Pokémon Go's New Event Finally Lets You Evolve Cosmog

After dragging it out for a month, we're allowed to evolve into Cosmoem, after jumping through all the hoops

Cosmoem, floating on the sand at the beach, for some reason.
Image: Niantic / Kotaku

When Pokémon Go added Cosmog at the start of its latest quarterly season, the Season of Light, it was (of course) done in the most confusing manner possible. This fan-favorite pocket monster was finally part of the mobile game but in a form that apparently couldn’t evolve. Well, starting today, with the launch of the week-long Evolving Stars event, finally it can. But just the one step.

POGO has had a very odd time of late. While the game’s writing and event designs have never exactly been stellar (pun violently intended), 2022 saw it enter bemusing territory. Poor communication on everything—from covid-19 safety to what that whole Ultra Beast wormhole story was meant to be—has frustrated players. So with the fresh start of the Season of Light, I really hoped for, you know, some clarity to shine on things.

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Instead, we had Cosmog and Professor Willow both show up and the introduction of one of those poorly-flagged stop-start Special Research events, this one called A Cosmic Companion. Through it, back at the start of September, players gained Cosmog, and then...it just stopped. Today, a month later, the next stage has begun, and it will allow us to be astonished to discover this Pokémon can evolve!

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Goodness gracious, imagine if it had first appeared six years ago in Pokémon Sun and Moon as the flagship Pokémon of the entire game, and we’ve all already known its three-stage evolutionary path for the better part of a decade!

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Read More: Pokémon Has Finally Taken Over My Entire Life, And I Love It

In today’s update, Willow picks up a conversation you’ve long forgotten and has no in-game method of seeing reprised, by asking you whether you and Rhi have been able to identify this implausibly obscure and unknown creature. (Rhi was the blue-suited guy from the wormhole we saw back in the Summer who few wanted or cared about.) You’ve found out it’s called Cosmog! Extraordinary. And now it’s time to evolve it into Cosmoem, although there’s no way you could possibly know that because no one’s ever heard of it before.

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Quite why POGO insists on running its storylines as if totally isolated from the rest of the Pokémon world I cannot fathom, not least when it invariably involves pretending players don’t know major things that were firmly established in the mainline games many years before.

Given that we’ve only been given the one Cosmog, you might be frustrated by having to evolve it. However, the official site states the following:

“Rumor has it that Trainers will have the opportunity to encounter additional Cosmog in the distant future.”

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I’m not sure if this is a suggestion of some sort of time-traveling shenanigans to come (I’ve asked, and been told it’s definitely not a typo for “not-too-distant future,” but they’re also not ready to say when). Given how this year’s gone in the game, I should probably assume it’s literal, and they’re planning to add another in 2076, but only if you let a stranger cough directly into your mouth.

The final part of this Special Research is set for November 23, meaning we have another month-and-a-half to fake astonishment as we find out what’s going to happen with the two-way evolutionary split for Solgaleo and Lunala. And indeed whether we’ll get something truly interesting if they have the nous to include Necrozma.

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Pokémon Go hasn’t had an altogether brilliant week, as it happens. The recent relaunch of the three team leaders resulted in some truly ghoulish characters (with the new Spark still looking like he’s fallen under a steamroller) and news that the game’s already sky-high prices are to go up in a bunch of territories, as a result of Apple’s price hikes.

Thankfully Rhyhorn and Ralts are back in the wild from this morning too, so I’m willing to forgive the game anything in my pursuit of a shiny of either.

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