After talking about it in the general anime thread, I figured it would be better to say it here: The writters are genuinely expecting anyone to still care about this supossed rivalry with Bea?
Bea and Ash interacted for just two eps and they barely got anything going on. It's not a rivalry such as Gary's, or Alain's, or much less Paul's. Not even close of either of those I just listed. Why do we have to be excited for it? We know almost nothing about Bea. The narrative doesn't makes me care about her, personally speaking. I guess she's fine and all, but there's not a lot going on for her. Her rivalry with Ash is super shallow is extremely poorly done.
And serious talk: you don't get to only use a character twice, not give her any sort of personality, story, or arc, define her as a rival for your protagonist, expend 42 episodes (it gets worse because this number is even higher since we don't know when she's gonna appear) without her even appearing physically or even mentioned by anyone, and conceivably expect anyone to still care about this character and her supossed role as a rival.
Technically, Bea did make a physical cameo appearance at the end of JN077, so it would mark 38 episodes since her last appearance in JN039. Of course, since she had absolutely no impact on the episode, her appearance there was absolutely inconsequential.
In fact, JN077 marked the first appearance of any SwSh game characters since JN055, while the upcoming JN082 is the first major appearance of any SwSh game characters since JN055. Irregardless of my opinion on the Gen VIII games, JN has really done a disservice to Sword and Shield.