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| Season | Pokémon Ultimate Journeys: The Series (Season 25) · Ghost trains, Gigantamax & stories from the lab arc (JN091–JN098) |
| Episode | Season 25, episode 5 · English episode 1175 · Japanese episode 1181 · Bulbapedia code JN095 |
| English title | The Good, The Bad, and The Lucky! |
| Japanese title | サラバ！さすらいのロケット団！ Saraba! Sasurai no Roketto-dan! — “Farewell! The Wandering Rocket-dan!” |
| First aired (Japan) | 28 January 2022 · TV Tokyo |
| First aired (US) | 21 October 2022 · Netflix |
| Screenplay | Shōji Yonemura |
| Opening / ending (Japan) | Wan, Tsū, Surī (One, Two, Three) – Karaage Sisters · Batsugun Taipu (Supereffective Type) – Pokémon Music Club |
| English opening | With You – Echosmith |
| Who’s That Pokémon? | Pelipper (US) · Pelipper (Japan) |
| Previous episode | Suffering the Flings and Arrows! (JN094) |
| Next episode | Lighting the Way Home! (JN096) |
Filler / stand-alone episodeButch and CassidyTeam Rocket split up
The Good, The Bad, and The Lucky! is the 5th episode of Pokémon Ultimate Journeys: The Series, the twenty-fifth season of the Pokémon anime, and the 1175th episode of the English dub overall (Japanese episode 1181, Bulbapedia code JN095). It first aired in Japan on 28 January 2022 and in the United States on 21 October 2022. It falls within the season’s Ghost trains, Gigantamax & stories from the lab stretch (EP91–EP98).
Released on Netflix in the US on 21 October 2022 with the first part (JN091–JN102); Teletoon had premiered it in Canada on 25 June 2022.
Synopsis
After a failed raid on Pikachu, Team Rocket chase a Pelipper they believe controls their prize machine across sea, ice and desert, and the trio drift apart as James and Meowth find comfortable new lives with their old colleagues Cassidy and Butch. The story opens with Jessie and Wobbuffet collapsing in a desert sandstorm, then jumps back a week to Vermilion City, where the trio are working part-time at a factory to fund their schemes. They net Pikachu and call the Rocket Prize Master, but the lazy Slakoth and Slaking it sends ignore every order and return to their Poké Balls, and Ash and Goh blast the trio away with Lucario and Cinderace. Blaming their bad luck with the machine, Team Rocket chase its delivery Pelipper, which Meowth learns insists that the Prize Master depends purely on luck. A Swablu perched on their balloon bursts it with Dragon Breath and sends them flying, and over the sea a Wailord swallows them and Pelipper whole. Inside the giant they find a rusted ship and a long-trapped Chatot, and Pelipper’s Hydro Pump makes Wailord spout everyone out through its blowhole onto a frozen sea.
The trio calm an angry Mamoswine by dangling Meowth in front of it, ride it in pursuit of Pelipper, and collapse from hunger in a blizzard near a snowy village. They wake beside a fire and a table of food served by Cassidy, once a Team Rocket elite, who explains that she has left the organisation to find more in life. Jessie insists they repay her by working, and the trio settle happily into life at her café. When Pelipper flies past one evening, James hesitates, so a tearful Jessie and Meowth leave him behind. In a seaside town they follow the smell of baking to a bakery run by Butch, Cassidy’s former partner, who has also quit Team Rocket and keeps a Meowth that looks exactly like Meowth’s first love, Meowzie. Seeing Meowth so happy, Jessie leaves him too, taking a Wobbuffet balloon he has sewn for her, but the same Swablu bursts it with Dragon Breath and blasts Jessie and Wobbuffet away for the third time.
Back in the desert, Jessie wakes from a dream of her partners slapping her to find a Sandshrew scratching her face, and she and Wobbuffet tumble into a sand pit where a Trapinch waits with open jaws. As Jessie accepts her fate, James, Meowth and Pelipper appear at the rim: James was thrown out of the café after his Morpeko ate all the food, and Meowth found that Meowzie’s lookalike already had a Persian. Both slide into the pit while trying to help, and Pelipper, whose bill cannot hold the trio and the machine at once, drops the Prize Master on the Trapinch and scoops them all up. Waving Pelipper goodbye, the trio decide that the machine, like life, runs on luck both good and bad. When Ash and Goh happen by, Jessie prompts them to ask what Team Rocket are up to, the trio recite their motto with renewed spirit and gladly accept Pikachu’s Thunderbolt, then crash back into their factory job in Vermilion City.
Major Events
- Team Rocket drift apart. Jessie, James and Meowth chase their prize-machine Pelipper, split up and reunite
- Butch and Cassidy, who have left Team Rocket, appear for the first time since Sleight of Sand!, 649 episodes earlier, and for the last time in the franchise
- Butch’s Meowth
- Aired in Japan the day Pokémon Legends: Arceus was released
- Meowth’s Ballad and Team Rocket’s Team Song are the first older themes used as insert songs in Journeys
Trivia
- The English title plays on the 1966 western The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, for Team Rocket’s meeting with Butch and Cassidy.
- The screenplay is by Shōji Yonemura.
- This is a stand-alone episode: it can be skipped without losing the thread of the Kanto, Galar & beyond story.
Changes in the English Dub
- The captions naming Slakoth and Slaking are removed
- The title card shows Pikachu instead of Team Rocket
- Meowth’s Ballad and Team Rocket’s Team Song as insert songs, the first older themes used as inserts in Journeys
Part of our Pokémon Ultimate Journeys: The Series guide. Browse every season of the Pokémon anime.