Taking Bets: Deadpool for Class 1A

Yes, Izuku said this was “the story of how we all became the greatest heroes.” 

So, clickbait is clickbait: assuming “we all” means all of Class 1A, then none of them should die in this, the final arc of My Hero Academia.

…But what if what made them heroes was that some of them did indeed give up their lives to save the day? 

This post is still super-long, in my attempt to justify, with limited evidence and the flimsiest of logic, why I think certain characters will die, and the rest will survive, before My Hero Academia concludes its final arc. 

Spoilers up to Chapter 364 of My Hero Academia. Content warnings about death. All images from the My Hero Academia Wiki.

As I posted earlier today, it’s likely Bakugo will make a full comeback to My Hero Academia after his apparent death–or, at least, a full-enough comeback before he potentially still dies but only after Shigaraki is defeated, the day is saved, and the world returns to some sense of normal. 

But just because I think Bakugo is going to survive this battle doesn’t mean the rest of Class 1A is in the clear, especially as My Hero Academia is in its final arc. 

Speaking with my friend Ellak Roach, it got me thinking about the likelihood of survival for Izuku, Todoroki, Ochaco, and the rest of My Hero Academia’s star class. (Sorry, Class 1B.) 

I have divided up the students into five sets: 

• Dark horse candidates who may unexpectedly die in this arc
• Characters with a close-to-50-percent chance of dying in this arc
• Characters that I could absolutely see dying in this arc
• Seven characters who I can’t imagine dying at all in this arc
• And one character who I am 100 percent certain will not die in this arc

(I am also hedging my bets by insisting on phrasing it as “this arc.” I could imagine a character having their lifespan cut short by injuries in this arc, as I don’t think Bakugo is going to live very long into adulthood, whereas in this post I’m talking much more about characters who will succumb to their death from injuries in this arc, whether they die on the battlefield or once they get to a hospital.)

Dark Horse Candidates

• Ojiro
• Koda
• Sato

Let’s start with the dark horse candidates who may win–and by “win,” I mean die. 

And, sadly, their potential deaths have little to do with how well written they are, but how poorly progressed their character development is. It’s characters whose deaths feel like an inevitability because Horikoshi doesn’t know what more to do with them–so, killing them off becomes a way to get one last bit of sentimentality from characters who may come off as bland or as the Scrappy (sorry, Tommy Turtle–you deserved better, man). 

These are the student characters who are analogues to Pro Heroes like Midnight, Edgeshot, and Crust: yes, you feel something when they die, but they either had little opportunity for development (Crust especially), do something noble so that your pain is that they died rather than how they lived (Edgeshot), or where it is such a swerve that you have problems processing why this death had to happen (Midnight). 

So, this category would include three characters Ojiro, Koda, and Sato. Nothing at all against these three–the cliche is, “every character is someone’s favorite.” And I find all three charming–Ojiro is the everyman, Koda reminds us that not all heroes have flashy powers and are best in support groups, and Sato has a fun superpower. But if they were to die, as utterly devastating as that would be for those charming reasons I just mentioned, that’s all it would be: it would be deaths to reinforce how grim the story has become, a shallow attempt to rend some tears from readers rather than giving us a reason to care about the characters themselves and mourn the lives cut too short. 

50/50 Odds

• Aoyama
• Tsuyu
• Shoji
• Shoto
• Izuku
• Momo

Next are the characters whose odds at dying I would put at 50/50. It could really go either way, depending on how the plot unfolds. 

There are various reasons. 

For example, it could be that their narrative has wrapped up, so all that is left for them is to die off. It could be a sacrifice to make up for prior misdeeds. Both of those apply to Aoyama.

It may, frustratingly, be a fridging to help motivate another character to keep fighting. I could see Toga managing to kill Tsuyu as a last bit of motivation for Ochaco to stop her. While this would be abhorrent, not just from a gendered perspective, it also feels sadly believable. While fans love Tsu, and I think some of that led Horikoshi to include her in the Shie Hassakai arc, the focus on her never felt organic enough, or that Horikoshi had an idea where to take her. She has shown intelligence in combat almost as high as that of Izuku, she is likable, the anime has shown she can carry her own stories, her backstory of family financial struggles and long-distance friendships is sympathetic–which means her death would actually hurt and make sense why someone like Ochaco would realize, that despite whatever sympathy she has for Toga, this bloodshed has to be stopped.

Another reason for killing off a character could just be poetic, having two warriors who are in agreement with each other and, in another time, may have been friends, but circumstances put them on opposite sides. 

I can imagine two instances of this: Spinner versus Shoji, and Dabi versus Shoto. 

Depending on where Spinner and Shoji end up in the story, I could imagine the two in a final duel with neither one surviving, a fight that becomes the core to the entire battle for heteromorphic Quirk possessors, about whether fighting to be accepted like Spinner is more valid than what comes across as Shoji’s desire to assimilate. While this seems like a long-shot, given how little development Shoji has received, Horikoshi has been setting up this kind of a narrative, given the small moments of Shoji acknowledging his appearance, responding to Komori’s remarks about him in the Class 1A vs Class 1B arc, and silent moments like interacting with the tall woman that Izuku saved. 

Far more gutsy would be if Horikoshi killed off Shoto. Whereas the Spinner versus Shoji fight is anticipated but not as concrete in expectations, we have been in the midst of the Dabi and Shoto fight ever since the Pussycat training arc. Shoto is one of my favorite characters in this series, if not my absolute favorite in the series, just based on how much potential his story has: the Todoroki family drama could have been the entirety of My Hero Academia if Izuku had not started off this story. And if you really want to make that hurt, to make readers realize war is hell, that toxic family structures do have lasting ramifications, it may not just be how traumatized and damaged Rei and Dabi are, or how guilty Endeavor feels, or how hopeful Fuyumi tries to remain: it may be something as senseless and heart-rending as seeing a decent person dying, trying to fix a family that can’t be fixed. 

Then there is Izuku, who kind of fulfills all the other reasons I listed above. 

Like Aoyama, his story is near its end, so death is a logical conclusion–and his sacrifice would be yet another in that popular cliche of the hero dying at the end to save the world. It’s in Izuku’s nature, and the mission statement of MHA seems to be, “Heroes die to save others.” 

Like Tsuyu, his death would give characters a reason to keep fighting–and as likable as Izuku is, like Tsuyu, he has some blandness that makes his death seem like an obvious choice. 

Like Shoji and Shoto, he is on the opposite side of another warrior who, by chance, he could have become: if things had turned out differently, Izuku could have ended up like Shigaraki. (But that’s a longer discussion, given that, as far as we know, Shigaraki was not born Quirkless–although there are enough believable hypotheses for how his decay Quirk was something forced onto him by All For One.)

That just leaves Momo–and I admit this is a bit of a swerve, after referring to so many characters whose deaths in this final arc seem like logical conclusions, moments to motivate other characters, or thematically apt. Momo is not really any of these. The reason I put her here is that I could see her living–as she is in the support position in the battle against Shigaraki, so far enough from the battlefield. But she is close enough to where Shigaraki is that I could see her dying. And while the light novels have done a great job at expanding on her character, the only reason I could see her dying here is as some lingering guilt to be felt by her classmates who will survive, in particular the students I think she is closest to and, skipping ahead, that I don’t think will die, namely Jiro, Denki, and Mina. But we’ll get to why I think they are in the clear later. 

Death Flags Coming

And now, the characters who I am most certain will (probably) die in this arc:

• Iida
• Sero

If I can say that Aoyama and Izuku’s arcs have reached their end, Iida’s stalled out years ago. 

Heck, it’s a weird coincidence that my engagement with My Hero Academia also stalled after the Stain arc. I used to review the anime every week–then stopped around that arc. And it wasn’t because I didn’t enjoy that arc. There were other factors preventing me from getting back to writing those reviews, including obligations and a lot of changes in my life at that point. 

But I do think a lot of my enjoyment in My Hero Academia ended when Iida’s arc wrapped up as it did. It’s not so much a “jump the shark” moment as it is that I started to see how the series refused to return to long-standing characters once they plateaued in their character progression.  It didn’t help that the arc suffered from a problem persistent elsewhere in My Hero Academia, that being about disabilities, that tend to serve as motivation for another character to take action when the disabled person cannot. With Iida’s brother no longer able to be a Pro Hero in the same way, and how that became the motivation for Iida to stop Stain. So, he stops Stain, learns he was overly zealous, and realizes he has to go back to the largely level-headed person he was before. Despite my reservations about how representations of disabilities were handled in the arc, it’s not at all a bad story–but it is an end to Iida’s arc, putting him back where he was. 

Since then, Iida’s presence has been pretty much the same: he is the serious guy, he is the responsible guy, he’s a little more loose and fun than before, but the humor is that he is still so stiff even when he is trying to kick back and relax. 

So when Iida shows up alongside Shoto to battle Dabi, and when Dabi is incinerating Endeavor’s other sidekicks as he walks his way towards Shoto and Iida, yeah, I don’t see Iida leaving this battle. His story is done. I think he is going to die, and like what may happen if Ochaco sees Tsuyu die, that is going to give Shoto that last bit of motivation to stop his brother. 

Then there is Sero. Horikoshi has said that he was going to get a moment. And at one point in Chapter 353, Sero had a silent word balloon as his classmates were momentarily savoring Shoto’s victory over Dabi. Was he worried that they were about to die? Or is he up to something that is going to screw over the heroes–and he’ll die for it? I don’t really have any more thoughtful reason why he’ll die aside from these details, as well as, like Ojiro and some others, he is enough of an everyman character, and largely in the background, that his death is foreshadowed but lacks a lot of the same emotional punch other characters’ deaths would have. His death is more like a checkmark: “We need someone to die, this is an obvious choice.”

Will Not Die

• Ochaco
• Bakugo
• Hagakure
• Jiro
• Denki
• Mina
• Eijiro
• Tokoyami

So far I have thrown death flags onto two out of the main four characters: Izuku and Shoto. (Or, three out of the main five if you still think Iida is a main character.) That leaves Ochaco and Bakugo–and I don’t see either one dying by the end of this war arc.

Ochaco’s death would definitely impact readers. But as I said, Tsuyu is the more likely student to die, if a student is to die, in a battle against Toga. But even if Tsuyu survived, I just don’t see Ochaco dying. She is likely going to end up carrying forward the warning that Toga represents, whether that is what can happen when parents, teachers, and students turn their backs on someone who needs help, or that, regardless our good intentions, our attempts to “fix” someone, to make them conform when that is not helpful to them or necessarily correct, can make things worse. Ochaco is probably going to leave that battle with Toga learning more about what a Hero should do; whether it’s the correct message to get from this manga is a whole other story. 

As for Bakugo, while he did die already, and I don’t see him lasting long from his injuries even after his new Edgeshot heart, I think symbolically it would be devastating to have him die so soon after the Heroes prevail. He’d probably go out like Aang in The Legend of Korra: live long enough to see what good he did, and what bad got worse, but die due to having expended so much of his energy as a kid. 

What about the rest of Class 1A? 

I can’t see Hagakure dying. Yes, her arc is pretty much done, given her role showing us what Aoyama was really up to–so, barring some last-minute reveal that she was a mole all along for some group, whether UA, the Heroes Commission, or aspy for the League of Villains or the Meta Liberation Army even more covert than Aoyama, I don’t see how her dying would do much. She got her moment in the spotlight to help Izuku talk down Aoyama, killing her now would not mean much when she actually did contribute something to help the others. 

I already don’t see Jiro dying, as she is leaving this battle with injuries, and there are stories to tell about what happens next when she is disabled and will have more limited use of her Quirk. Plus, if Momo dies, Jiro’s association with her is going to make that death hit her harder, so she has to live to suffer through that.

And if Jiro doesn’t die, that means Denki, given his association with her, also won’t die. Whether there is friendship, romance, or something in between for those two, if he died, that would be a bit too much, I think, for Jiro, and after what she has gone through, this goofball is probably going to stick around as a bit of levity for her. 

And that’s pretty much the same reason why I don’t think Eijiro will die, either, especially if Izuku dies, as Bakugo is going to need someone to bounce off of–especially how under-utilized that Bakugo and Eijiro relationship has been since the Shie Hassakai arc. 

Plus, Eijiro has to stick around for the same reason Mina would stick around: their association with Gigantomachia and their discovery of Midnight’s corpse, as well as their bond since middle school, means these two are pretty much surviving if the other is. The two probably will work together to take down Gigantomachia, avenge Midnight, and put a bow on their relationship that has been in the background since we learned how much guilt Eijiro has harbored for his failure to protect others. 

Tokoyami fulfills the same role as Eijiro does for Bakugo, and Denki for Jiro: someone else–Hawks–needs to have him here for his character progression. If Hawks dies, Tokoyami has to be there to witness it. If Endeavor dies, Tokoyami has to be here to listen to Hawks. Given what Hawks has gone through, as pretty much black ops for the government, Tokoyami is his morality chain, and while an author can be cruel to inspire emotions in readers, I don’t see Horikoshi killing Tokoyami just to give a sad ending to Hawks. Hawks’s story is about someone who is cynical to the point that you think he has zero hope in a better world–but every action he takes is to make sure there doesn’t have to be another him, another Nagant, another someone who has to do the dirty work. You don’t have to like that approach to storytelling, or his role in black ops, but it would be bad writing–not that My Hero Academia isn’t capable of it–to end Hawks’s story so bleakly that he sees Tokoyami die and think all of his work was for nothing. 

So that akes care of most of Class 1A–all except one last student, one who I see no way he will die, because to do so would give too much joy to too many readers, whereas keeping him around as the answer to Soul Eater’s Excalibur is necessary to keep people irate and let that anger fuel them for the rest of their lives…

Bonus Will Not Die: Mineta

This is our hell. That perv won’t die. We are cursed to have him stay with us, forever and ever, because the world is full of Mineta’s, and that is sadly one of the most realistic details about My Hero Academia. 

Or, They All Live Happily Ever After

Or, maybe I’m wrong. Maybe all of Class 1A lives, while only some of the adult Pro Heroes die, because having the next generation bite it this brutally would be too grim for what has been an optimistic story, about the previous generation (who screwed up the world) striving to make a better world for the next generation…sometimes to the point of toxic positivity and in ignorance of the societal realities that keep creeping into it. 

What do you think? Who do you think has a death flag on them? When Izuku narrated that his class would be the greatest heroes ever, did he mean they had to live long enough to do that and then abruptly die? Or is it not technically a lie if a classmate dies, because Denki and Eijiro can just puppeteer Bakugo’s corpse for a Weekend at Kacchan’s lark? Feel free to write your thoughts in the comments!

And if this darkly humorous betting pool entertained you or provoked some thoughts, please consider a monetary contribution to my Ko-fi. Your financial support helps me to pay bills and afford resources I use to read content and write these posts. The link is at ko-fi.com/dereksmcgrath. Thank you for your consideration.