In an ideal world, Yuji Itadori and Yuta Okkotsu would be alive and perfectly happy at the end of “Jujutsu Kaisen.” Sadly, the stakes of the Culling Game rose even further, with no clear idea of how it would end or whether the players would not die.
So, it was no question that Adam McArthur and Kayleigh McKee, the voices behind the English dub of Yuji and Yuta, respectively, laughed when asked what they hoped to see in their characters at the end of the anime’s third season.
“What would I, in my heart of hearts, what would I like to see?” McKee said while McArthur repeatedly asked, “without spoiling,” before ending with “alive and happy.”
Still, “Jujutsu Kaisen” season three had a breathtaking finale with the characters rewriting the rules of the Culling Game. Yuji is still coping with the aftermath of the Shibuya incident, but has found new allies. Yuta is still in a good physical condition, but he needs to add a rule that will get him out of the colony. On the other hand, Ryomen Sukuna — one of the main villains in the anime — is unhinged as ever, showing his true form while sitting on the Tower of Bones.
With the ending in mind, McArthur and McKee knew that the deaths and heartbreaks would multiply as the series goes on. “As Jujutsu sorcerers, we know there’s going to be more heartbreak, more hardship, more fighting. And that’s hard to get out of unless they stop being a sorcerer and move out of Japan at this point,” the latter said.
“Despite all that, at the end of season three, I would like them to have a moment to be a kid for a little bit before having to go back into it. Because that’s something that Gojo, I think, said that he firmly believes that as well, that they should get to be kids,” she continued.
After all, season three was trauma after trauma — almost to the point where some viewers forget that many of the characters are still kids in the events of season three. And as much as possible, McArthur wanted his portrayal of Yuji to be a reminder to the viewers of how young they truly are.
“All the trauma and stuff that Yuji went through, I would say that he is going through, I want it to feel as real as possible. Like, I want you to be like, ‘Hey, I want people to remember that he’s 15 years old.’ You know? This is happening to a kid,” McArthur said, noting his character’s unbreakable spirit and how it played into the bigger picture of things. “I just want the weight of it all to feel as real as possible. That’s kind of my approach.”
For McKee’s part, she wanted to highlight Yuta’s “softness” as a key point of his character arc despite the weight of the Culling Game lowering everyone’s chances of survival.
“I’ve wanted to carry Yuta’s softer nature while adding in this new confidence, and I feel, maybe a responsibility that he might feel he has at this point with his strength to really create a new performance while holding that core of him, being like this softer, compassionate guy,” she said.
The voice actress also explained that Yuta’s character arc was about finding a support network amid the darkness among the Jujutsu sorcerers.
“Particularly for Yuta, I feel like the way he really deals with it is, I mean, he got through it because of finding a support network and new friends. And it was their help and seeing their strength that gave him the power, I think, to get through his own trauma,” she said. “And I think that that’s a really important thing to know, that you don’t have to go through darkness yourself all alone.”
As season four is officially in production, McArthur shared that if he could choose a scene that moved him the most, it was the moment at the end of the Execution fight where Yuta revealed to Yuji that his attempt to kill him was his plan all along to save him.
“And Fushiguro comes back, and Fushiguro and Yuji are reunited after all the goings on of the Shibuya incident. Yuji pauses for a moment, and then he says, ‘Fushiguro, I have to ask you something.’ And he asks about Kugisaki. That moment was so impactful,” he said.
“You can feel the weight of what Yuji witnessed with everything that happened with Kugisaki, but you can also hear in his second okay to Fushiguro that he knew he sort of had to, like, let it go so that he could move on to do what they had to do now. So that was that was pretty impactful moment,” he continued.
Further details of “Jujutsu Kaisen” season four have yet to be announced, though fans speculate it will premiere sometime in 2027 or 2028, given its production timeline.