Few characters in Jujutsu Kaisen's villains find a way to win fans over. The charming Geto has his backstory with Gojo and a character progression that begs viewers (successfully, no less) for identification and empathy. Sukuna, in his raw chaos and the slow excavation of his connection with protagonist Itadori Yuji, has a dominant charisma that's impossible to ignore. Mahito, on the other hand, has little going for him—he's so despicable that he's hard to watch, and knowing he'll appear in a scene feels painful in itself.

The dust has started to settle since Jujutsu Kaisen's finale, which left many fans upset after Mahito got the beloved shōnen's final word. However, his appearance in the finale was actually very meaningful. In fact, it's a final restatement of Jujutsu Kaisen's most noteworthy meditations—one that Mahito has always served as a pivot for, and one that only Jujutsu Kaisen has put so much work into.

Mahito's Role in (And Within) Jujutsu Kaisen Sets Up Its Biggest Theme

The Legendary Shōnen Manga Has One Concealed Message for Readers

Jujutsu Kaisen has always focused on social roles and obligations, as well as how individuals can fulfill those while being happy. Consider Geto's inner conflict about the role of sorcerers to protect non-sorcerers, or Nanami's inability to slot himself back into a "normal" role as a salaryman in light of his talents as a sorcerer. Ingeniously, Jujutsu Kaisen doesn't restrict this discussion to humans. By creating a humanoid cursed spirit with Mahito, the series is able to also consider the perspective of someone who isn't considered human but—importantly—who talks, acts, and sees themselves as human.

On its own, the reason a cursed human is born is simply because of human negativity. The sole role of a cursed spirit is, in effect, to act like a "what goes around, comes around" boomerang of misery that will plague humanity. This is Mahito's purpose and his "role", strictly speaking. It's complicated, though. Mahito grows as he kills, and because he's the most "human-like" of any spirit, he turns that into a goal and identity.

Mahito begins to ascribe to 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 average cursed spirit might harm people indiscriminately, but for Mahito, the harm becomes the instrument for the realization of a personal ideal.

Mahito's Need For Recognition Provides Important Contrast

Mahito, Yuji, And Megumi All Connect in One Important Way

Mahito is the offspring of humanity, and he believes that as he grows, he will perfect the concept of "humanity". If the paternal analogy is taken on its face, there's no real legitimate argument against Mahito's claim to humanity; he has no precise father or mother, but is instead congealed humanity negativity. A human child is the reflection of its parents and lineage, but also the worldly circumstances leading up to its birth. Mahito is likewise a reflection of humanity, with its lineage being human negativity and its circumstances.

However, with his personal goal being to become the "perfect human" at the cost of living humans, he has to likewise turn against his parentage. A weirdly Freudian thing is taking place here: humanity (as Mahito's father) is an abstract thing and can't answer back to Mahito, and even if it could, it would disapprove of his attempt to usurp it. In turn, Mahito becomes obsessed with the validation of father figures—namely, Sukuna and Kenjaku.

These two figures serve as primary pillars of Mahito's sense of self. They act as guideposts of greatness in an ideal counter to humanity, and their recognition of his power and combat progress (or, in other words, his means to effect his goal of the beautiful "true" humanity) can make or break his entire conception of himself. Mahito, though, isn't the only Jujutsu Kaisen character who has to deal with the absence of the dominating word of an authority figure.

Both Megumi and Yuji, too, have no father. Yuji does have a father—the reincarnated twin of Sukuna, no less—but he effectively doesn't appear in the story. His own mother, too, is taken over by Kenjaku, who dispossesses her of authority: the motherly presence can, through a stray incident, disappear and be supplanted by the direct threat of a curse. Megumi, on the other hand, had never known his own father, who was killed by Gojo—a fact Megumi himself laughs at.

For both characters, people like Gojo and Nanami take on roles of authority, but neither attempts to give the impression that they have an authority that would mirror or recreate a paternal bond. Yuji and Megumi, too, both abandon the idea of paternal validation more-or-less entirely. Yuji attempts to live up to the words of his dead grandfather, but unlike Mahito, Yuji doesn't attempt to replace or seek the validation of his ideals that his grandfather would have provided.

Jujutsu Kaisen's Finale Proves That Mahito Is More Important (And Pitiful) Than Fans Thought

The Infamous Curse Will Never Be Satisfied

This becomes especially important thanks to a few pivotal 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 outlive him seek out a strength of their own and forget about him.

Secondly, in chapter 265, Yuji announces his revelation that a well-lived life doesn't come down to fulfilling a specific role in the world, nor any sort of concrete impact an individual has. Instead, it's about the smaller ways their influence and memory reverberate through the world. These are two ways that Jujutsu Kaisen stands firm against the idea that somebody has a fixed role they must fulfill, and that they have to determine the value of their own life by the validation of authority figures.

In general, this is where Mahito goes wrong. He has always been the "negative example" of its overarching themes, and it didn't become clear until his final discussion with Sukuna. Reflecting on the fact that he held so much negativity and hatred that his own path felt inevitable, Sukuna laments that if he should ever get the chance to do things again, he might take a more positive path.

Jujutsu Kaisen's last words are Mahito screeching that he's "the last unruly child", the analogy of (symbolically) paternal validation comes full circle. Both his "fathers" are never to return, and the last unruly child will never "grow up" to be strong without their validation. That purgatory becomes Mahito's hell. Jujutsu Kaisen then reveals its most significant idea: other people can give guidance, but as Yuji discovered and Gojo demanded the next generation of sorcerers to understand, they can't give one's life meaning; that's something one can only give oneself.