I mean, that was always a product of circumstances. The kids weren’t meant to get involved in any of the pro hero stuff, and when they did, they usually got shit on for it but got their jobs done. In the war, the kids managed to help take down Machia, but didn’t stop him from killing thousands, same as the pros. I’ve never felt their strength was out of place or that any of the students outside of Deku had somehow massively eclipsed the pros.
And Deku is obviously the most special case of them all. He is literally being propped up by society as “the hero to stop AFO,” and it’s that expectation that caused him to slowly destroy himself in the first place. So even if he’s the number 1 in terms of defeating villains, that doesn’t make his development or the skill of the pros any less. Him getting that strong was even seen as a bad thing because of how much he nearly sacrificed to achieve it. Imagine if 1a didn’t help him now that Shigaraki is 3 days away from being up and running, and he had to fight the next fight near death already?
I don’t think Horikoshi needs to timeskip at all. In fact, that would be strange to me depending on how this next confrontation goes. He’s already underestimated this “Final Act,” so I’m not going to start waving the “rushed ending” flag yet. Especially not over something as small as him having gauntlets on his legs, though that is a VERY strange detail to not tell the audience when it was introduced. Like, what the heck.
But he could easily just have this next fight not be the last one. Heroes don’t need to lose, just have Shigaraki start taking control of things without AFO hounding him. Have an actual, multistage war instead of a single battle like the last time.
Remember, there are A LOT of pieces missing for this to be a “final battle.” Gigantomachia is locked up, most of the PLF that followed Shigaraki specifically are locked up (including ReDestro and Geten), Toga is nowhere to be found, and as was just revealed, AFO has pull in other countries, not just Japan. You think the heroes are the only ones that are going to start getting overseas reinforcements?
I won’t call the ending “rushed” just yet, but depending on how a lot of these plot lines are resolved, it could be good or bad. I definitely think he needs like at least 80-100+ chapters to solve everything though.
, I always thought it was weird that first years were getting involved with stuff big shot heroes were struggling with such as the overhaul situation, the war arc and now imo it feels weird that the greatest hero out there would have reached that title while he was still in hero school.
