Dragon Ball Super's Final Manga Chapter Confirms Pan Is Goku's Real Successor, Not Gohan

Gohan's got the brains and the hero résumé, but Dragon Ball Super's manga keeps pointing at his daughter Pan as the one actually built like Goku. In Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero, Pan learns to fly at age 3, beating her dad by a year or two and her grandfather by more than a decade.

The manga's most recent canonical chapter has Goku picking Pan up from preschool when she sneaks up to attack him. He blocks it with zero effort, but her instinct to throw hands at Goku says everything about who she takes after. Right after, the two straight up race off together while Gohan and Piccolo try to keep up.

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Dragon Ball Z's epilogue backs it up too: Pan enters her first martial arts tournament, beats an adult combatant, then beats a teenage Goten in a sparring match, no small flex against someone already established as strong. Still, the franchise has slept on her, never once letting her go Super Saiyan, even in GT, where nearly every other living Saiyan besides Bulla gets the transformation.

With Pan getting more screen time in Super Hero, a bonding moment with Goku in Super's latest chapter, and chatter about Dragon Ball's next movie, the torch-passing setup is right there. Gohan already had his turn as Earth's protector after Goku stepped back during the Cell Saga. Pan looks like the one built to take it next.