Who Dies in My Hero Academia Season 8? Every Death, Ranked

Season 8 brings My Hero Academia to a brutal close, wrapping the Final War and diving into the Epilogue as fan favorites bow out in devastating, tragic farewells.
My Hero Academia is finally swinging the hammer on its last big chapter. Season 8 cleans up the Final War Arc and closes out with the Epilogue Arc. It is not a slaughterfest — only five confirmed deaths — but the ones we get hit hard and ripple through the story in smart, sometimes brutal ways.
How Season 8 wraps things up
We are picking up right where Season 7 left off, with the Final War already underway. Season 8 finishes that battle and then moves straight into the aftermath. And yes, the farewells are rough. Here is how the major deaths shake out, ranked by impact.
5. Kurogiri
Kurogiri goes down doing the one thing he was built to do: warp people to where they are needed most. He burns his Warp Gate nonstop to sling heroes into position so Deku can keep pressing All For One. The price is his body literally coming apart. Even as he is unraveling, the Oboro Shirakumo part of him surfaces — that instinct to protect — and he blinks one last time to shield Shigaraki from a Deku strike. It is a quiet, gutting end that says a lot: even a Nomu can choose mercy on the way out.
4. Stain (Chizome Akaguro)
Stain shows up at exactly the moment you would not expect but kind of always wanted: right when All Might needs him. He throws in with his idol against All For One, closing the loop on the Hero Killer myth. AFO being AFO, he counters hard, crushes Stain, and steals his quirk on the way out. Stain still dies smiling, hitting All Might’s victory pose. The guy who terrified heroes ends up giving them one of the season’s most honest tears.
3. Dabi (Toya Todoroki)
Dabi’s family showdown during the Final War drags every Todoroki wound into the sun. Secrets, guilt, rage — all of it. But the death itself does not happen there. He survives the war only to die about eight years later in a medical pod, never recovering. It is a delayed detonation that forces the Todoroki family — especially his father — to actually reckon with the fallout. It also nudges the hero-villain conversation into less comfortable, more human territory.
2. Tomura Shigaraki
Shigaraki’s exit lands like an anvil because it is tied directly to Deku’s growth. After All For One falls, Shigaraki gets a final beat with Deku where he acknowledges what Deku tried to do and asks him to pass along a last message to Spinner. He dies the symbol he always threatened to become: the hero of the villains. That paradox is the push Izuku and the rest need to actually change the world they are fighting over.
1. All For One (Zen Shigaraki)
The end of an era is not subtle. All For One literally rewinds himself into nothing — de-aged down to an infant and then gone. It is wild, poetic, and exactly the sort of ending a self-made demon would write for himself. Deku strips away the monster myth in that final confrontation and shows us what AFO really is: a lonely man clinging to a past he cannot keep. And when he reaches for his brother’s memory in the last instant, it lands like a heartbreak, not a cheer.
"The Demon Lord literally rewound himself out of existence."
Quick chapter check (manga)
- 5. Kurogiri — listed with Bakugo in the 'killed by' slot; death noted in Chapter 423 (on-page, it reads more like he burns out warping himself apart while saving Shigaraki)
- 4. Stain — killed by All For One in Chapter 401
- 3. Dabi — dies in a critical state, medical pod, Chapters 426–431 (about eight years after the war)
- 2. Tomura Shigaraki — killed by All For One in Chapter 423 (paired with his final exchange with Deku and message for Spinner)
- 1. All For One (listed here as Zen Shigaraki) — finished by Deku + Shigaraki in Chapter 423, after the rewind collapse
My Hero Academia Season 8 is streaming now on Crunchyroll.