'Dragon Ball Super' Movie Villain Comes From a Different Time Period

The first Dragon Ball Super movie teaser trailer highlighted a lot of little details that seem to back up early information that we got when the movie was first announced. One of the biggest points of intrigue with this film has no doubt been the villain, which will be a new character, making his debut in the film. Thanks to some new details flowing out of a Dragon Ball Legends gaming event, we now have an interesting new detail of the Dragon Ball Super movie villain to share:

We got a peek at a new Akira Toriyama-designed DragonBall character who will debut in the @ToeiAnimation #DragonBallSuper movie this summer - “a Saiyan from a time that’s not from Goku’s time” pic.twitter.com/8bernRjnaD

— Deb Aoki (@debaoki) March 20, 2018

This little detail raises some major questions about this new villain - namely, does he come from the past, or the future? Either scenario is interesting (more on why below), and either one could also have major ties to threads that have already been woven through the Dragon Ball mythos:

The Past

Early on, we heard that this Dragon Ball Super movie would be one that revisits the origins of the Saiyan race, to reveal why Goku, in particular, has been able to increase his power to such an insane degree. A lot of us assumed that the film would be focusing on a new set of ancient Saiyan characters, but maybe that was never the case: From this trailer, it would seem that Goku would either have to travel to the past to confront an ancient Saiyan warrior, or this new villain somehow comes from the past (either through time travel or some kind of awakening) to battle Goku. Either way works for us.

The Future

People have been debating the look of this new villain in the Dragon Ball Super movie, and some think that the character's armor may be an important signifier: One that outs him as a being from the future!

The scenario here would be largely the same as the past-era scenario; namely, this new villain would be a future Siayan warrior, who either comes back to the past to challenge and/or learn from the great Son Goku, or Goku must travel to some future timeline to beat this villain, and/or possibly save the world, again.

Freeza

One other X-Factor in this is Freeza, and how the evil emperor (and soon to be Tournament of Power MVP) connects back to this villain and storyline, as has already been teased. The fact that the film was originally touted as revealing more of Freeza's secret history with the Saiyans definitely makes the case for the movie dipping into Dragon Ball history.

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What do you think of Dragon Ball's newest villain? Excited to see more? Let us know your thoughts in the comments!

Dragon Ball Super airs on Crunchyroll Saturday evenings at 7:15 p.m. CST. Adult Swim airs the English dub during its Toonami block Saturday evenings at 9:30 p.m, and is now available to stream on FunimationNOW and Amazon Video.