Genuine Answer: Could Re-Destro Have Been the Series’ Big Bad if Tomura and the League Never Rose to Power?
Yes. Re-Destro (Rikiya Yotsubashi) and the Meta Liberation Army had every ingredient necessary to serve as the final ideological and military antagonist of My Hero Academia if Tomura Shigaraki and the League of Villains had never coalesced into a credible threat. Here is why the story could have pivoted that way almost seamlessly.
1. Scale and Resources
The MLA in its modern form commanded tens of thousands of highly trained, ideologically driven warriors across Japan (the manga states over 116,000 members before the merger).
They possessed near-limitless funding via Detnerat (a legitimate mega-corporation), advanced support gear, and political lobbying networks.
By comparison, the League at its pre-merger peak was roughly a dozen named members and a handful of Nomu.
Without Tomura, the MLA would have remained the single largest organized anti-government force in the country.
2. Clear, Diametrically Opposed Ideology
Re-Destro’s “Quirk Liberation” philosophy is the perfect mirror to hero society’s regulation and suppression of Quirks:
Hero society: “Use your power only with a license, only for sanctioned purposes.”
MLA: “Every Quirk is a human right; free use without restriction is the natural state.”
This is a far more coherent, marketable, and seductive worldview than Tomura’s original “I just want to destroy everything” nihilism. It could have radicalized civilians, lower-ranked heroes, and even students the same way real-world extremist ideologies do.
3. A Sympathetic, Charismatic Leader
Re-Destro himself is not a cackling madman. He is articulate, physically imposing, burdened by generational trauma (the murder of his ancestor Destro), and genuinely believes he is fighting for freedom. He is the rare villain who can give a speech that makes the audience uncomfortable because parts of it almost sound reasonable—something Tomura never managed until All For One fully hijacked him.
4. Built-In Escalation Path
The story already showed how the MLA planned to operate:
Phase 1: Quietly radicalize and recruit
Phase 2: Provoke incidents to destabilize hero society (Deika City was the test run)
Phase 3: Full-scale civil war once critical mass is reached
Remove Tomura, and the Revival Celebration never happens. The MLA simply continues growing in the shadows until they are ready to launch a coordinated nationwide uprising. The Paranormal Liberation War arc could have been re-imagined as the “Meta Liberation War” with almost no structural changes—only the flag would be different.
5. Personal Stakes for the Protagonists
Several existing character conflicts map perfectly onto an MLA-only endgame:
Best Jeanist and Hawks already infiltrated the League; they could have infiltrated the MLA instead.
The Todoroki family drama (Dabi) loses its villain anchor, but Endeavor’s obsession with being the perfect regulated hero would clash violently with Re-Destro’s liberation rhetoric.
Students like Bakugou, Tokoyami, or even Midoriya (whose Quirk hoard breaks every regulation) could be tempted or targeted by liberation propaganda.
6. Why It Didn’t Happen (Canon Reason)
The League existed, and Tomura/All For One represented raw apocalyptic destruction—an external, unifying threat that forced hero society to confront its rot only after near-total collapse. Re-Destro’s vision was ultimately absorbed rather than defeated because the story needed a single final boss with world-ending power. The MLA became the army, Tomura became the head, and All For One became the brain.
Conclusion
Yes—Re-Destro absolutely could have carried the role of the series’ ultimate antagonist if the League had remained a scattered band of misfits or never formed at all. He had the organization, the philosophy, the resources, the personal charisma, and the long-term plan that Tomura lacked for most of the story. The result would have been a very different My Hero Academia—one closer to a political thriller or civil war epic instead of a shonen apocalypse—but the bones for that version were already in place. In an alternate timeline where Tomura died in the USJ attack or never met All For One, the final cover of the manga might well have shown Deku facing a giant Rikiya Yotsubashi atop a liberated Japan, with the caption “The Liberation War begins.”