u/Legitimate-Ad5789

One of my favorite panels in HxH.

Netero, the man who spent most of his life praying and gratitude ends it by saying, "See you in hell, if there is one." That line alone is so cold.

It also shows the exact moment Meruem despairs for the first time and understands what humanity really is. He wasn't beaten by strength, he wasn't even fighting one man, he was beaten by humanity's willingness to create something as cruel as the Poor Man's Rose just to do whatever it takes to defeat the other side.

This panel you know captures both Meruem's despair and humanity's collective malice. It's not as simple as ohh humanity is evil, it's the willingness to destroy anything that stands in it's way.

And here's why Netero is one of my favourite. He isn't pretending to be a hero or morally above it all. He knows exactly what he's doing and accepts the consequences.

TOGASHI, or TOGOATSHI man really cooked this well.

I just read a post on this subreddit and there was a take, Gon's story reached a natural conclusion because he found Ging, lost his Nen, and the manga has moved on to Kurapika, the Succession War, and the Dark Continent. I understand why people feel that way, but I think that's looking at Hunter × Hunter through a traditional shonen lens when Togashi has rarely written the series that way. Finding Ging was never the end of Hunter × Hunter. It was simply the end of Gon's first journey.

I don't think that's the story Togashi has been writing at all.

In fact, I think once you stop looking at the ending as "someone has to become stronger than everything else," Gon goes from looking irrelevant to looking like one of the few characters actually built for the conclusion.

The Dark Continent itself tells us this.

People talk about it like it's just another place with stronger monsters, but the Five Great Calamities completely reject that idea. They're not villains with ambitions, philosophies, or kingdoms to overthrow. They aren't enemies in the traditional sense. They're disasters, forces of nature. Humanity didn't lose because someone wasn't strong enough. Humanity lost because it treated nature like something that could be conquered.

Netero is the greatest proof of this.

If brute strength were enough, Netero would've been the answer. He wasn't just one of the strongest people alive; he was someone who actively sought impossible fights and had the ability to back himself up. Yet after multiple expeditions, he came back dissatisfied because there was no opponent to defeat. There was no "victory." The Dark Continent wasn't a battlefield,it was an ecosystem operating on rules that didn't care how powerful humanity was.

The strongest human in history effectively confirms that the answer isn't "be stronger."

Meruem reaches almost the exact same conclusion from the opposite direction.

At first he sees the world as a food chain where the strongest naturally rule the weakest. That's his entire worldview. But after meeting Komugi and fighting Netero, that worldview collapses. He begins valuing individuals instead of treating humans as livestock and starts talking about coexistence instead of domination.

Think about how significant that is.

The strongest human and the strongest Chimera Ant both arrive at the same conclusion from completely opposite perspectives.

One learns strength isn't enough. The other learns strength isn't everything. That feels far too deliberate to ignore.

If the thematic answer to Hunter × Hunter is coexistence rather than conquest, then the type of protagonist the ending requires changes completely.

That's where Gon comes in.

People often reduce Gon to an idiot who likes fighting, but that's honestly never been how Togashi introduced or portrayed him.

Go back to Chapter 1. He's not introduced defeating a monster. He's not introduced declaring he'll become the strongest Hunter.

He's sitting quietly, camouflaged in leaves, fishing in the middle of nature. He's almost blending into his surroundings instead of dominating them.

That introduction has always felt unusual compared to other shonen protagonists, but in hindsight it almost feels symbolic.

Look at every major player currently driving the story. Kurapika is driven by revenge and recovering the Scarlet Eyes. Beyond is driven by exploration and ambition. Pariston thrives on manipulation and chaos. The princes are driven by succession. The Phantom Troupe follows its own collective purpose. Ging pursues knowledge above almost everything else.

Everyone wants something.

Everyone is trying to impose their own objective onto the world. Gon... isn't.

His defining characteristic has never been ambition. It's curiosity. He experiences the world rather than trying to control it.

That alone makes him uniquely suited to a place that exists completely outside human expectations. This also explains why Gon changes people in ways no one else really can.

He never gives speeches.

He never convinces people through ideology.

He simply approaches them honestly.

Killua changes because Gon never judges him as an assassin.

Leorio and Kurapika stay together because of Gon's sincerity.

Meleoron immediately trusts him.

Knuckle can't stop respecting him.

Even the Phantom Troupe, people who supposedly only care about one another, begin showing cracks around him.

Nobunaga openly mourns Uvogin while talking to Gon, exposing emotions that the Troupe usually keeps buried. Gon looks Chrollo directly in the eye and asks one of the simplest yet most uncomfortable questions in the series:

"How can you kill people who have nothing to do with you?"

No manipulation.

No threats.

No special ability.

Just genuine confusion.

That question doesn't defeat Chrollo, but it visibly unsettles him because nobody interacts with him that way. That's a recurring pattern throughout the series. Gon reaches people through authenticity rather than ideology.

If the final obstacle isn't something that can simply be defeated, that trait becomes incredibly valuable.

Then there's the power argument.

People often dismiss Gon because he "lost his Nen." But that's not actually confirmed. Nanika was told to heal Gon and bring him back. Nen exorcists had already failed to undo the consequences of Gon's contract before Nanika intervened. We still don't know exactly what Nanika restored.

Did she erase the contract entirely?

Did she only heal the physical damage?

Did she reset Gon to the state before the vow?

The manga deliberately never answers these questions.

Even Ging tells Gon that his aura is still there, but Gon can't perceive or use it normally.

That's not closure.

That's an unresolved mystery.

Likewise, I think people misunderstand Adult Gon.

The form wasn't simply "Gon after years of training."

It was his future potential violently compressed into a single moment through the most extreme Nen contract we've ever seen.

The story never says, "This is the strongest Gon could naturally become." It says he sacrificed everything he could ever become to obtain that power right then.

Those aren't the same statement.

And even in that artificial state, Gon did something almost nobody else in the series could've done.

Pitou is repeatedly framed as someone who may have surpassed even Netero physically, with both Netero himself expressing caution and Colt believing the Royal Guards exceeded humanity's greatest strength.

Adult Gon didn't barely win. He completely overwhelmed Pitou. Everybody knows it you and I both do. It wasn't a difficult fight. It wasn't even a fight. It was a massacre.

That's important because it proves Gon possesses a capacity unlike almost anyone else in the series.

Finally, from a structural perspective, I don't think Togashi has actually written Gon out of the story at all.

The chapter where Gon finally meets Ging, the supposed ending of his story,is also the chapter where the Dark Continent is properly introduced.

That's not coincidence. Ging immediately shifts his attention toward Beyond Netero's expedition.

Gon's Nen remains unresolved.

The world's greatest mystery is only just beginning.Kurapika is absolutely the protagonist of the current arc. There's no debate there.

But people keep treating "Gon isn't relevant right now" as if it automatically means "Gon's story is finished forever."

Those are completely different claims.

To me, Hunter × Hunter hasn't been building toward humanity defeating nature. It's been building toward humanity learning how to exist alongside something far greater than itself.

If that's really the ending Togashi has in mind, then the character most naturally suited to that conclusion isn't necessarily the smartest, strongest, or most ambitious.

It might just be the boy who, from the very first chapter, was happiest simply sitting in nature, fishing, with no desire to conquer the world at all.