Dragon Ball Super opened up the long running franchise to a wide new world of potential stories with the introduction of its multiverse, and ultimately that might have been a mistake because it’s too big of an idea for the franchise to really play with. When Dragon Ball first introduced Beerus to the franchise, it was never really the same. It was not only revealed that there were a God and Angel that were actually the strongest beings in Goku’s universe, but it turned out to be the opening salvo to a whole new multiverse of introductions to come in the future.
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Dragon Ball Super then revealed that there was a potential for even more on the way with all sorts of new allies and foes that could make their debut from across the many universes. But just like the lost potential from when it introduced the Demon Realm that wouldn’t get explored until years later, a multiverse might have been just too big of an idea for a series like Dragon Ball to dive into properly. Outside of an arc or two touching on many of the other universes’ fighters, fans will never get to really see this entire multiverse.
Dragon Ball’s Multiverse Is Just Too Big
To give it credit, Dragon Ball did initially avoid one of the biggest inherent problems when introducing the idea of a multiverse. When seen in other media, a multiverse is usually the idea that there are many other universes existing outside of the main one. There are sometimes even infinite other universes with infinitely different takes on each character, and some franchises even buckle under the weight of such an ordeal. But Dragon Ball did curb this early on by capping off its multiverse with just 12 universes in total. Each one even had its own number and power levels.
Dragon Ball’s multiverse revealed there are 12 universes that each have their own Gods of Destruction and Angels that watch over them. Then it was revealed that there was an even higher being that stood above them all. As later revealed through Dragon Ball Daima, this multiverse shrank a little in size even further when it was revealed that a being from the Demon Realm actually created the multiverse itself and sent out the Supreme Kais to watch over each one. So while it’s a massive multiverse in terms of potential, its scale is much smaller than many other versions of the multiverse.
But it’s still too big for Dragon Ball to handle. Because Dragon Ball was under the creative watch of original series creator Akira Toriyama for such a long time, it really meant that it could only go in a single direction. The series was still intent on exploring Universe 7’s own threats rather than continue on the multiverse path after the Tournament of Power. Almost seeming like the Tournament of Power was supposed to be the end of the multiverse shenanigans overall. For Dragon Ball fans, however, this only led to disappointment as (like Goku) we have been trained to always seek higher powers.
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Dragon Ball’s Multiverse Will Always Disappoint
Jiren was an interesting foe to end the original Dragon Ball Super TV anime series on as he represented the strongest of all the fighters from the potential multiverse. The thing about this, however, is that he’s also not the strongest. The Tournament of Power notably had four of the universe skip out on the battle royal for being simply too strong, and thus even Jiren is likely dwarfed by their power. It’s just that Dragon Ball was never really interested in exploring that idea. It was just a way to limit the number of fighters within the Tournament of Power itself.
Dragon Ball fans are always debating power levels to the point where they continue to want to see Goku stand up against the toughest fighters, so a multiverse with four fully unexplored universes means that fans will never truly get their answers as to how strong Goku really is. It’s disappointing in a way as it means that this potential will truly never be explored. Even if Goku were to somehow become the strongest in his own universe (and defeat Black Frieza in the process), it’s not likely that we’ll even scratch these other universes.
Dragon Ball’s multiverse was ultimately just too big of an idea for it to handle. While it managed its scale to some degree, there will still always be a lingering disappoint from fans for what we didn’t get to see (and likely won’t ever get to see) as a result from these universes. And when a multiverse is already knocked down a peg before it even gets going, all that potential is capped right from the jump. It’s all lost.
