's goals are unique from the start to the end. Arguably one of the least popular teams hailing from the Pokemon X and Y games, they still have one of the most spectacular plans for the world. Their cover-up story has as much pizzazz as their main plan has thematic significance in our current world.

Team Flare's struggle against mindless resource consumption is necessary in the contemporary world. It goes without saying that their goal of obliterating all life is not right, but their vision is not one to be stifled. The complexity of their goals is what puts them at #2 on this list.

1) Team Plasma

Region: Unova
Goal: Separate the world of Pokemon from the world of humanity. Later, take over the world.

Team Plasma is the evil team from Pokemon Black and White whose aim is to "liberate" Pocket Monsters from their trainers. This idea brings into question the ethicality of capturing critters into Poke Balls and pitting them to fight against each other.

This inquiry is bound to hit a nerve as the question nearly ignores fans of the franchise. Therefore, the fact that the writers chose to address it through Team Plasma within the narrative itself is by far the most interesting of the lot.