In fact, it intentionally creates these parallels in a way that’s not only meant to conjure up nostalgia for those glorious prime seasons of Dragon Ball Z, but also to show audiences how the show is going to up the stakes and blow previous expectations out of the water. Also, the episode flies right past it, but that rainbow gem fuel process that Future Bulma uses is pretty damn sweet, too. That’s the kind of technology that Trunks needs to bring over with him to the present timeline!

It also feels like the episode intentionally toys with the audience when it cuts away from the thrilling life-or-death stakes of Future Trunks’ situation to Goku doing mundane farm work. Nobody wants this, especially Goku, but there’s a nice balance at play here that Goku and company’s lives should be so peaceful when all of this fresh chaos is about to hit. While everyone is still blissfully unaware of the danger that’s to come, Goku tries to find ways to turn his chores into a training substitute (maybe he’s read Nathan For You’s “The Movement”?) and ropes Piccolo in for the ride.

Goku falls back on the excuse that Roshi trained both him and Krillin with this same sort of approach. This might be true, but villains have certainly gotten a lot stronger since then. It’s still a lot of fun to watch these two do yard work at an alarming, competitive rate, but it’s also like, “Hey, when are they going to get back to the Future Trunks stuff?”

The situation on Earth picks up a little pace when Goku realizes that Vegeta is on Beerus’ planet and getting training in with Whis (yet more evidence that Vegeta very well might currently be stronger than Goku). Goku’s situation changes from harvest work from homework when he basically gets more of a history lesson on Zeno, King of the Universes, who interrupted the series’ latest multiversal tournament.

Whis reiterates that Zeno is the ruler of all twelve universes, but he also explains that he has the power to erase entire universes. In fact, there were more than twelve universes for a long time, but the existing total is all that are left from various Zeno erasures. Zeno has been shown to be an extremely cute, tiny individual so it doesn’t hurt for the show to double down on reminding the audience how powerful he is. Goku and Vegeta’s efforts don’t get much further this week (although the upcoming tournament gets brought up), but rest assured that they’ll have lots to do once Future Trunks makes it over to their timeline.