Ultra Ego Vegeta: Why the Road of Destruction Fits the Saiyan Prince

Ultra Ego is the latest transformation for Vegeta in a long line of attempts to either match Goku or surpass him. It's a destructive power taught to him by Lord Beerus, the God of Destruction of Universe 7, and it's granted the prince power he could never have dreamed of in the past. I want to deconstruct Ultra Ego Vegeta, explain why the road of destruction suits his strongest form yet, and show what it took for him to get here.

To truly understand Ultra Ego, you have to understand Vegeta, and sometimes in this fandom even Vegeta's fans don't understand him. I'm not going deep into his full character arc through Dragon Ball Z and Super here. I'm focusing on why Ultra Ego suits the prince, and how it ties all the way back to when he was a kid.

Vegeta's Saiyan class system explains his obsession with Goku

Vegeta comes from a civilization built on class. Your value as a living person, and how your people perceive you, depends on your power level when you are born. That is what drives Vegeta absolutely nuts through most of Dragon Ball Z. He could never comprehend how Goku was able to keep up with him, and at many points surpass him, despite being born with such a low power level.

Vegeta constantly says he's the prince, but he's not reminding the audience. He's reminding himself, because deep down he thinks he deserves to be the strongest just because of his lineage. That is not how it works in this world, and it's a lesson Vegeta learned from getting to know Goku. They're the same race, yet Kakarot was born so weak he was thought to be low level trash. Vegeta can't fathom that Goku is not only more powerful than him but also a fighting genius. That's the root of why Vegeta's speech at the end of Dragon Ball Z makes sense, though that speech is very often misunderstood by fans, and it's something I want to explain on its own another time.

Vegeta's ego drove the truly evil things he did when he was younger

Interestingly enough, the words ego and evil are often interchangeable. Vegeta did a lot of truly evil things when he was younger because of his ego, simply because he could, not understanding they weren't the right thing to do. Because his father happened to be the king of the Saiyans on Planet Vegeta, he thought he could do whatever he wanted, until he faced foes who tested him, like Goku and later Frieza.

Throughout his life Vegeta was coddled and convinced he was superior to everybody else. He's a super elite, and his parents, especially his father, kept reminding him of that. He did have a lot of power, too. He was way stronger than Nappa, stronger than Raditz, and stronger than pretty much anybody except Frieza, not counting gods. Then Goku came along and rocked his world.

Look at Dragon Ball Super: Broly and even the original Bardock special. When Vegeta finds out Planet Vegeta is destroyed, he isn't crying or emotionally disappointed. He just says, "great now i'll never be the king." At least in those days, he did not care about anybody weaker than him. That's why he never wished for Planet Vegeta to come back and never cared to revive his own race: to him they were all weak, and they all died. It took Goku, and eventually Bulma and Trunks, to make him come around and learn what love actually was.

This was established multiple times in Dragon Ball Z, and the first was when Vegeta killed Nappa. Nappa was something like Vegeta's best friend. They fought wars together and traveled the universe collecting planets, bonding for a long time. But once Nappa lost to Kakarot, he was of less value to Vegeta, so Vegeta blew him up and did not care at all.

Beerus and the old Vegeta share an indifference to destruction

There are similarities here with Beerus, though they're not quite the same. Beerus has the unfortunate, or some would say fortunate, job of being the God of Destruction of Universe 7, which means keeping the universe in balance alongside the Supreme Kais, the gods of creation. Beerus has to destroy, and he has gotten to the point where wiping out civilizations, planets and living beings doesn't really affect him much, with some exceptions.

When you take the job of being a god, you have to not feel sympathy for those who die, not be soft natured, and be able to destroy because it's your job. There may be some guilt in Beerus, but we never really see it. That's the similarity between the old Vegeta and Beerus, and it's why going down the path of a destroyer fits Vegeta. But there's a lot more to it than that.

In the Frieza saga, Vegeta passed his Saiyan ideal on to Goku

In the Frieza saga, Vegeta considers himself the sole example of what the Saiyans are supposed to be. He takes all of their sins onto himself because he believes he's obligated to be the ultimate example of a Saiyan. So when he failed to defeat Frieza, it broke his confidence and his will to fight. While dying, he told Goku that Frieza must be killed at the hands of a Saiyan, and that Goku should have no mercy.

To be clear, I don't mean Vegeta literally gave Goku power. He figuratively tried to pass on what needed to be done to Frieza. It took Frieza killing Goku's best friend for Goku to truly hit his Saiyan roots, show much less mercy, and become the Super Saiyan that Vegeta wanted to become.

Goku will never be a destroyer. He'll never be a Beerus or a Vegeta. He's more of a martial artist, a guy who likes competition but doesn't want to wipe you out if you're weaker than him. He just wants you to get stronger. Vegeta never really cared about that for most of his life.

Bulma and Trunks softened Vegeta, and Super continued that growth

Vegeta began to have more empathy thanks to Kakarot, and through the bond he formed with Bulma and Trunks during the seven years between the end of the Cell saga and the start of the Buu saga, when Goku was dead. Without Kakarot around, he grew closer to his family, and that's how he got soft. That's why he atoned for his sins against Majin Buu and blew himself up, because he didn't want to go back to that. He thought it was the only way to catch up in power, and it was a huge mistake. I've covered that in explicit detail before.

Vegeta kept showing this side into Dragon Ball Super. In Resurrection F, he tells Frieza he needs Goku as his measuring stick and wants to keep him alive. In the Universe 6 arc and the Tournament of Power, he shows sympathy for Cabba, a young member of his race, and kind of wants to mentor him. So if somebody tells you Vegeta got no development in Super, that's nonsense. Would the Vegeta of old ever have held onto his daughter and refused to train because his wife was pregnant? That's not the Vegeta from Dragon Ball Z. That's an evolved man who realizes what the right thing to do is, and who became a better husband than anybody could have thought.

Babidi could never control Vegeta because he is pure ego

There's an internal struggle in Vegeta. Bulma, Trunks and later his daughter domesticated him, but inside he knows, or at least thinks, that he has to go back to his roots when he fights. It's almost like he channels that ruthlessness in battle, feeling it's the only way to reach the maximum power needed to catch up to Goku and be the best fighter he can be.

Remember that Babidi gave Vegeta the Majin upgrade but could not control him. Vegeta did it to gain a boost in power. Some would say Vegeta was simply too powerful, but that's not the only reason. Vegeta is pure ego. He wants to satisfy it by catching Goku and beating him, and even domesticated, his ego would never let somebody else take him over. He wants to be his own man, even when he makes mistakes. That choice led to Majin Buu being hatched and millions of people dying, and Vegeta knew what would happen and still did it, because it was all about him. That's why he apologized when he went to sacrifice himself, not wanting to endanger Bulma and Trunks.

His changes didn't happen overnight. It took years. At the end of the Majin Buu fight, Goku wanted to spare the fat Majin Buu, but Vegeta wanted to kill him because he was too dangerous. Both make a lot of sense, and you can't really disagree with Vegeta: Buu was a problem for a very long time. By then Vegeta had also witnessed genocide, caused not just by Frieza and Buu but by Vegeta himself.

Ultra Ego requires Vegeta to let go of his guilt

In the Moro arc, we saw a little of Vegeta's guilt when he felt bad about killing all those Namekians back in the Frieza arc. That brings us to the Granolah arc, where Beerus legitimately criticizes Vegeta's guilt. As a destroyer, Beerus feels that guilt is unnecessary and has to be expunged from the heart, because that's his job. So to become Ultra Ego and really become a God of Destruction in Beerus's eyes, Vegeta has to let go of the guilt and realize that sometimes you have to destroy. It's not Vegeta's job the way it is for Beerus, but that destructive Hakai energy has to come from within.

It's a mental game. Martial arts in Dragon Ball, through Z, a lot of GT and a lot of Super, has always been about mind, body and spirit. Super isn't quite as well written as the older series, but those martial arts tones still stand, and having mind and body as one will always guide you to the most power. Goku's Kaioken involves mind, body and spirit, and so does Ultra Instinct. So Vegeta needs a mind, body and spirit that is guiltless and egotistical, focused only on himself. Hence, Ultra Ego.

Pride and ego don't have to mean evil

In the Moro arc, Vegeta also acknowledges, albeit a bit sarcastically, that he's bound for hell. That's more of the ego. A Saiyan always keeps his pride, and pride and ego go hand in hand. Vegeta isn't a bad guy anymore, but you don't have to be evil to have an ego or to tap into it when the time is right.

A professional athlete like LeBron James or Tom Brady sometimes has to be a leader, and that requires pulling something out from deep inside and telling yourself you've done it before and can do it again. That goes for life too, whether you're trying to get a girlfriend, a good job, a career or pass a class. It's about finding something in your gut that gives you the push to finish and be proud of your work. There's nothing wrong with a little pride, but too much can cost you, and that's a recurring theme with Vegeta in Dragon Ball Z. He thought he could beat Goku, and Goku busted out the Kaioken and hurt him. He thought he was a Super Saiyan against Frieza and got humiliated. He thought he'd gotten strong enough to beat the androids, and Android 18 beat him.

Now, with his new God of Destruction power, that ego is exactly what he needs to tap into. In a way, we've come full circle. Vegeta has changed, but "sometimes you got to go back to your old self to find out who you really are." He's pretty much almost always been a bit of an anti hero. I think at this point he's still a bit more ruthless than Goku, but he knows right from wrong this time, so he goes after the villains, whether or not he succeeds depending on the story, because it's the only way he knows how. He will never be like Goku.

Beerus teaches Vegeta that a destroyer shows no mercy

Lord Beerus tries to explain that being a God of Destruction means having no mercy and no guilt, because you cause so much destruction that if you felt guilt, you'd stay up every night unable to sleep. You basically have to therapeutically remove the guilt from your soul. It's not something Vegeta will always do, but if he wants to tap into Ultra Ego, that's how. We see manga panels in Super of Beerus teaching Vegeta what it truly means to be a destroyer god, the very thing Vegeta took pride in for most of his life: having no mercy. You treat the villains like that, not the good people. That is the true secret of Ultra Ego, and Beerus recognizes that, unlike Goku, Vegeta is much more suited to it because of his history.

During the fight with Granolah, Vegeta taps into the part of Saiyan nature he tried to embrace his whole life before meeting Goku: the instinctual drive to fight, to win, essentially to destroy. The more he fights, the more his brain and body come together, letting him unleash that destructive inner power. But things get interesting, because Vegeta has trouble tapping into those instincts. Granolah is literally an example of why Vegeta feels guilty, since Granolah's people are victims of the Saiyans. Remembering what his people did is why he struggles to reach the full power of Ultra Ego in that fight.

Beerus may have been the first character since maybe Nappa or Frieza to actually validate Vegeta's ego and his willingness to destroy. If you're going to destroy, at least you're doing it on the side of good. As long as you're saving lives, that's ultimately the right thing to do, even though you can easily lose control and get too caught up. But that's how you get the max power out of it.

Ultra Ego is Vegeta's own path, not a regression

Taking the God of Destruction pathway makes the most sense for Vegeta, and the purer route of Ultra Instinct fits Goku, because unlike other Saiyans, Goku isn't racked with guilt. The Saiyans took over planets for Frieza and killed people. Some of them didn't care, and some, like Bardock, did. Goku doesn't have those sins in his soul.

So when people say Vegeta has regressed, I don't think so. I think he's actually developed quite well, and surprisingly better than we originally thought, because he's finding out that following in Goku's footsteps won't work for him. He has to go down his own path, the path of Ultra Ego, and now that he can tap into his ego, he can at least use it for good instead of evil. If Goku is yin, Vegeta is yang: polar opposites, but also similar, bound by their civilization's history and their rivalry, which continues to be the focal point of Dragon Ball.

Does Ultra Ego or Ultra Instinct feel like the better fit for its Saiyan?