The Wrong Way to Put Out a Fire

The union between Enji Todoroki and Rei began as an arrangement serving two appetites. He wanted an heir engineered to outgrow All Might, while Rei's father saw a way to haul the Himura name back toward prominence by handing his daughter to the country's second ranked hero. Refusal was hers to give and she declined to give it, choosing her family's interests instead. The arrangement stayed transactional, though Enji did register the woman he had married: sturdy in most things, quick to fracture under distress.

Toya arrived first, and for a while he was everything the plan required. A doctor's visit ended it. The boy's flames ran hotter than his father's ever had, but his constitution came down from Rei, tuned for cold rather than heat, so sustained use would sear his own skin rather than build tolerance. Enji stopped the training on the spot. Toya, who had inherited his father's refusal to bend along with the fire, would not accept the verdict, no matter how his mother and his sister Fuyumi worried over him. He kept practicing in secret on Sekoto Peak, hoping to earn the attention back, while Enji simply produced more children toward the goal: Natsuo, written off, and then Shoto, whose blend of both parents' abilities was the result he had been chasing.

Caught training yet again and ordered to find some other life, Toya came apart and turned on his infant brother. From then on Shoto was walled off from his siblings and Rei was assigned to watch her eldest so the prize child would stay untouched. Attempts to reach Toya only pushed him further into resentment, while his private training pushed his flames from orange to blue. He tried once more to show his father, and the result was Enji striking Rei and shouting her down while Fuyumi, Natsuo, and Shoto watched, blaming her for failing to keep the boy in check. That was the fracture that eventually put a scar on Shoto's face and Rei in a psychiatric ward.

The end came on Sekoto Peak. Toya waited for a father who never came, and grief lit him and the woods around him. Nobody had taught him how to lower the heat, only how to raise it, and the mountain went up with him as Enji arrived to watch. Believing his son dead, the man buried himself in hero work and in Shoto's purpose. Asked in the present why he never showed, Enji admits he had no idea what he would have said. Rei confesses she would not have known either.

Though the ruin traces back to him, the rest of the family claim a share of the failure for never breaking through to Toya before Dabi replaced him, and they resolve to stand with Enji against him. Rei points to Shoto, treated worst of all and still able to walk out of that mindset, make friends, mend what he could, and become the household's rescue. Shoto asks his father to accept their help.

Hawks and Best Jeanist, listening in for anything useful about Dabi, step in and offer themselves as well. Rei stops the conversation by kneeling to apologize to Hawks for the burns Dabi gave him, and a flustered Hawks insists none of it is hers to answer for while Best Jeanist helps her up. When Hawks asks whether Enji is behind the scar on Shoto's face, Rei claims it immediately, and Shoto keeps calling her mother anyway. Hawks, who walked away from his own parents, calls the boy a class act.

The situation outside is dire: Paranormal Liberation Front remnants scattered nationwide, villains loose, professionals resigning in droves, no foreign assistance available, and a Near High-End Nomu still rampaging. Hawks argues that none of it belongs on one hero or one family, and that whatever proves true about Dabi's broadcast, he intends to back people still trying to do right. Enji, reservations intact, stands up. The three form a unit, with a press conference as the first move, but Hawks wants to know what One For All is first, since Enji let the phrase slip during the war and the public heard it. Enji suspects where to look, remembering Izuku's warning that Tomura was hunting him. On the way to Izuku's room the pair pass Katsuki, hauled off by classmates while shouting at his friend to wake up, and Best Jeanist is glad to see him this loud despite his wounds. Their questions have to wait: Tenya explains that Izuku is unconscious with All Might beside him, communing with the previous holders of the Quirk.

The full history of the Todoroki family is laid out, covering the Quirk Marriage, Enji's abandonment of Toya once the boy's body proved unable to bear his own flames, the isolation of Shoto, Rei's breakdown, and Toya's apparent death by self immolation on Sekoto Peak.

Rei, Fuyumi, Natsuo, and Shoto commit to helping Enji confront Dabi. Rei apologizes to Hawks and takes responsibility for Shoto's scar. Hawks proposes a team of himself, Best Jeanist, and Endeavor, with a press conference planned to address Dabi's allegations. The trio then turn their attention to One For All, only to find Izuku unconscious in the hospital.

The episode adapts Chapter 301 through Chapter 303 and belongs to the Paranormal Liberation War arc, airing in Japan on January 28, 2023, with the English dub following on February 18. It opens on Ours and closes on North Wind.

Several beats are expanded from the manga. The negotiation with Rei's father runs longer, Enji is shown striking Rei where the manga only suggested it, Skeptic appears among the escaped villains rather than being named in passing, and Hawks' feathers are visibly regrowing. The adaptation also corrects Toya's hair color to white in the scene where he plays with Fuyumi and Natsuo.