Jujutsu Kaisen Ending Gives SHOCKING REASON Why Sukuna Chose to Reincarnate

Jujutsu Kaisen Chapter 271 confirmed exactly what led to Sukuna deciding his reincarnation 1,000 years ago through his talk with Mahito.

But this revelation also produces even more unanswered questions and potential issues with how Sukuna has been presented since the beginning.

Sukuna’s philosophy

In Chapter 213, Sukuna expresses annoyance at how the weak cling to life, as if it had any value.

We see more of Sukuna’s personal ideals in Chapter 238, in that he had none.

He only lives for himself, unmoved by exterior purposes and only moved by his own nature.

In other words, to try and understand Sukuna is to fail at understanding who Sukuna is.

The most important detail of this is how he talks about how fighting, killing and eating people is merely a way to “pass time before death”.

It is strange how someone with no fear of death or a desire for immortality or conquest would pursue the path of becoming a Curse but if we look at Sukuna’s beliefs in detail, it makes sense while also clashing with how he presents himself to others.

By this I mean that like Muzan from Demon Slayer, Sukuna presents himself as an unknowable disaster as a way to hide or deny his humanity, both to others and most especially to himself.

There is a little trick though: Sukuna thinks there is still some value in human life.

He believes that every human has a “unique, fleeting taste”, which is also what Sukuna says in the epilogue in Volume 30 when he asked Uraume if they can help him slaughter humans.

As much as he condemns the weak for crying about their rights to live freely, Sukuna deep down does see some value in fleeting humanity, as least in relation to the taste of them.

More likely, as we will learn, Sukuna enjoys eating humans because of the suffering and superiority he inflicts over them as a curse.

At the end of the series, we learn that Sukuna was lying to himself and others about being a disaster.

By choosing to be an empty monster, he could accept his lot in life as a cursed little wretch and embrace the passions of a fleeting life while waiting for death as Sukuna saw that the world would only treat him that way.

Yet why would he reincarnate to essentially live the same life all over again?

Sukuna’s Past in Detail

In Chapter 253, we learn that Sukuna was born as a set of twins but he consumed his brother to survive.

We also learn that his mother died from the process, which made Sukuna grow up as an orphan.

When asked by Kashimo if he became the strongest or was born this way in Chapter 237, Sukuna only said that he believed he was born as a “cursed, unwanted little wretch”.

This wording will become quite relevant.

In Chapter 238, Sukuna’s feats were narrated, revealing that he had defeated multiple factions.

These included and at the last bit, the Angel and her “Desshi Pacification Squad”, which was the protection squadron for the Abe clan

The Northern Fujiwara was the most powerful clan in the Heian era due to being a family of regents while the Abe clan

The Heian era feats were an explanation for the events in Yorozu’s flashback to the time she died to Sukuna’s slashes.

Yoruzu only knew of Sukuna was afar anyway.

After the defeat of the Fujiwara clan, the Heian government invited Sukuna to a festival, showing that he had ascended to the level of a living deity out of the people’s fear.

This also reaffirms Akutami’s statement in the databooks, that Gojo was more feared in modern days when compared with Sukuna because the Heian Era always had terrifying sorcerers.

However, Sukuna is treated as a myth in these stories and are detached from Sukuna personally.

Sukuna never holds any pride in what he has done in the Heian Era, only being assured in his own strength.

Uraume is the Key to Understanding Sukuna

Of all the characters Sukuna interacts with, he shows the most amount of positive emotion around Uraume.

When they reunited in Shibuya in Chapter 116, Sukuna talked to the androgynous monk like they were a close friend.

In Chapter 271, we finally understand why their connection is deep: because like himself, Uraume is a “little, cursed wretch”.

The epilogue shows us how the two met.

Sukuna comes across Uraume, who was found freezing their parents and entire neighborhood after accidentally awakening their Cursed Technique

Sukuna immediately took Uraume under his wing, telling them to help him with cooling and preserving his meat since he accidentally broke his own ice house.

Both of them would be surprised in how they could live with each other, with Sukuna and Uraume not feeling cold around each other.

Through Uraume, we see Sukuna find meaningful companionship, not fear, respect, hatred, arrogance or even an attempt to control or explain the untamed wild man.

Was Sukuna’s past retconned in the ending?

The last chapter’s most profound points would continue when Mahito and Sukuna traded words about how they ended up in their deaths.

Mahito remained exactly the same evil unforgivable curse but Sukuna changed, which could be a commentary on how Sukuna changed throughout Jujutsu Kaisen.

However, there was always a sense of humanity to Sukuna in the fact that he treated Uraume quite differently, rather than indifferently.

I do appreciate how Akutami makes Sukuna’s statements more metaphorical and profound instead of outright expositing Sukuna’s past.

When Sukuna talked about how he completely understood love and found it useless, one would think he just has incredible apathy.

But the final chapter does show that Yuji’s mercy for Sukuna were founded on something.

This is mostly my take on the situation but it seems to explain everything.

Sukuna and Uraume were close friends, a bond formed from circumstance that developed because they were the only two people who could stand each other.

When Sukuna talked about the curses within him, it might be what made him feel incompatible with people.

Sukuna survived by draining his mother and twin brother in the womb, which could be the source of Sukuna’s deformed four-armed, four-eyed, two-mouthed body and curse.

The curse of loneliness was not solely from his strength but from his own existence, vomiting up the curse of having taken the life of his family before even being born.

The epilogue shows us how Sukuna and Uraume met and you can see how, in some way, Sukuna was able to express his humanity through them.

So Why Did Sukuna Choose to Reincarnate

And here is where I might have an answer to why Sukuna chose to reincarnate.

Kenjaku offered Sukuna an opportunity to fight the sorcerers of the future. Perhaps Kenjaku predicted the world would grow and so would the amount of cursed energy, cursed spirits, and jujutsu sorcerers.

On the one hand, this is exciting as Sukuna can satisfy his endless appetite for battles and human flesh that his Heian era would not be able to.

On the other hand, he would still see the same phenomenon of a world of curses, something deep down he might have wished was different.

Somehow, the modern world did change Sukuna, as he was able to have an exciting battle with Gojo and the existence of Yuji Itadori, his distant descendant, would test his convictions and slowly bring out the insecurities Sukuna hid away.

Kenjaku’s twisted experiments with Jin Itadori might have been a work of karmic fate as Sukuna would finally see himself as not a curse but a pitiful human being in the eyes of a merciful incarnation of his twin brother, a victim and source of his life’s curse.

While the epilogue shows that he had always stayed by Uraume’s side, it did not mean that Uraume healed the wound of his soul, the emptiness he felt that made him a cruel, uncaring monster.

With Yuji’s compassion, he chose to take the initiative with Uraume, to choose to stay with them and live for them rather than to dwell in his own curse.

Perhaps, in choosing a reincarnation through the Culling Game, Sukuna eventually found redemption by going north, no longer a curse.

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