[The Chaos Entity]

Quote:

Originally Posted by NeonZ

I'd guess part of the issue with the lack of a third belt in the main toyline of Zi-O was just the production team itself. Based on some recent interviews, Shirakura dislikes villains that can be active, transform and fight from early in the show. He prefers them as background figures rather than like active members of a standard tokusatsu "evil organization" (with rubber suits and such), something he considers taken up by Sentai nowadays.

That's probably why we didn't get an extra belt and Swartz only got a transformation in the final arc itself. It's probably not something solid enough yet that Bandai absolutely enforced on him, and with the Watches selling well there was no need to force it on the show's production.

Bandai decides all this stuff well in advance. A hypothetical Third Driver would have been decided upon very early in the show’s run, before they could know how well Ridewatches would sell.
Shirakura would have literally zero control over things like that, as it’s all be decided months in advance by Bandai.
Besides, not all third quarter belts are used by evil guys. The Eyecon Driver G was used by Takeru, and Chase only became a Rider after he had already become a good guy.