Y'know, this reminds me: Ya ever think about how weird it is that years down the road there's gonna be this whole new generation of fans who have no proper conception of certain Pokemon as having once been final evos at all?
Take me and other guys in my age bracket for instance, people who generally started with Gen 4 games. I understand the superficial fact that Pokemon like Aipom, Murkrow and Sneasel were single-stage for nearly a decade before DP extended their lines. But that period was before my time to where I can't ever fully internalize them as such - in my heart, they are NFEs and always will be.
I saw TV ads for the Unova games when they were airing. I have seen years of Dunsparce evolution memes, fan concepts and copium. I have cracked jokes about how painfully bland Stantler is as a single-stage. But by the end of this decade, assuming I'm still engaged with this series at all I'm gonna be talking with people for whom that'll all be the distant memories of Pokeboomers, people who will find it incredibly difficult, if not impossible to see even the likes of Ursaring and Bisharp as complete, wondering how we ever managed. There are people on this forum much older than me who I presume went through this arc with DP, but now it's our turn to feel ancient I guess. Wild.