Butler was fired from working with Team Magma because an experiment to create a Groudon from a fossilized remnant of it had failed. He realized that he needed a stronger energy source for the regeneration process. The power that he sought was only available once in a millennium. Butler and his girlfriend, Diane found the crystallized "cocoon" of Jirachi in Forina. When Ash, Brock, May and Max found Butler at the Millennium Festival, Butler presented Jirachi to Max because Max was supposedly the friend that Jirachi needed to find so it can awaken when the Millennium Comet comes. When Jirachi awoken from its thousand-year sleep, Butler set up his machine and gave it a test-run a night later. Diane informed Ash and the gang what Butler was up to and decided to take Jirachi back home. Butler had his Mightyena place a tracking device on Diane's van. When Jirachi was sent home and was about to go back to sleep for another thousand years, Butler showed up out of nowhere and snatched Jirachi. Butler then used Jirachi's power in the hopes to create a Groudon from scratch. However, he wound up with a manifestation of pure evil that resembled Groudon. When the false Groudon started sucking up every Pokémon in sight, Butler begged Ash and Max (everyone else was sucked up by the false Groudon) to forgive him and help him to set his machine in reverse to get rid of the big, red abomination. The plan was a success and the false Groudon was destroyed and everyone was released. After Jirachi finally went back to sleep, Butler and Diane decided to stay and protect the Pokémon of Forina. While Butler's only major role was in Jirachi: Wish Maker, he and Diane made a cameo during the ending-credits of Lucario and the Mystery of Mew.
