Dragon Ball Super Moves Past Goku and Vegeta, Spotlighting New Heroes
For years, Goku and Vegeta have effectively carried Dragon Ball on their backs as the franchise’s most recognizable faces. But with Dragon Ball Super shifting focus toward other fighters—especially following Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero—it’s becoming clearer that their long-running character arcs are nearing the finish line.
Gohan & Piccolo Are Currently Dragon Ball Super’s Main Characters
The last stretch where Goku and Vegeta truly acted as the primary leads in Dragon Ball was the Granolah the Survivor Saga. After that, both Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero and the manga’s Super Hero storyline put Piccolo and Gohan front and center, with Goku and Vegeta pushed into a supporting B-Plot role.
Piccolo drives much of the core story beats, while Gohan gradually takes over as the centerpiece during the final portion. The manga’s later chapters are also structured around Gohan’s perspective—except for Chapter 104, which functions as a flashback—making his viewpoint the organizing thread for the arc.
Piccolo even lands the last panel in Dragon Ball Super Chapter 103. Across the arc and the movie, Goku and Vegeta spend much of their time trading blows rather than growing as characters, while Piccolo and Gohan receive major power boosts and reassert themselves as two of the strongest Z-Fighters.
By the end of Super Hero, Gohan understands what he must do to keep Earth safe, and the manga expands on that by showing Goku acknowledging how much Gohan has developed. When the manga eventually resumes after its hiatus, Gohan and Piccolo are expected to remain the main characters throughout—especially Gohan, whose strength Whis has even framed as a level that could allow him to replace Beerus as Universe 7’s God of Destruction.
This also fits Dragon Ball’s broader “passing the torch” theme, suggesting that Gohan could stay as both the series’ primary hero and the main point-of-view character during the Black Frieza Saga.
Broly Has the Most Potential For Character Development in the Black Frieza Saga
Even with Gohan and Piccolo now holding the spotlight, both are already fairly established and developed within the story. Broly, though, has the most room left for meaningful narrative change. Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero treats Broly as one of the series’ major players, and the manga has been teasing the idea of him taking on a larger part in the Black Frieza Saga.
Right now, Broly is positioned as the character with the biggest narrative upside. He was responsible for killing his father after Frieza’s influence, and Frieza then manipulated him into fighting two of what are now among his closest friends. The Black Frieza Saga could force Broly to confront his mistakes, learn from them, and develop further as a more socially grounded person. Given his debut movie and the way the franchise has been building him up, it wouldn’t be surprising to see the Black Frieza Saga devote a large amount of page time to Broly’s growth.
Yamoshi is described as a God-Tier fighter, but the strongest Saiyans in Dragon Ball Super are portrayed as significantly more powerful than the original Legendary Super Saiyan.
Goku & Vegeta’s Character Arcs Are Done
Beyond the current cast shift, there’s also a bigger problem for Goku and Vegeta: there’s very little left to accomplish for their character stories. Goku has already mastered Ultra Instinct, and the only remaining major step tied to his arc is deciding whether to train Uub. Vegeta, meanwhile, has repaired the damage he caused on Namek, worked through the Saiyans’ darker history, and surpassed Goku—meaning he’s checked off his major goals and gone through growth that many viewers would argue is stronger than his earlier development in Dragon Ball Z.
That said, the end result is that Goku and Vegeta now feel fully formed as characters, while Gohan, Piccolo, and Broly still have more potential for new directions. Even Akira Toriyama appeared to recognize this, pushing Goku and Vegeta aside throughout Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero. And even Dragon Ball DAIMA leaned more toward other characters rather than continuing their joint duo dynamic.
Overall, Dragon Ball seems to be moving on from the Goku-and-Vegeta partnership that defined so much of the franchise’s identity—especially now that their stories are effectively reaching their conclusion.
