Few characters in Jujutsu Kaisen are as despised as Mahitobut he is actually the secret to unlocking the message behind Yuji's journey. For the most part, Jujutsu KaisenThe film's villains find a way to win over fans. The charming Geto has his history with Gojo and a character progression that begs viewers (successfully, no less) for identification and empathy. Sukuna, in his raw chaos and slow excavation of his connection with protagonist Itadori Yuji, has a commanding charisma that is impossible to ignore. Mahito, on the other hand, has few advantages – he's so despicable that he's hard to watch, and knowing he'll appear in a scene is painful in itself.
The dust has started to settle since Jujutsu Kaisenending, which left many fans upset after Mahito got the final word of the beloved shōnen. However, his appearance at the end was actually very significant. In fact, it is a final reaffirmation of Jujutsu Kaisenof Mahito's most notable meditations – one for which Mahito has always served as a pivot and which only Jujutsu Kaisen put so much work into it.
Mahito's role in (and in) Jujutsu Kaisen defines its biggest theme
The legendary Shōnen manga has a hidden message for readers
Jujutsu Kaisen has always focused on social roles and obligations, as well as how individuals can fulfill them and be happy at the same time. Consider Geto's internal conflict over the role of sorcerers to protect non-sorcerers, or Nanami's inability to return to a “normal” role as a salaryman in light of her talents as a sorcerer. Ingeniously, Jujutsu Kaisen does not restrict this discussion to humans. By creating a humanoid spirit cursed with Mahito, the series is able to also consider the perspective of someone who is not considered human, but – more importantly – who speaks, acts and sees himself as human.
By itself, the reason why a cursed human is born is simply because of human negativity. The only role of a cursed spirit is, in fact, to act as a boomerang of “what goes around comes around” misery that will plague humanity. This is Mahito's purpose and his “role”, strictly speaking. It's complicated, however. Mahito grows as he kills and, as he is the most “human” spirit of all, he transforms this into a goal and identity.
Mahito begins to assign himself another role. Where the role of cursed spirits in general is to cause misery, the role he constructs for himself takes on broader, more abstract concepts like “beauty,” “humanity,” and “evolution.” The common cursed spirit can harm people indiscriminately, but for Mahito, harm becomes the instrument for realizing a personal ideal.
Mahito's need for recognition offers an important contrast
Mahito, Yuji and Megumi connect in a major way
Mahito is a son of humanity and believes that as he grows up he will perfect the concept of “humanity”. If the paternal analogy is taken at face value, there is no real legitimate argument against Mahito's claim to humanity; he has no precise father or mother, but is instead the frozen negativity of humanity. A human child is a reflection of his parents and his lineage, but also of the mundane circumstances that led to his birth. Mahito is also a reflection of humanity, his lineage being human negativity and circumstances.
However, as his personal goal is to become the “perfect human” at the expense of living humans, he also has to turn against his ancestry. An oddly Freudian thing is happening here: humanity (like Mahito's father) is an abstract thing and cannot respond to Mahito, and even if it could, it would disapprove of his attempt to usurp it. In turn, Mahito becomes obsessed with validation from father figures – namely, Sukuna and Kenjaku.
These two figures serve as primary pillars of Mahito's sense of identity. They act as beacons of greatness in an ideal counterattack on humanity, and your recognition of their power and combat progress (or, in other words, their means to effect their goal of beautiful “true” humanity) can make or break all its conception. of yourself. Mahito, however, is not the only one Jujutsu Kaisen character who has to deal with the absence of the dominant word of an authority figure.
Both Megumi and Yuji also have no father. Yuji he does has a father – none other than Sukuna's reincarnated twin – but he effectively doesn't appear in the story. Her own mother is also taken over by Kenjaku, who strips her of authority: the maternal presence can, through an isolated incident, disappear and be supplanted by the direct threat of a curse. Megumi, on the other hand, never met her own father, who was killed by Gojo – a fact that Megumi himself laughs about.
For both characters, people like Gojo and Nanami take on roles of authority, but neither of them tries to give the impression that they have an authority that would mirror or recreate a paternal bond. Yuji and Megumi also abandon the idea of parental validation more or less entirely. Yuji tries to live up to his late grandfather's words, but unlike Mahito, Yuji does not try to replace or seek the validation of his ideals that his grandfather would have provided.
Jujutsu Kaisen's ending proves that Mahito is more important (and regrettable) than fans thought
The infamous curse will never be satisfied
This becomes especially important thanks to some crucial events. Firstly, Gojo – the closest thing to a paternal authority figure that any of the sorcerers would have – explicitly asks Yuji to avoid validating himself against Gojo's own dreams or strength. In fact, he demands that the sorcerers who survive him find a strength of their own and forget about him.
Secondly, in chapter 265, Yuji announces his revelation that a life well lived is not just about fulfilling a specific role in the world, nor about any kind of concrete impact that an individual has. Instead, it's about the smaller ways his influence and memory reverberate around the world. These are two ways that Jujutsu Kaisen stands firm against the idea that someone has a fixed role that they must fulfill and that they must determine the value of their own life through validation from authority figures.
In general, this is where Mahito goes wrong. He was always the “negative example” of his overarching themes, and that didn’t become clear until his final discussion with Sukuna. Reflecting on the fact that he had so much negativity and hatred that his own path seemed inevitable, Sukuna laments that if he ever had the chance to do things again, he might follow a more positive path.
Jujutsu KaisenMahito's last words shouting that he is “the last rebellious son”, the analogy of (symbolically) paternal validation comes full circle. Both of his “parents” will never return, and the last rebellious son will never “grow up” to be strong without their validation. This purgatory becomes Mahito's hell. Jujutsu Kaisen then reveals his most significant idea: other people can give guidance, but as Yuji discovered and Gojo demanded that the next generation of sorcerers understand, they cannot give meaning to someone's life; this is something we can only give to ourselves.