How Did Toya Todoroki Die in My Hero Academia?

One of the characters that we know played an important role in the entire messed up life of the Todoroki family in My Hero Academia is Toya Todoroki, who is the eldest son of Enji Todoroki, aka Endeavor. The thing about Toya is that he supposedly died right around a decade before the events of My Hero Academia. It was his death that contributed to the messed-up relationship among the members of the family. So, how did Toya Todoroki die in My Hero Academia?

Toya Todoroki died when he lost control of his flames while training in Sekoto Peak. It was his sadness that forced his body to produce flames that were hot enough to burn the human body to ash. And because Toya never learned from Endeavor how to put out flames, he was supposedly burned to death by his own flames.

The death of Toya Todoroki was an important part of the entire My Hero Academia storyline, especially regarding the entire setup of the Todoroki family. However, when Toya was revealed to be Dabi the entire time, things changed for the family because of the fact that they still had an opportunity to correct a huge mistake. So, with that said, let’s look at what happened to Toya in My Hero Academia.

How Did Toya Todoroki Die In My Hero Academia?

The Todoroki family in My Hero Academia is one of the most prominent families in the entire nation, as this is the same family that Enji, the hero called Endeavor, comes from. Enji Todoroki, for decades, was the uncontested number two hero in Japan due to how powerful he was. But he could never be number one until All Might retired. And the fact that he didn’t have what it took to surpass All Might as the number one hero in Japan led him to start his own family.

Endeavor entered into a Quirk marriage with the struggling Himura family as he went on to marry Rei, who had a powerful Quirk called Frost. Because Endeavor believed that a child with both his and Rei’s Quirk could become more powerful than All Might, he decided to marry Rei and produce children with her. And while he failed in his first attempt to produce a successor that had his and Rei’s Quirk, he ended up having a child named Toya, who had a flame-based Quirk that was more powerful than Endeavor’s.

At first, Endeavor was happy about Toya’s Quirk because his extremely hot flames would have had the chance to surpass All Might’s status as the top hero in Japan. However, when he realized that Toya inherited Rei’s resistance to ice instead of heat, Endeavor stopped training him because it was too dangerous for Toya to use his Quirk. 

But the problem was that Toya had already decided to be a hero that could surpass All Might, and that was why he continued training to become powerful enough to use his Quirk. When Shoto was born, that was when Toya was pushed to the breaking point because he realized that Endeavor was happy that Shoto had his desired combination of fire and ice Quirks, and that was when Toya only tried to train harder so that he could earn the same kind of attention that Endeavor was giving to Shoto.

While Toya was training in Sekoto Peak, he learned that his excitement level changed his flames to blue and allowed them to burn hotter than before. That was when he wanted to tell Endeavor what he had discovered, only for Enji Todoroki to scold him for continuing his training. Still, Toya went back to Sekoto Peak to show his father his progress.

The problem was that Endeavor never came, as Toya was overcome with sadness. He started to produce flames that were so hot that they burned through the entire peak. He couldn’t control the flames as they started burning him as well. The problem was that Toya never learned how to put his flames out because Endeavor only taught him how to produce flames. 

As such, he struggled to control his flames, as he was presumably burned to dust alongside the trees in Sekoto Peak. Endeavor and all of the other people that responded to the situation concluded that Toya Todoroki died due to the extreme heat of the flames he produced when he was in a state of deep sadness.

Did Toya Todoroki Really Die?

While we do know that Endeavor and the rest of the Todoroki family became a more dysfunctional family after Toya presumably died in Sekoto Peak, the thing is that this wasn’t the case. Despite the fact that Rei’s mental health and sanity took a toll and the fact that Natsuo ended up hating his father, Toya actually never died.

What happened was that Toya had the wherewithal to jump into the river while he was burning. He woke up in an orphanage where he was nursed to health by All For One’s lackeys. However, after healing well enough and despite not being supposed to survive his burnt condition for a long time, he decided to return to his home.

But when he came back, Toya saw that Endeavor and the rest of the family were seemingly unaffected by his passing. What made it worse was that Endeavor still abusively trained Shoto. That was when Toya woke up to the reality that he was seemingly unimportant to his family and that his father was cruel to him. He decided to return to All For One, where he was allowed to work as one of the villains under the powerful villain.

That was when Toya dyed his hair and turned into the man we know as Dabi, who possesses the Blue Flame Quirk, which is more powerful than Endeavor’s flames. Dabi continued to monitor and follow Endeavor to learn more about him and to understand what makes him tick so that it would be easier for him to bring him down and kill him. But he changed his plans when he learned that Endeavor became the number one hero as Dabi decided to make his father’s life a living hell before eventually destroying him.

So, with that said, Toya was alive the entire time but was hiding in the form of a villain named Dabi, who worked alongside Tomura Shigaraki and the League of Villains. And he only became a villain so that he could eventually bring his father down, as it was his hatred for Endeavor that kept him alive for a very long time despite his wounds and burnt body.