Which Evil Team would send a grunt to compete in the Badge Quest?

[Greninjaman]

I was chatting with another user, and this question came up: What evil team would send a grunt to do the Badge Quest? Which one would make the most sense? Note that I skipped Black & White Team Plasma, since that was the goal to begin with.

 

[Zexy]

I mean technically Team Yell's "leader" was on a Badge quest... Skull's did the island challenge too before. Star could have any bullied student so wynaut?

 

[Greninjaman]

I think Team Rocket could work since they want power and having a Champion among their ranks would give them that power.

 

[Nicolas721]

Rocket: Gen I has an infiltrated gym leader who also happens to be the strongest so they wouldn't need it at all, but Gen II could do it to investigate on Silver and on how strong the leaders are. Aqua/Magma/Galactic: Their Goals are completely unrelated.
Plasma: They actually did it with N, so they are the objective answer.
Flare: It could give them some insights on Mega evolution, but they also have enough money to research it on a less time consuming way.
Skull:Already did it and failed.
Yell: Too busy fangirling about Marnie and bothering others, though sending someone to make Marnie and Piers look better sounds like something they could do.
Star: Too busy keeping their bases, and the gym leaders do not care about them at all as they dont even mention them.

 

[Red Knight]

I think Team Rocket would be the most likely. Giovanni is already the 8th gym leader, sure, but that shows that Team Rocket can and will put people in officially recognized positions of power and prestige to further their goals, to make the system part of their power instead of an impediment to their power. They don't have an elaborate endgame like Aqua/Magma, Galactic, or Flare, they just want money and power for the sake of money and power.

Team Plasma already tried the whole "make one of our own the Champion" thing and it failed, and I don't think Ghetsis would be keen on trying to do it again. Team Skull actively resent people taking on the Island Challenge. Team Yell is focused on propping up Marnie (who is not actually part of Team Yell, they are acting in her name but not with her blessing, or Piers' for that matter) to win the Gym Challenge and become Champion; sending a grunt to participate in the Gym Challenge themself wouldn't really make sense IMO. Someone floated the idea of the participating grunt being used to prop up Marnie and make her look better against the other challengers, but I feel like there are better ways of doing that, and I think Team Yell would feel the same way.

Team Star is the only other group here I see sending grunts to do the Gym Challenge. The whole reason they formed in the first place was for mutual protection against bullies; sending members to take on the Gyms, either to gauge their progress in training Pokémon or as the means of training itself, would make sense to further that goal. Sure, after Operation Star, they're kind of in a limbo state without Penny leading them, but the bosses would still be interested in making sure their grunts were competent battlers, since they want to ensure their bases are well defended. Then again, their main defensive strategy is the Star Barrage, which is a battle style that relies on their numbers and doesn't exactly seem compatible with the more formal one-on-one battles expected by the Pokémon League, but the guards at their front gates do still engage you in orthodox battles.

 

[Dr. Gro 3001]

As annoying as Team Yell is, they technically had someone associated with them that did take the Gym Challenge of their region. A question that I find more interesting would be: which region's challenge are we taking? Alola technically doesn't have one since there are no gyms. The Galar Gym Challenge would put someone in the public's view because of how televised the challenge is. Paldea's is also pretty well known since it is associated with the largest school in the region.

 

[Eitarou]

The entire point of Team Skull is that they're failed challenge-goers, so that doesn't really work.

Also, we already have a non-BW team that has someone doing a Badge quest: Macro Cosmos.