Obviously, major spoilers ahead so consider this a warning.
What happened in the battle between Yamamoto and Yhwach?
In Episode 6 of Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War, the battle between the leaders of their respective teams became heated-up as leader of the Gotei 13 reveals his Bankai, which is called Zanka no Tachi. The Bankai gave Yamamoto the power of the sun. The flames that came out of the captain’s blade are so hot, so his Bankai can potentially incinerate the entirety of Soul Society if used for too long, and as shown below, his Bankai is wild.
According to the shonen’s lore, Yamamoto’s Bankai can cut things out of existence with its sheer heat. The powerful release is said to produce heat upwards of 15 million degrees, and it gives the captain the power to summon the dead he’s killed with his Zanpakuto to control in battle. However, the destructive power of Yamamoto’s Bankai wasn’t enough to stop Yhwach. It was revealed that the opponent the captain battled was not Yhwach, but the imitating Sternritter, Royd Lloyd. Yamamoto was surprised to see the real Yhwach appear, and the powerful villain revealed that he was met with Aizen in the underground prison. When the captain tried to unleash his Bankai again, the Quincy emperor stole it with his medallion. Yhwach explained how it was not that they could not take his Bankai, but it was that his power was too enormous for anyone but him to handle. Yhwach manifested an enormous sword made of spiritual energy from the sky, and as he bid Yamamoto farewell, he fatally stabbed him. The episode concluded with Yamamoto’s downfall, but did he actually die or survive?
Did Yamamoto die in Bleach?
As revealed in Chapter 511 in Tite Kubo’s Bleach manga, Yamamoto was bisected from his shoulder to his waist, and as the dying Yamamoto fell down, Yhwach berated him. He told Yamamoto that he became weak over time, and that he was only a real threat 1,000 years ago. He said that Soul Society will die soon. Yhwach unleashed an barrage of Reishi blasts on Yamamoto, completely obliterating the captain’s body. Episode 7 of Bleach: TYBW showed Yamamoto’s death.
Will Yamamoto return in the future of Bleach?
Now that we know that Yamamoto really died in Bleach, fans are wondering if he will come back to life. By the end of the Thousand-Year Blood War arc, Yamamoto is still dead. The only remains of the old captain the Gotei 13 could recover was the scorched and broken Ryūjin Jakka, which they laid in the center of the meeting hall within the barracks of the 1st Division. However, twelve years after Yamamoto’s death, the captains of the Gotei 13 performed the Konso Rensai ceremony before his grave in Soul Society to allow the Reishi formerly comprising his body to return to the soil, but unbeknownst to them, this ritual instead cast the late captain to Hell, so there’s a chance that we could see Yamamoto return in the future manga chapters of Bleach, but at the time of this writing, there are no updates for the next arc of the shonen series.
