Nintendo revealed unexpected DLC for Mario Kart 8 Deluxe last year. Six waves totaling an additional 48 tracks. Wave four even brought a returning character with it in Birdo, and now someone may have found a link to Mario Kart Tour hinting at what other characters are coming next.
Nintendo has confirmed there are more characters to come and added five slots to the racer select menu. That presumably means there will be five more characters added during the final waves, and Dylanirus thinks they may have figured out who they are. They've done some digging in Tour and hypothesized the order of its cups points to who's coming.
Dylanirus notes Pauline, Nabbit, Diddy Kong, and Hammer Bro's cups all come right after Birdo's. They've also suggested the blank space between Pauline and Nabbit is for Petey Piranha. If accurate, that dashes the hopes of anyone that wants to see Kamek and Funky Kong added to the game, but don't give up on those dreams just yet.
MondoMega has thrown out a counterargument suggesting the order Tour's cups are stored has absolutely no correlation with Mario Kart 8 Deluxe's roster whatsoever. Even though Birdo comes after Gold Mario, a new character in the newest Mario Kart game on consoles, MondoMega claims the order relates to when the characters were developed and has nothing to do with whether they will be added to the Switch game or not.
Whether Dylanirus has hit the nail on the head or their theory has been debunked, it does seem likely at least a couple of their predictions will be a part of the upcoming DLC. Many of you are still shocked Diddy Kong wasn't in the game all along, and Pauline's role in Super Mario Odyssey makes her a prime candidate to make her mainline Mario Kart debut on the same console.