The Naruto Villain Who Could Have Been Unstoppable

Many intense villains have appeared on "Naruto." Each successive villain is much more powerful than the previous, so much so that fans are often left sitting at the edge of their seats wondering just how Naruto and his comrades are going to persevere. Usually, they manage to come through.

The first big bad is Orochimaru. As a member of the Legendary Sannin, it is impressed upon fans early in "Naruto" that he is a powerful ninja. He demonstrates his skills in Chapter 295 when he playfully battles Naruto empowered by the Nine-Tailed fox chakra. After no longer being a threat to the series, in Chapter 346, Sasuke eventually absorbs him while he is weakened.

Skipping to "Naruto: Shippūden," the show introduces the Six Paths of Pain. This collective of six zombies with supernatural abilities is puppeteered by Nagato using a special ocular hereditary ninjutsu called the Rinnegan, a power held by the Sage of Six Paths, a legendary warrior said to have created ninjutsu. With this, Nagato launches a full-scale assault on Konohagakure to gather intel, destroying the village in the process. Using a combination of a new powerful form called Sage Mode, a technique that allows Naruto to harness energy from nature, as well as the Nine-Tailed Fox's chakra, Naruto defeats him.

With every villain, we learn about their extraordinary abilities, their backstories, and then lastly, see one of our heroes best them or convert them. It's a cycle that "Naruto" fans are very familiar with. However, there was one villain who couldn't be stopped or converted.

As Tsunade suggests in Episode 322, "Just the name itself is power." Madara Uchiha is first name-dropped by the Nine-Tailed Fox in Chapter 308. It isn't until Chapter 560 – over 200 chapters later — that fans finally see the character in action. He was hyped up to be such a powerful being that when it came time to introduce him, we were not disappointed.

In Chapter 560, during the Fourth Great Ninja War, Madara enters the battlefield as an undead reanimation and nearly annihilates an entire division of the Allied Shinobi Forces alone, killing hundreds of ninjas by summoning two meteorites to level the battlefield. And when facing the Five Great Nations' strongest warriors, he toys with them until unleashing his true power, leaving them for dead.

Aside from being a master of the Sharingan, he also unlocks both its evolution — the Mangekyō Sharingan — and its more powerful evolution — the Eternal Mangekyo Sharingan. This grants him the use of the Perfect Susanoo, a titanic avatar that Madara claims, in Episode 339, can "destroy all things in this universe."

During the climax of the war, Madara absorbs all nine of the tailed beasts and becomes the Ten-Tails Jinchūriki, something only two others had achieved, one of them being the Sage of Six Paths. At his most powerful in the series, not even Naruto and Sasuke, buffed by the Sage of Six Paths himself, can stop him.

Ultimately, Kaguya Ōtsutsuki ends up becoming the franchise's final villain through a strange plot device where Madara is used as a sacrificial pawn to resurrect the powerful goddess, per Chapter 678. Fans weren't too pleased by this development because Madara had become such a beloved villain who was seemingly undefeatable. Rumors even began to spread among the fanbase on places like Reddit that "Naruto" author Masashi Kishimoto had once stated that Kaguya was created as a deus ex machina to kill off the powerful Uchiha villain. Though no such interview statement has ever been definitively unearthed, the fact that the rumor gained traction is a testament to how fans feel about Madara and the ultimate end to his arc.

Though we still don't know if Kaguya was created as a response to Madara, it does seem as if Madara was meant to be unstoppable. Kishimoto actually intended for him to be a formidable ninja with no weaknesses. In an interview with What's With Jeff from 2012, just after Madara breaks his contract with the Reanimation Jutsu, Kishimoto was asked if Madara has any weak points. He explained, "All strong people have some kind of weak point, but Madara does not." Point blank, if plot wasn't an issue, it appears that Madara would have been unstoppable.