How Dragon Ball Super Can Bring Bardock Back to the Series

Dragon Ball Super has fans feeling like now is the time for a big Bardock comeback – but how would such a thing be possible? The series has already sort of answered that question, in a way: Goku’s father Bardock has been a major featured character in two of Dragon Ball Super’s most recent story arcs: The Broly movie arc, and the “Granolah The Survivor” arc in the Dragon Ball Super Manga. Of course Bardock only appears in flashback scenes in those two story arcs – but Dragon Ball fans want to see him make a full return, in the current canon of Dragon Ball Super – and it can be done! 

Here’s how Dragon Ball Super can bring Bardock back to the series: 

New Dragon Balls, New Reasons

The Dragon Balls are (obviously) the heart of Dragon Ball, and as such, they are (and technically always have been) the key to bring Bardock back through a resurrection wish – as so many characters (good and bad) have similarly been brought back (Goku, Vegeta, Freeza, most the Z-Fighters, etc.). 

The key to keeping Bardock’s return from being (another) gimmicky novelty of the Dragon Ball franchise has always been finding an organic way to bring Bardock into the series. Thanks to the Granolah Arc, we now have the perfect opportunity to do that! 

The backstory of Granolah and his planet, Cereal, revealed  a larger story of how and why Bardock started to break away from the Freeza Force and its master, Freeza. Bardock was part of the Cerealian genocide, but when it came time to kill a young kid (Granolah) Bardock’s unique attachment to his own son Goku (established in the Broly movie) made him tap into some rare Saiyan compassion to spare Granolah and his mother. 

Bardock’s heroism went further than that – he actually battled Freeza’s nefarious business partners the Heeters to get Graonlah and one surviving Namkeian on Cereal (Monaito) a chance at life. That fight included a climactic battle with Gas, the youngest and strongest of the Heeters. The mystery of how Bardock defeated Gas has been teased as one of the biggest secrets of the Granolah Arc; now that Gas used the Dragon balls to become the strongest warrior in the universe, the answer of how to defeat him has become more crucial than ever. 

Only Bardock seems to know the secret to Gas’s defeat (Gas does too, but obviously he isn’t telling), so if there was ever a great reason for Dragon Ball Super to bring Bardock back, this would be it. 

Next: WHY Dragon Ball Super Should Bring Back Bardock