When it comes to Dragon Ball villains, Goku has a nasty habit of letting them off easily. He’ll kill the ones he has to, but if he somehow thinks he can help it, he’ll spare their lives. Nothing about this has changed, despite the number of villains who eventually turned on him.
This mercy has led Goku to a nasty habit of restoring his enemies to full strength with Senzu Beans. It sometimes works out with people like Piccolo and Vegeta, but then there are enemies like Cell and Moro who are much more committed to causing harm. Anyone else would have finished off these villains in their weakened state, but not Goku. Even his logic in these scenarios is highly debatable.
Why Does Goku Keep Giving His Enemies Senzu Beans?
In Dragon Ball Z, restoring Cell’s stamina was simply a matter of proving how strong Gohan had become. He wanted to show everyone, including the boy, how powerful becoming an Ascended Saiyan would make him. He ended up being right, though it took much longer to prove than he had hoped.
Healing Moro in Dragon Ball Super, on the other hand, wasn’t necessarily about getting him ready for the next fight. He did it with the expectation that he’d either go back to prison quietly or die trying to fight him. The only reason he’d have to heal him back up is if he wanted to prove the Planet Eater had no way of beating him.
One of the big reasons Goku takes these kinds of “risks” as everyone else calls them is because he believes that the situation is under control. If he had known how things were going to turn out with these villains, he would have more likely done something to prevent it; that’s what ended up happening at the end of the Golden Frieza Saga, though it required rewinding time after Frieza had already blown up the Earth once. He has no trouble killing villains past the point of no return, but only he decides what that point is.
As long as Goku thinks he can handle whatever may come, it doesn’t matter whether the villain is at full power or on the brink of death. With Cell, he was rightfully confident that Gohan would become strong enough to win even with the handicap. He likely felt similarly about how he could handle Moro with his Mastered Ultra Instinct. Since there was always a warrior in the room more than powerful enough to defend the Earth, he could handle the situation in whatever way felt most appropriate.
How Does Goku Feel About His Mercy Backfiring on Him?
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Of course, in both these cases, things ended up falling outside of Goku’s sense of control. Goku was expecting Gohan to finish the fight as soon as he had the chance, but the boy let the Bio-Android suffer long enough to initiate a self-destruct sequence; Goku ended up having to sacrifice himself to save the Earth. As for his fight with Moro, he might have expected the Planet Eater to turn on him, but he couldn’t have expected him to merge with the planet and make it virtually impossible to finish him off alone. Things ultimately worked out, but if Goku ever wanted to save himself the aggravation of a drawn-out battle, he probably should have just kept these villains in their weakened state.
This is likely a habit that Goku won’t be breaking out of any time soon. Thankfully, it’s not something that he does that often, either. If he ever does it again, it will be with the confidence that everything will work itself out in the end. That will probably mean more fighting, but this is Dragon Ball, so more fighting is to be expected either way.