For as immortal as the scene of Gohan and Goku doing to combo Kamehameha to beat cell is, I feel like a lot of people forget that it wasnât enough. Part of why I think a lot of people are confused as to why the crew forgave Vegeta so fast is that I think it gets lost in the emotion of that moment that Gohan was going to lose that fight. Gokuâs love and aid wasnât enough. Gohanâs raw power that Goku bet on may have been enough, but Gohanâs willingness to threaten the safety of his home wasnât. What won was when everybody else cleared the blast radius, Vegeta didnât. He distracted Cell with a piddly little blast, interrupted the focus, and created the opportunity for Gohan to overwhelm him.
Vegeta had no energy left, it wasnât a âwell only a saiyan had the power to-â thing. Any of the Z-Fighters couldâve done it, but Vegetaâs the only one who did. I read Piccoloâs offer to help him afterward as an olive branch and thanks for that, because Piccolo also couldâve stayed and done it, but he took initiative to get everyone else clear of the blast and assumed Gohan had the victory. Vegetaâs determination to see Cell die with his own eyes saved Piccoloâs boy after his mistake had cost him his own. He stayed with Gohan, saw that Gohan was losing, and broke his own rules about battle intervention to make damn sure Cell wasnât walking away from that fight.
Vegetaâs was inarguably the largest of the several fumbles that happened to allow Perfect Cell to exist, but heâs also the only one who never left Gohan to clean up the mess alone, even if the others only did it out of good faith in Gohanâs power. For all of his flaws and faults I think that choice told on him more than all of his peacocking had, and I think itâs why the crew was so quick to like him afterward.
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