10 Pokémon That Should Have Been Legendary, Ranked

With over 1,000 pocket monsters in the National Dex, the world of Pokémon is ever-expanding, especially since the latest release of Pokémon Legends: Z-A. But what remains a conflict among us, members of the community, is that some of these mons deserve more than they got – especially since their dex entries and lore already point towards an upgrade in status.

While everyone has their own list of mons they want to be elevated to the “Legendary” status, we’ve compiled our own. Without further ado, here are Pokémon from the anime and game series we felt should have been called legendaries instead of being classified as standard wild encounters or tucked away under the community’s ‘pseudo-legendary’ banner.

TITLE	Pokémon
CREATOR	Satoshi Tajiri
ANIME RELEASE DATE	April 1, 1997
IMDb RATING (as of July 10, 2026)	7.6/10
WHERE TO WATCH	Netflix, Amazon Prime Video

10 Absol Gets Blamed for Disasters It Only Ever Tried to Stop

Absol gets treated like a curse the moment it shows up, and honestly, that’s the whole tragedy of this entry. Its horn picks up on disasters before they happen, and it walks straight into danger just to warn people who usually chase it away with pitchforks.

That kind of selfless, misunderstood power is exactly the material legends are made of. It never asked for the reputation; it just keeps showing up anyway. Ranked lowest here only because its power is reactive rather than commanding, sensing catastrophe instead of embodying it outright.

9 Milotic Turned a Cursed Ugly Duckling Into a Living Legend

Feebas is about as unremarkable as Pokémon get, so watching it become Milotic still hits different every time. The transformation isn’t just a glow-up; it’s treated like something out of folklore, the kind of beauty that stops trainers mid-sentence and derails entire conversations.

Contest storylines have been built around its presence alone, no battling required. A Pokémon that can silence a whole room without throwing a single attack deserves a lot better than a plain, ordinary classification. It sits this low purely because its influence is aesthetic rather than world-shaking; beauty alone can only carry a case so far.

8 Arcanine Was Already Called Legendary Before Anyone Noticed

Arcanine‘s own Pokédex entry flat out calls it a Legendary Pokémon, and that’s not fan theory; that’s canon text sitting right there in the games. Old scrolls describe people captivated just watching it run, and its bark alone is enough to make onlookers bow.

Game Freak clearly had bigger plans for this one before Moltres took its spot in the lineup. It got the title, just none of the paperwork. It climbs above Absol and Milotic because the word legendary is stitched directly into its identity, not just implied by fans.

7 Snorlax Blocks Entire Roads Like It’s a Boss Fight, Not a Nap

Snorlax doesn’t battle its way into legend status; it just lies down and becomes an obstacle the entire region has to plan around. Routes get rerouted, towns wait years for it to wake up, and somehow that laziness reads as raw, immovable power rather than comic relief.

Most Pokémon have to prove their strength through fighting, dodging, or brute force. Snorlax proves it by refusing to move at all, and somehow that’s still oddly terrifying to trainers passing by. It edges out Arcanine since its power reroutes entire towns and routes without Snorlax lifting a paw; that’s structural influence.

6 Lucario Reads Souls Through Aura Like A Full-Blown Pokémon Psychic

Lucario doesn’t need eyes to know what’s really going on around it, since reading aura lets it sense emotions, intentions, and even things that are supposed to be invisible. That’s the kind of ability usually reserved for mythical, god-tier Pokémon, not something evolving from a Riolu you found in the wild.

Its whole connection to a centuries-old aura guardian only makes the case stronger that this one slipped through the cracks. And the fact that it’s one of Ash’s best Pokémon in his Galar team also cements the validity. It ranks above Snorlax for tapping into a mystical force, aura, that few non-legendary Pokémon are ever shown wielding at all.

5 Shiny Gyarados Turned One Quiet Lake Into Its Own Boss Arena

One Gyarados turning red and going berserk shouldn’t be enough to bring the Indigo League Champion himself out to investigate, yet that’s exactly what happened at the Lake of Rage. Team Rocket’s forced evolution experiment created something that felt less like an angry fish and more like a contained catastrophe waiting to spill over.

Lance didn’t chase it down for sport; he chased it because it was genuinely destabilizing an entire region, and that’s not a normal Pokémon’s problem to cause. It beats Lucario because it forced a literal Champion to personally intervene, a bar most Pokémon on this list never clear, let alone a shiny Pokémon.

4 Garchomp Flies Like a Jet Fighter and Still Somehow Gets Slept On

Garchomp moves like a fighter jet that happens to have teeth, and the anime never lets you forget it, whether it’s tearing through the sky or leveling opponents without breaking a sweat. Being a pseudo-legendary already puts it a tier above most fully evolved Pokémon, but the sheer presence it carries on screen feels like something Game Freak accidentally undersold from day one.

Speed and raw force rarely pair together quite this cleanly in one design. It ranks above Gyarados since pseudo-legendary status already puts it a class above everything ranked below, on top of the raw speed.

3 Metagross Thinks Faster Than Any Supercomputer on the Planet

Talking about pseudo-legendaries, Metagross runs on four brains fused, and the result is a Pokémon whose Pokédex entries openly compare its thinking speed to a supercomputer. That’s not flavor text exaggeration either; it’s a machine-brain hybrid casually outperforming actual technology while also being able to levitate whole boulders and crush steel without slowing down.

Most legendaries earn their mystique through ancient myths and prophecy. Metagross skips all of that and earns it through pure, unsettling processing power instead. It edges out Garchomp because its intelligence alone rivals technology built by humans, a rarer flex than speed or strength.

2 Dragonite Guards the Open Seas Like a Legendary Really Should

Dragonite has long been treated as something closer to a guardian spirit of the sea than a regular dragon-type, with stories of it guiding lost ships safely home through storms. Lance himself, the strongest trainer in the region, chose it as his signature ace, which says plenty about how the games and anime both view its standing.

It could have literally become a legendary Pokémon based on a prehistoric animal. A Pokémon trusted with sailors’ lives at sea earns legendary treatment either way. It ranks second for combining raw combat prowess with a guardian-like reputation that both games and anime constantly reinforce.

1 Tyranitar Rearranges Whole Mountains Just By Throwing a Tantrum

Tyranitar doesn’t just win fights – it rearranges the actual terrain around it without even trying that hard. Its Pokédex lore describes it as leveling mountains and starting forest fires simply by throwing a fit, which is a wild amount of collateral damage for something that isn’t officially legendary.

Godzilla-coded design aside, any Pokémon capable of altering a region’s entire geography through sheer temper alone belongs several tiers higher than pseudo-legendary status ever gave it credit for. It takes the top spot because no other entry here reshapes the physical world around it just by losing its temper.

RANKINGS	POKÉMON	GENERATION
1	Tyranitar	Gen 2
2	Dragonite	Gen 1
3	Metagross	Gen 3
4	Garchomp	Gen 4
5	Shiny Gyarados	Gen 1
6	Lucario	Gen 4
7	Snorlax	Gen 1
8	Arcanine	Gen 1
9	Milotic	Gen 3
10	Absol	Gen 3

What are your thoughts on our list of Pokémon from the franchise that deserve legendary status? What are your top picks for legendary mons? We’d love to know your opinions in the comments below.

The Pokémon series is available to watch on Netflix and Amazon Prime Video.