Vegeta's purple glow in Dragon Ball Super Beerus: not Ultra Ego

What happened to Vegeta in Dragon Ball Super Beerus episode 3? Since the episode premiered, it's been the talk of the fandom. I don't think it's an early Ultra Ego or destruction energy. The most logical theory is that it's a new type of rage form for Vegeta: a furious mutation of Super Saiyan 2.

People have floated several explanations. It could be some kind of Super Saiyan 2 mutation, an early mutated version of Ultra Ego, or Vegeta tapping into destruction energy. Or it could be a cool effect the creators and animation team threw in to spice up the "my Bulma" scene. My theory draws on clues from Dragon Ball Super, from the manga, and from what other Saiyans and characters with Saiyan blood have done throughout Dragon Ball.

What Vegeta did after Beerus hit Bulma in episode 3

Beerus strikes Bulma in Dragon Ball Super Beerus episode 3. For some reason, this version changes the blow to an elbow instead of a regular smack. I guess the creators wanted it to seem more like an accident. Vegeta loses his temper, screams and powers up.

He goes into what appears to be Super Saiyan 2, but it doesn't look quite like Super Saiyan 2. Then he launches an attack on Beerus. It did more damage, was more effective and felt faster than anything Super Saiyan 3 Goku did when he fought Beerus on Kaio's planet in the previous episode. So how can a transformation that isn't Super Saiyan 4 or something beyond it do better than Super Saiyan 3?

How Vegeta surpassed Goku in Battle of Gods (2013)

To answer that, we have to go back to the original Battle of Gods film from 2013, written by Yusuke Watanabe and Akira Toriyama. When Bulma gets hit in that story, there's no purple aura and nothing unique about Vegeta's power up. Master Roshi immediately recognizes that Vegeta has surpassed Goku.

I'm not sure how Roshi knows how strong Goku has gotten, since we don't know the last time Roshi saw Goku fight. He might be thinking of a fight from years earlier, maybe Majin Buu. But if we take him at his word, which I always have, it makes sense that Vegeta could surpass Super Saiyan 3. Vegeta had trained in his base form and in the basic Super Saiyan form, and on top of that he got a massive boost from his rage.

Gohan is the character most associated with rage boosts. His anger let him reach powers far beyond what he was capable of and tap into higher forms like Super Saiyan 2. Much later, in Super Hero, he unlocked Gohan Beast from being very angry. In this case, Vegeta's wife got hit and Vegeta lost it.

Vegeta's fear of Beerus and the fight or flight response

Something that isn't often talked about is the fear Vegeta had of Lord Beerus. Vegeta already knew how dangerous Beerus was and what he did to Vegeta's father and to so many others. Because of that, I think Vegeta went into a very rare version of fight or flight.

We've seen this before. Characters afraid of their loved ones dying have powered up and done marvelous things in Dragon Ball. Goku has done it many times, and so has Vegeta, with Gohan probably most famous for it. It's a principle Dragon Ball has used often, and it's based on real world science.

The fight or flight mechanism is a reaction to real or perceived danger, where your body tenses up and becomes stronger or faster to face the threat or run from it. Your brain detects a threat and signals your hypothalamus, activating your sympathetic nervous system. Your muscles tense up, you release adrenaline, your heart rate and blood pressure rise, your breathing spikes and your pupils dilate. "It sure sounds like you're going Super Saiyan, right?" It's not identical, but there are similarities.

These stress responses have been hardwired into our DNA for millions of years, so we could run from threats like wild animals, dangerous people threatening us and our loved ones, or anything in nature that could hurt us. It's one of the real world ideas Toriyama uses in Dragon Ball. So Vegeta got a rage boost and an adrenaline boost on top of his training, and that's how he got so strong without a Super Saiyan 3 of his own. Dragon Ball Super Beerus then added this purple filter, or glow, to make it seem more threatening.

The clue in Dragon Ball Super's 2015 "Furious Mutation" episode

The answer to that glow may lie in Dragon Ball Super from 2015. I want to stress a caveat: the 2015 reference is legitimate, but what I'm theorizing here isn't in any guidebook or in any Toriyama interview. Toriyama wrote the movie version, and his true vision has always been that version of the Battle of Gods story. The 2015 version had Toei writers. Still, many years later, Toriyama did create Ultra Ego, so we have to keep that in mind.

The original 2015 episode 7 was titled around Vegeta's "Furious Mutation." When it aired, I don't think anyone questioned that Vegeta was angry and somehow mutated into an angered version of Super Saiyan 2. We'd seen that before, with Gohan's version and even Majin Vegeta's.

When those episodes aired back in August 2015, I remember some of us theorized they might make Vegeta go Super Saiyan 3, though I wasn't sure. It didn't happen. They went with Vegeta getting very angry and landing some hits on Beerus, but nothing too extreme.

With this purple filter, it may be that the Toei staff adapting the story again for Dragon Ball Super Beerus took that original title and asked how they could illustrate a new type of furious mutation.

Future Trunks' Super Saiyan Rage, Broly and Kale as the model

The answer may lie in another mutation from the 2015 series: Trunks' Super Saiyan Rage form, exclusive to him during the Future Trunks arc and his battles with Goku Black. That form appeared only in the anime and later the games, not the manga. It looked like something between Super Saiyan 2 and 3, or at least an enhanced version of his Super Saiyan 2, maybe with him picking up something about god ki through osmosis. We never got an explanation, but we knew it came from Trunks being very angry.

Likewise, Broly and Kale have their own versions of rage and ways of using it to mutate. This Vegeta transformation, if you want to call it a new transformation, may have been something like that.

Why it can't be Ultra Ego or destruction energy

It's impossible for this to be destruction energy. It doesn't look quite like it, because the purple Beerus uses is different, and so is the purple Vegeta uses as Ultra Ego Vegeta in the Granolah arc. It's not the same thing.

On top of that, at this point in the story Vegeta has never trained with Beerus or Whis a day in his life. He doesn't even know what god ki is, and he has no idea how to tap into anything resembling Ultra Ego. Advanced god forms like Ultra Instinct, Ultra Ego and Super Saiyan Blue require a specific kind of training that neither Goku nor Vegeta knew about until Beerus woke up and confronted them. Neither had even heard the legend of the Super Saiyan God, despite training for most of their lives.

Vegeta trained under Beerus and Whis for a long time before Ultra Ego was ever brought up to him. That happened in the Granolah arc, not in the Resurrection F era or anywhere near it.

Super Saiyan forms as a spectrum, and my transformation fatigue

So the most logical conclusion is that this is a special furious mutation for Vegeta, or Super Saiyan 2 plus fury. There could be a million fan names for it, but if that's what it is, it makes the most sense to me.

Modern Dragon Ball has taught us that Super Saiyan forms could be a spectrum, with different mutations and pathways. There's Gohan Beast, Broly's rage, and Kale's rage form, which differs from Broly's, which differs from Trunks' form. There's the Ultra Ego and Ultra Instinct paths, the Daima Super Saiyan 4, the GT Super Saiyan 4, everything Cumber and the Dragon Ball Heroes characters do, and Rosé. Something new always seems to pop up. I for one am pretty fatigued on transformations, and I don't want any more at this point.

I know some people might be theorizing that maybe this was the animators' way of foreshadowing Ultra Ego as a visual nod. If your theory is that it's a visual nod, I can get on board. My problem is people assuming it was Ultra Ego just because it's purple, which is silly, because Vegeta has had a purple aura since the Saiyan saga.

Ultra Ego isn't a power that was hidden inside Vegeta his whole life, and it isn't a primal Saiyan form. It had to be taught to him by Lord Beerus himself. Unless they're doing a radical retcon, which I highly doubt since the Granolah arc isn't on the docket for the anime for several more years, the only logical theory based on what Dragon Ball Super Beerus showed is that this is a new type of rage form for Vegeta.