I think there's a way to pair them directly with the hub. I did it recently when I only bought a hub and outlet (no remote)[1], and it worked fine. One rumour I've seen a few times is that the Hub was an afterthought[2], which is why it is designed around pairing with the remote, but it's definitely a weird setup (they're ZigBee, so should work without the remote - they do when using the Hue hub).

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/tradfri/comments/bddyjt/connect_tr%...

[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/tradfri/comments/aq0161/pairing_wit...