WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Season 1 of Jujutsu Kaisen, available for streaming on Crunchyroll.
One of the breakout successes of the Winter 2021 anime season, Jujutsu Kaisen wraps up its first action-packed season with an ending that leaves viewers hungry for more. The Season 1 finale mostly focuses on finishing off the fight between Itadori Yuuji, Nobara Kugisaki and two of the three Cursed Womb brothers: Eso and Kechizu. The scrap provides an important opportunity for the two in-training sorcerers to showcase everything they'd learned over the first season (especially the underused Nobara), but also more of the heroic humanity that makes Itadori the shonen series' lead.
But even as Itadori laments having to take Eso's life -- a being not so different from his own hybridized human-Curse status -- his future is already being decided by those above him. And that's not the only thing Jujutsu Kaisen sets in motion for a potential second season.
Itadori & Nobara Have Made a Powerful New Enemy
As mentioned, Eso and Kechizu were two triplets, introduced during the Cursed Womb: Death Painting arc that closes out the first season. While Eso and Kechizu are killed by Itadori and Nobara, the third brother, Choso, is still at large. In fact, we discover that he's aligned himself with two of the anime's main antagonists, Mahito and Geto, who were also the architects behind giving the Curses human vessels.
While his siblings fight for their lives against the first-year students, Choso plays a leisurely game of chess with his two new allies (the board of game of choice for any introspective villain, as pop culture has taught us). He senses, however, when Eso and Kechizu have been killed, and will no doubt want to seek revenge on Itadori and Nobara for their murderous actions. Meanwhile, Mahito and Geto are still plotting Satoro Gojo's downfall.
Sukuna Increases His Power - A Finger at a Time
In the aftermath of Itadori and Nobara's battle against the two brothers, the pair reunite with Megumi Fushiguro, who endured a tough battle of his own against the Finger Bearer in the two episodes prior. Emerging bloodied and beaten but victorious, he successfully recovers the Sukuna finger that the Death Paintings were tasked with retrieving. The trio plan on letting their handler, Akari, seal the cursed object, but Sukuna has other plans.
No sooner does his human vessel, Itadori, take the finger for safekeeping, but the King of Curses manifests a mouth on Itadori's hand and gobbles the object up. The moment is played off mostly for laughs as Itadori's classmates scold him for being so careless but really, it's a quiet reminder of Jujutsu Kaisen's rather bleak, overarching story: one day, Sukuna will most likely consume all of his lost fingers, and Itadori will either be lost forever or die trying to stop the supreme Curse for running amok. For now, this latest addition to Sukuna's finger tally just means an even more powerful archvillain for Season 2.
There's a Mole Among the Sorcerors
Season 1 of Jujutsu Kaisen paints a picture of a very insular and tradition-bound sorcerer society. So insular, in fact, that there appears to a lot of generational distrust -- especially between Gojo and Principal Gakuganji. As well as his disagreement with the sorcery world's higher-ups on how to deal with the Itadori/Sukuna situation, the prodigious teacher suspects that there's a traitor among those we meet during the Sister School Exchange arc, in which the students of Jujutsu Tech took part in a showdown against Kyoto Met.
Utihime Iori, one of Kyoto's first-grade teachers and the few people Gojo seems to fully trust, agrees to help him by hunting down clues as to who the mole is at her school when the two institutions part ways. While we're none the wiser as to which sorcerer could be working on the side of the Curses by Season 1's end, Gojo does call Utihime to see if her investigation has turned up anything -- hinting that answers will come in a sequel season.
Itadori, Nobara & Megumi Are In For Big Promotions
Despite all the lurid, exorcist-themed horror of its fight sequences, Jujutsu Kaisen's first season comes to a close on a positive note. With the friendship between the central trio already destined for iconic status -- alongside the likes of Naruto, Pokémon and others -- the cherry on top of this is Aoi Todo and Mei Mei recommending that the three of them be awarded Grade 1 classification.
The prompt for this is Principal Gakukaji's realization that the many anomalous special grade Curses popping up means that the sorcery world needs all the help it can get fighting such threats in such increasing numbers. Alongside those three, Maki and Panda's names are also brought up, thanks to their strong performances during the Exchange Event. Given the Principal campaigned for Itadori's murder during that same event, there's a possibility he will reject the promising young student's promotion, but, Sukuna vessel or no, Itadori's growth has been nothing short of exemplary. Perhaps the Principal will soften his outlook in Season 2.
The most obvious setup for a sophomore installment of the popular anime, however, comes in the form of a phone call to Megumi from Gojo, inviting him, Itadori and Nobara on a "top-secret mission." This cliffhanger ending could easily lead directly into a possible second-season premiere. So far, all that's been confirmed is a spinoff movie project, but given the tremendous success of MAPPA's TV adaptation, it seems as though it's just a matter of when and not if Jujutsu Kaisen's Season 2 is announced.
