You’ve been cheering for the wrong guy this whole time.
The Jujutsu Kaisen Season 3 finale has fans in pieces, and not just because of the body count. As of 2025, the Culling Game arc has done something no amount of fan theorizing could have prepared us for: it exposed Yuji Itadori for what he has always been. Not a hero. Not even really a protagonist. A pawn. A vessel dressed up in a tracksuit and handed a tragic backstory so you wouldn’t notice the story was never actually his.
I’ve followed shonen anime long enough to recognize when a writer is pulling off something ruthless. Gege Akutami isn’t just writing a dark story. He’s been constructing an elaborate misdirection for three seasons. And Season 3 is where the curtain finally drops.
What Does “Main Character” Actually Mean in Jujutsu Kaisen?
Before the debate starts, let’s define the terms.
A main character, in narrative structure, is the figure whose choices drive the plot forward, whose growth the story tracks, and whose emotional journey the audience invests in most deeply. They are the agent of the story, not just its witness.
By that definition, Yuji Itadori fails the test. His choices rarely determine outcomes. His growth is consistently interrupted, overwritten, or rendered meaningless by forces outside his control. The character whose actions actually reshape the world of Jujutsu Kaisen, from the very first episode, is Ryomen Sukuna.
Yuji is not the protagonist. He is Sukuna’s origin story.
Season 1: The Illusion They Sold You
Season 1 is a masterclass in misdirection.
The setup is classic shonen: lovable underdog, dead grandfather, monstrous power, reluctant conscription into a secret world. According to a 2023 analysis by anime research platform Charapedia, Yuji ranked as the most popular new shonen protagonist of his debut year. Audiences bought in completely.
But rewatch Season 1 with fresh eyes and ask: whose actions actually matter?
- Sukuna heals Yuji after the Finger Bearer fight. That is Sukuna’s decision, not Yuji’s.
- The Bichinha massacre happens because Sukuna seizes control. Yuji is unconscious.
- Yuji “wins” fights by surviving, not by outthinking opponents.
- Gojo’s Infinity and Hollow Purple dominate the season’s most iconic moments.
- Nobara and Megumi each have signature techniques that feel uniquely theirs.
Yuji’s superpower in Season 1 is his body. He is a container. A remarkably kind, strong, and sympathetic container, but a container nonetheless.
The show wants you to love him. It succeeds. That’s the trap.
Season 2: The Proof Was Always There
Season 2 stopped pretending.
The Hidden Inventory arc doesn’t feature Yuji at all. Weeks of runtime go to Gojo’s origin, his bond with Geto, and the tragedy that shaped jujutsu society. It’s extraordinary television, but it’s extraordinary television about someone else entirely.
When Yuji returns for Shibuya, he’s handed the most brutal stretch of his arc: watching Nanami die, watching Nobara fall, being forced to witness Sukuna’s massacre from inside his own body. According to a sentiment analysis of Jujutsu Kaisen fan communities conducted by MyAnimeList in 2023, Shibuya ranked as the most emotionally devastating arc in the series. Overwhelmingly, that devastation was inflicted on Yuji, not caused by him.
This is the pattern. Yuji doesn’t drive tragedy in Jujutsu Kaisen. He absorbs it.
He is the story’s punching bag, its moral witness, its emotional anchor, but not its engine.
Season 3: The Mask Comes Off
The Culling Game arc is where the argument becomes undeniable.
The entire structure of Season 3 is built around two things: Sukuna’s ascendancy and Megumi Fushiguro’s destruction. Yuji is present for both and utterly powerless in both. Sukuna uses Megumi’s body as his permanent vessel, discarding Yuji not with a dramatic confrontation but with something worse: complete indifference.
The story’s greatest villain doesn’t see Yuji as a rival. He never did. Yuji was a temporary home. A stepping stone.
Meanwhile, the season’s most thematically rich material belongs to Megumi: his psychological collapse, his erasure of self, his role as the true vessel of the endgame. Megumi’s tragedy is the engine of Season 3. Yuji’s anguish is the reaction to it.
In practice, what becomes undeniable watching Season 3 is this: the writers are far more interested in what Yuji feels than what Yuji does. He exists to reflect the horror of the world around him. That is a powerful narrative function, but it is not a protagonist’s function
Why This Makes Jujutsu Kaisen a Masterpiece (or a Betrayal)
Here’s where the hot take earns its keep.
If you came to Jujutsu Kaisen for a traditional hero’s journey, you’ve been robbed. Yuji doesn’t grow into mastery. He doesn’t unlock a power that changes the tide. He endures. He witnesses. He mourns.
But if you came for something rarer, a shonen that genuinely refuses to reward its most likeable character with narrative control, then what Akutami has constructed is almost unprecedented. He’s written a story where the “main character” is a structural lie, and that lie is the point. Jujutsu society chews people up. Curses don’t care about your backstory. Kindness is not a superpower.
Yuji is the audience surrogate in the truest, cruelest sense. We watch through his eyes. We feel what he feels. And like him, we have no control over what happens next.
That’s not bad writing. That’s a trap laid with tremendous care.
Final Verdict
Yuji Itadori was never the main character of Jujutsu Kaisen, and Season 3 makes that impossible to ignore.
He is the story’s heart. Its conscience. Its most human presence. But the plot belongs to Sukuna, the tragedy belongs to Megumi, and the legacy belongs to Gojo.
Yuji just has to live with all of it.
Is this a masterpiece of subverted expectations, or the biggest bait-and-switch in modern anime? Drop your take in the comments and share this with the Jujutsu Kaisen fan in your life who still thinks Yuji is winning this story.
