I have some seriously strong objections with some of these arguments here. For starters how is a choice from BotW or ToTK arbitrary or Skull Kid isn't all those years after he could've been added? How are half the points for a BotW and post-that era comparable to Skull Kid when they are more recent and thus have had less opportunities? Especially the one in regards to Smash, there have simply put not been enough chances to reference any of the recent games in Smash past spirits. And same for spin-offs. Taking Sidon for example, he appeared in the one spin-off Zelda game that he could've appeared in, any previous ones, he simply didn't exist. And I really don't see how Majora's Mask is any more key than freaking BotW (and its predecessor OoT) or debatably TotK. BotW was referenced in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe for example and it just overall is a very important game for Nintendo overall with the impact its left and TotK is also absolutely no slouch.
But point is, whether a post-BotW character gets in or not, Skull Kid screams of a character that missed the boat. Even with the increasing content, why add him now and not in previous games?
If we just break Zelda's characters down on the series being repped on a game-by-game basis, it's actually quite good currently. We have a BotW rep, a LttP rep, two OoT reps, a MM rep, and a WW rep.
Things only become a problem when you stop looking at the fighters as reps and start looking at them as characters. Three of those reps are the same guy. Of the remaining three reps that aren't that guy, two are the same girl.
One of the big merits of Skull Kid is that his popularity isn't tied to relevancy or recency. He sticks in people's minds and continues to be referenced despite Majora's Mask's age or relative unimportance in the greater franchise because he's just an interesting character with a good design, personality, powers, and backstory. Skull Kid is cool independently of Majora's Mask.
In contrast, will people still really covet the Champions or Rauru as playable characters when BotW and TotK aren't the new hotness anymore? Midna and Ghirahim are cool characters, but there's a reason they aren't as requested as they were during Brawl and Smash for Wii U/3DS' era. They don't stand out amongst the dozens of cool Zelda characters and it's tough to really make an argument for why they should get prioritized.
Not every game needs to be represented in Smash by getting a new character for its own sake. Not to necessarily single you out, but it feels like a lot of the thread has blinders that every new, major Switch game needs a dedicated rep when that's never been the case with previous Smash games and titles. IMO, the roster is also a lot more interesting when it isn't chained to games that released between project plans.
At the same time though, Smash games also usually start development a year before their system of choice comes out. Melee started full scale development in 2000, Brawl in late 2005, Smash 4 in early 2012 (this is after the 3DS's release in February 2011 and before the Wii U's release in November 2012), Ultimate in February 2016, not to mention that Ultimate was a very different beast, made on request from Iwata a little after he passed in July 2015.
Also I don't know how jumping into Smash from another project would automatically make the game Ultimate Deluxe or derivative of Ultimate when Sakurai did exactly the same thing with Kid Icarus Uprising and Smash 4, a brand new game that was not derivative of Brawl and was co-developed on TWO DIFFERENT SYSTEMS.
Like the earliest the Switch 2 can possibly come out is like June or July even just based on the Switch's timeline for revealing things, so I really don't think Smash getting revealed next year and maybe coming out in like latter-half 2027 is that crazy, which assuming development started after the Namco studios stopped hiring in June 2024 would give it three years of dev time, which is pretty typical for Smash.
There's no way to really make that pattern work with the Switch 2 unless you assume that Sakurai's newest project ended development in 2024 or, at the latest, early 2025, which doesn't really line up with Furukawa's statements regarding modern games requiring more resources and time. Not that
every game has to fit that model, mind you, but those are the words of the guy who gets to decide how much money each release has and when products ship.
Also, Smash for Wii U and 3DS are very derivative of Brawl
and Uprising. That's why Smash for 3DS has so many items and enemies from Uprising. Likewise, Sakurai has said previously that Smash for had as many characters as it did because they could reuse previous assets. Lucario and Diddy were still using their Brawl renders in their character portraits as late as April 2014, IIRC.
