The Betrayer

Ukitake completes the Kamikake ritual, letting Mimihagi's stilling power spread from his lungs through his whole body and turning him into the Soul King's right arm. Darkness erupts from his eyes and mouth as a shadowy Mimihagi rises into the sky, coils around the two halves of the Soul King, and confronts Yhwach in the Greater Soul King Palace. Because The Almighty cannot perceive Mimihagi, Yhwach recognizes it as part of the King and attacks with blue flames, which it repels with its own reiatsu.

Ichigo shatters the Blut on his arm to intercept Yhwach, and Yoruichi moves to solidify Mimihagi as a new Soul King using the Sankotsu no Jufu. Their plan unravels when Uryū appears and shoots Yoruichi in the back, cracking her barrier. Pernida then mutilates her arm and Yhwach blasts her off the palace before ripping Mimihagi loose from the Soul King.

Uryū blocks Ichigo from reaching Yhwach and coldly declares he sides with the Quincy king because he is a Quincy. Their duel escalates as Uryū fires Heilig Pfeil from his bare hands, unleashes Licht Regen, and activates his Quincy: Vollständig, overwhelming a reluctant Ichigo who refuses to kill his friend. Uryū reveals he learned of the thousand-year grudge from Sōken Ishida's journal and cannot forgive the Shinigami who slaughtered his people. After Ichigo's Getsuga Jūjishō overpowers Uryū's Sternenstaub, Uryū punches a bloody hole through Ichigo's side and sends him plummeting from the palace.

Nearby, Orihime, Sado, and Ganju battle the Schutzstaffel, briefly burying them with Renkan Seppa Sen before Gerard and the others reactivate their power. In Urahara's laboratory, the technicians realize Ukitake alone is holding the Three Worlds together, at ruinous cost to his life. With Mimihagi finally torn apart, Yhwach commands his Schutzstaffel to combine their power into a broadsword, shatters the Soul King's crystal, and absorbs both halves, emerging transformed and sprouting multiple eyes.

The thirtieth Thousand-Year Blood War episode and 396th overall, it adapts scattered pages from chapters 617 through 625 and covers the Fall of the Soul King. The anime expands the Ichigo versus Uryū fight and the Schutzstaffel confrontation, and reorders several manga beats, including having Yhwach shatter the crystal to free the Soul King rather than absorb him from it intact. A noted error inverts the direction of the cut splitting the Soul King's body.