Okay, for those just joining in on the convo - this is my own interpretation and not meant to offend anyone. If your own ideas of Black Myth Wukong differ you're free to believe them, this is just my thoughts and my own ideas being shared!
I really like the way you worded how Wukong feels to you - like more man than monkey - because it's honestly true! The original story is all about how he becomes exactly that. Wukong starts out the story as a monkey living in paradise with no desire to improve or change until he has his existential crisis about death and that leads him onto the path of Self Cultivation. That's what the whole journey west is, an allegory for practicing Buddhist (and to a lesser degree, Taoist) beliefs and turning yourself into a greater being.
Yaoguai's who do this end up becoming more human looking the further along their journey they go, until they're able to give themselves a complete human form even! So I think you're right on the money with describing him like that, he grew and changed to become something unstoppable and, as the Buddha himself described in chapter 58, "...is able to alter the course of planets and stars." He is a being literally able to change destiny if he doesn't like it.
Now where my interpretation changes from yours is in how I see the Destined One. From what I understand of your interpretation, you think he's someone trying to build himself up to be a hero like Wukong but isn't actually him, rather just an individual trying to emulate him. Is that correct?
My own thoughts is that he is Wukong, or at least a part of him. Now full disclosure, I don't trust the Old Monkey who follows us through the journey. Do I think he's evil? No. But I don't think he's being entirely honest either, or at least - he thinks he's being honest but he doesn't actually know much more than we, the audience, do about what's going on.
The Old Monkey is the one who sets the DO off on his journey by telling him to collect the six relics that make up Wukong.
Eyes, Ears, Nose, Tongue, Body, and Mind.
These six pieces are actually part of Buddhism, the five senses and your soul that make you who are. Throughout the game you gather each of the five senses and are quite literally rebuilding Wukong's body - and even using it as your own. You get special perks and powers from each piece you gather, but every person you talk to in the game says that these pieces have so much power, so much raw energy, that they can't use them at all. The best they can do is enshrine them or hide them away, because trying to use the power from such a small piece of Wukong is too overwhelming.
And yet the Destined One can use them all with no issue.
Now, where my beef with the Old Monkey comes in has to do with the final stage. We enter the stone left over from Wukong and find memories. His memories. All his triumphs and embarrassments and mistakes and feelings. We quite literally sail through his life and it's here that the Old Monkey contradicts himself.
He reveals to Bajie that DO is Wukong's Mind, the last piece of the puzzle needed to bring the Stone Monkey back, and Bajie doesn't believe him at first. They talk a little more about Wukong's life - the Old Monkey is particularly scolding and harsh about Wukong's past (and it's so frustrating to not be able to stand up for him, at least for me) and then the Old Monkey says that Wukong is gone. He is gone, his Mind was lost when he split into the relics, never to return and that whatever happens after this will not actually be the Wukong from 500 years past.
Now I have two issues with this -
Just minutes before the Old Monkey said that DO is Wukong's Mind. His soul, essentially. Now he's flipping the script and saying that Wukong's Mind had been lost long ago. These are two very conflicting statements that either point to the Old Monkey not having any idea what he's talking about, or he's purposefully misleading everyone on what the actual truth is.
And second, no one is the same person they were before. Just in the time it took me to write all this out I am a different person than I was when I started. Every moment you spend alive you are growing and changing and feeling. Of course the Wukong who is going to awaken isn't the same one from 500 years ago! If DO is actually his soul and has been redoing this journey multiple times for 500 years as the game itself says he has been, then that means when DO "becomes" Wukong, he's got multiple lifetimes of new memories to sort through, but he's still Wukong.
And that's why the Stone Monkey and the Broken Shell are such important fights -
The Stone Monkey is Wukong's base impulses and feelings. His desires to eat and survive and live comfortably, as all living beings want. (This is what Bajie even represented in the original story, the base desires of man to eat, drink, sleep, and mate. This is why he acts the way he does.)
The Broken Shell is a physical embodiment of all his memories - his past lives, not just one. I believe the normal ending supports this as it shows a sequence of DO falling to his knees and accepting the gold fillet be put upon his head once more as he falls asleep - another collection of memories to add to the ever growing stone on the mountain top until a new DO pops out of it and is sent on his way by the Old Monkey. Even during the final fight, the second cutscene that leads to Broken Shell's second phase - you see him take the pieces of Wukong from DO into himself, making him a literal frozen in time Wukong with memories of all his lives but no soul. DO is the missing piece that needs to join them all together so they can be whole again.
And in the True Ending, this is what I believe happens. DO finally merges with the pieces of his body, his base impulses and desires, and his memories. The way the cutscenes ends is him smirking and opening his eyes as his past lives come back to him - and we cut immediately to the best goddamn animated short in the game, Unfinished, which is Journey to the West but backwards. The game ends with him in his empty Water Curtain Cave, no gold fillet chaining him down, as he turns and walks into the daylight.
