The third season of Dr. Stone is a time of amazing adventure and all-new technology, with protagonist Senku Ishigami constructing a whole ship to cross the sea and visit the island that Byakuya Ishigami previously lived. Senku faces his oldest and most fearsome foe, petrification, on the ostensibly uninhabited island.

Senku had thought that the petrification incident was a one-time occurrence in the twenty-first century, but it's occurring again, and much more purposefully this time. All evidence implies that petrification is not a random natural occurrence, but rather a weapon used by an unknown party, probably Why-Man, to combat Senku's Kingdom of Science at every turn.

 

Why Does Dr. Stone Seem to Use Petrification as a Weapon?

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In Dr.Stone, only minutes after Senku and the Perseus crew arrived at the supposedly deserted island with Soyuz in tow, the impossible happened, and people became petrified in stone once again. However, it wasn't a massive aurora-like wave in the sky -- this time, the petrification was more localized and only affected everyone on the Perseus, leaving Senku and his island team unaffected. Such a precise, tactically relevant attack was clearly done by someone who can use petrification as a weapon. The petrification attack also waited until the Perseus arrived rather than randomly happening at sea, clearly making it a strategic move on someone's part.

The new petrification attack also targeted Senku's team while leaving the island's enigmatic residents, such as Amaryllis, alone, implying that a native utilized the petrification weapon defensively to protect their people from the just arrived tourists. However, as evidenced by the submerged sculptures, whoever possesses the petrification weapon is equally willing to use it on their own people. Senku knows that this island remained unoccupied for centuries after Byakuya's group and their descendants left, and no one had been there in the twenty-first century during the initial petrification wave.

This suggests that some unknown humans arrived there, then were purposefully petrified by their own kind long after the 21st-century petrification occurrence. It appears extremely unlikely that the first petrification event was a random act of nature that occurred to recur several times on this island. Someone is terrifying their own people for some reason, and they're also terrifying Senku's crew aboard the Perseus as well.

 

Dr. Stone's Combat System is Changed by Petrification Weapons

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The strongly implied presence of a deliberately-used petrification weapon totally overhauls Dr. Stone's combat system and presents a terrifyingly familiar threat to the Kingdom of Science. It's also a refreshing change of pace, as Tsukasa Shishio threatened Senku with simple brute force, while dodging petrification is a whole new challenge that Senku may not be ready for. Tsukasa can capture Chrome and other characters in his stone fortress, but if someone gets petrified, bringing them back is a whole different challenge -- and if Senku himself gets petrified, the Kingdom of Science may be doomed. These stakes are many times higher than what fans saw in the "Stone Wars" arc.

The news isn't all bad for Senku, though, since he can fight a person who uses certification. If petrification had always been an act of nature, there would be nothing Senku could do -- it would be like trying to "kill" a hurricane. Even if petrification is an effective weapon, its wielder is still fallible, and Senku may outwit that person and steal or destroy their petrification weapon, whatever it may be. This is what gives Senku a fighting chance in this bizarre new story arc, and if he can claim the petrification weapon for himself, it may prove immensely valuable. He may end up using it on the villainous Why-Man if they meet, and since the stone can heal, Senku might even use it to heal the still-injured, cryogenically frozen Tsukasa Shishio. The possibilities are endless -- if Senku can win this island battle first.