Endings are always difficult, especially when a series has been going on for a long time. For a series like Jujutsu Kaisen, the series always felt like it struggled to find its footing when Satoru Gojo wasn’t on the page being the coolest person anyone had ever seen. When the Jujutsu Kaisen manga ended in 2024, it was probably time for that particular story to end, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t leave me wanting more from the guy who was supposed to be the main character.

Spoilers for the ending of Jujutsu Kaisen are ahead, in case you couldn’t tell.

From the very beginning, Jujutsu Kaisen wanted us all to believe it was about Yuji Itadori. He is simply brimming with that Shonen Manga Main Character Energy. He’s plucky and kind and somehow possesses an inexhaustible reserve of strength that makes him both weird and mysterious. When he ends up as the host for Sukuna, a curse so powerful and so deadly that he is referred to as the King of Curses, it feels like the start of a modern Naruto, which was obviously a strong influence on Gege Akutami when he was coming up with Jujutsu Kaisen.

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The problem started not with Itadori but with everyone around him; basically most of the characters he comes across – particularly the adult characters – are vastly more interesting than he is. The moment that Saturo Gojo popped on screen, I realized this was his series and Yuji Itadori was just the lens through which we gazed upon Gojo’s magnificence. Then Kento Nanami came along and was intensely relatable simply because he took personal offense at the idea of having to work even a single minute of overtime. 

Compared to these two, Itadori struggles to keep my attention. Heck, he struggles when compared to his classmates, which includes characters with stronger motivations and more interesting designs than his. But the real tragedy here is that Jujutsu Kaisen ends right when Yuji Itadori is growing into his own as a sorcerer and, arguably, when his story finally becomes his own.

Saturo Gojo wasn’t just the coolest person in the world and an absolute attention hog every moment he was around; he was so absurdly powerful that he acted as a protection to the status quo. The curses and curse-users couldn’t make a real move on human society with him around because he was so overpowered that he could stop them without even trying. He is like a less muscular version of All Might from My Hero Academia without any real limits to his powers until he spends the second half of the series locked in a box.

At the end of the series, Gojo is dead, and the uneasy balance he represented is gone. Sure, the powerful enemies like Geto and Sakuna are off the board, but there are always going to be new threats that crop up. Yuji Itadori enters this new world alongside his friends, who are similarly trying to find ways to do the maximum good. For the first time, he is free from Sakuna and out in the world to make his own way.

And then… Jujutsu Kaisen just ends with the implication that Sakuna may not be as dead as everyone hopes. The next thing we know, it is Jujutsu Kaisen Modulo, which takes place dozens of years later when society has settled into a new status quo. We don’t actually see what impact Itadori has in this new world. We never get to see what he does with his new lease on life, and it is so frustrating. 

I’m not generally an advocate for series outstaying their welcome or continuing past the point where they are still fun, but I feel like there is still more of Yuji Itadori’s story to be told. Or, rather, I would like to see how he crafts his own story and his own path in the world. The ending of Jujutsu Kaisen isn’t necessarily bad, but it doesn’t give its protagonist the chance to be the main character in his own story.

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