I love when a show subverts its expectations. Like, you think one thing is going to happen and then the anime takes a turn, pulling a ‘Gotcha!’ on the viewer. It’s enjoyable when something mainstream can surprise you, even if it’s a relatively simple thing. Like maybe where they lead the protagonist on a wild goose chase over the villain, but it turns out the true antagonist was right there, under their nose. Betraying them all. You know, the same trick Chainsaw Man pulled perfectly with the Gun Devil.
Okay so, while I can’t tell you for sure who killed the Gun Devil, the supposed mastermind behind the coup in hell, the fans have their hunches. Most likely, it was Pochita himself who consumed the Devil back in Hell, during the war with the Four Horsemen. The biggest proof we have for this theory is the fact that when we first meet the heavily injured Devil, he is littered with bullet wounds. And if that isn’t a tell-tale sign of who attacked him, I don’t know what is.
Considering he was still breathing, that meant the other Devil who attacked him was probably defeated. This isn’t as farfetched a theory as some might believe. We already know how threatened the other dwellers in Hell felt by Pochita, who was the infamous Chainsaw Man. They wouldn’t have let him go unless they were killed by him in return. But they did a heavy number on him, considering how it took Denji feeding the battered Devil his blood to help him survive. But was there something more sinister at play here?
I mean, at this point, we all know that the Gun Devil was a ‘red herring’. Despite how powerful it was, it was found dismembered, and its remains were separated so it couldn’t reincarnate properly. Now, who could be so powerful as to leave something that killed more than 50,000 people in under a minute? That’s what we’re here to figure out in Lore Analysis – a segment where we look at the history of popular stories across the Animesphere to see what the plot is hiding from us. So, let’s dive right in!
The Gun Devil: Could Pochita Have Defeated Him In His Weakened State?
Despite being set up as the central antagonist early on in the series, it’s revealed during Makima’s reveal as the Control Devil that sometime after the Gun Devil’s initial appearance that it was defeated by an unknown power.
The most likely suspect is possibly Pochita aka the weakened form of the Chainsaw Man. The primary reason for suspicion is that Pochita appears with bullet wounds during its initial appearance, considering that it is known that Pochita aka the Chainsaw Man was being targeted by the Weapon Devils and the Four Horsemen, there’s reason to believe that he may have been attacked by the Gun Devil sometime before meeting Denji, who has been Pochita’s host for a while now.
For a second, people fooled around with the idea that maybe Makima might’ve had a hand in his defeat too, but that seems unlikely from what we’ve seen so far. Other than that, there isn’t a known power that can contend with the level of a full-power Gun Devil so it’s unknown for now who else could have taken it down.
What Happened To The Gun Devil Afterwards?
The Gun Devil, as mentioned earlier, was defeated by an unknown force. Its body was later discovered by the Soviet Union, after which its body was divided into several pieces between the various nations of the world some parts had been captured by other devils.
It is one of these pieces that belong to the US that is activated by the President to attempt to kill Makima before she can start exerting more of her powers over the world. So maybe there is some merit to the Makima theory mentioned previously. But it was only a small fraction of its strength that went up against the Control Devil, not enough to subdue the other parts that were still scattered across the world, possessed by governments and Devils alike.
As Denji is able to fully erase said portion, only around 80% of the Gun Devil still exists. Whether future portions of this devil will come back is unknown. But hey, we all know how Devils keep reincarnating even if a little bit of them is left. So, it’s likely we haven’t seen the last of the Gun Devil. That is until Denji gets his hands on the last remaining 20%.
