Jujutsu Kaisen: Why Is Sukuna Evil? Explaining the Roots of Evil!

Sukuna is the principal villain of Jujutsu Kaisen, as has been evident from the very first episode of the series. And while the manga is currently featuring the seemingly final fight against Sukuna as part of the Shinjuku Showdown Arc, fans still know very little, if anything, about the powerful villain. He is, nevertheless, an exceptionally popular character, and fans keep wondering about him and his backstory, which could explain the roots of the evil he represents. In this article, we are going to talk about that topic specifically, as we are going to try and explain why Sukuna is so evil in the series.

Sukuna’s backstory has not been revealed

Legend has it that Sukuna was a formidable human jujutsu practitioner who was regarded as the best in his day a millennium ago. He was a powerful sorcerer who also killed other jujutsu practitioners. Because of his might, no one could defeat him. He was a truly evil villain. This makes sense since, in the Golden Age of Jujutsu, he was the cursed spirit of a sorcerer whom people perceived as a natural calamity. Sorcerers either feared or revered him as a god.

After being ultimately vanquished, he transformed into a humanoid cursed ghost with two faces and four arms. He was too powerful for the sorcerers of the day to cast out. It was, therefore, determined to split his soul into twenty fingers and imprison it in objects that were cursed. We are aware of this. However, there are few details surrounding his story, and we don’t know anything more about his background. This is all we can contribute in terms of Sukuna’s origins, and while it is quite apparent that Akutami will need to expand upon this, we don’t know anything yet, so we’ll have to wait a bit.

The roots of Sukuna’s evil are unknown

And while the above-written section does tell us that Sukuna was evil even a millennium ago, it doesn’t reveal why he was evil. We know that Sukuna was a true calamity, and even in the present, it has been reiterated over and over that Sukuna’s resurrection is something that cannot be allowed. And while everyone failed miserably in that aspect – as Sukuna is back in his full, four-armed form – none of these facts help us understand the roots of Sukuna’s evil personality. Why was he such a menace? Was he born evil, or was he made evil? Why does he care only about himself and those loyal to him?

Well, sadly – we don’t know. As we’ve said, Akutami owes us a good look into Sukuna’s past, which is going to reveal more, we hope, but based on what we know now – we can guess it’s one of these two things.

First, Sukuna was simply born evil. This wouldn’t be a strange narrative solution, as Akutami has recently proven that he does not shy away from simple solutions, so we could actually see a backstory that shows that Sukuna is simply evil incarnate. It wouldn’t make much sense, seeing that he was born as a human and not as a cursed spirit, but we wouldn’t be too surprised if it happened.

The second solution is a better fit, but we don’t know if Akutami will decide to go with it, although we hope that he will. The second solution stipulates that Sukuna was made evil (by a curse or a spell) or that he turned evil (like Geto did, as he was disillusioned with the values he had defended earlier). It could be that he was powerful and that he was shunned because of his power, which, paired with his obvious narcissism, resulted in him wanting to avenge himself by killing everyone who did not support him loyally. This would be a fitting and logical story, although not the most original one, but Sukuna having a Geto-like character arc would make sense.

But, as we’ve said, we don’t know – yet. We hope Akutami will reveal more info in the future, and until that happens – Sukuna has simply been evil all this time, and that’s that.

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