Iris has gotten so little build-up, development and/or focus in Journeys, that I find that very easy to digest in the same way Ash didn't get to the finals or even battled his rival during his first League. If Iris got to fight Lance here it would've felt terribly artificial, more so than it already is.
If they'd just added her to the audience of the Leon vs Lance episode, and then given her an episode about defeating Alder, her inclusion here would be more believable.
Journeys was still fleeing from continuity like holy water back then, but that would have been a great setup.
May be because of my many playthroughs of Emerald, but I actually like Wallace as a Champion. Despite being a Water-type expert, he makes great use of the secondary types of his Pokémon.
I like Wallace too! One of my favorite characters in the entire franchise but I often forget that he's the champion since even the game he was champion in, Steven is the 'final boss'. It's why even though I like his personality and his team, I don't really see him as equal to some of the other champs
Wallace does have my respect for actually being the post-gen 1 boss that gave me the most trouble by a good margin (Cynthia was a breeze in comparison), though a lot of that came down to not being able to 2 hit KO Milotic.
This speaks to me, for Emerald was my first main series game, and Blaziken was my starter. And I had verrry little concept of type effectiveness back in 2005 when I played Emerald for the first time, soooo you can all guess how my first battle with Wallace went, challenging him with Blaziken as my main. And the second time. And the third. Honestly, I forget just how many times he whupped my butt. But I kept getting a little bit stronger with each defeat, and eventually my Blaziken was strong enough (like, high 80's or 90's, not really sure, pretty sure it was close to level 100 by that point, I know it reached level 100 eventually, my first Pokemon to do so,
) to breeze tight through the E4 and Wallace himself. After all these years, I still remember my beloved Blaziken's moveset. It was: Blaze Kick, Slash, Double Kick, and Dynamic Punch (which I distinctly remember having it learn because I liked the way the name sounded and how it looked. Hated that terrible accuracy, though. Still do. )
Lance is not a Dragon Master. He's just a Dragon-type trainer.
All of his Pokemon are dragons in terms of appearance though
Yup. And in Masters EX, he even says that not all dragon Pokémon are Dragon types.
That certainly begs the question of how are Types handed out and by who...
Recent Pokedex entries imply that Pokemon have/produce different types of elemental energy inside their bodies, and that is the source of their "types".That certainly begs the question of how are Types handed out and by who...
He has more Dragon types than Cynthia, is the cousin of Clair and is the champion of two regions. I think that classifies him as a Dragon Master.
There's no narrative for Iris to battle Lance over Cynthia. It doesn't matter if he has more dragon Pokemon. Cynthia is more relevant to Iris.
