Over the period of time that Bulma has been working on the time machine, Dragon Ball Super has taken this opportunity to do plenty of character introspection, especially with Future Trunks. The final piece of this character work transpires in this episode when Future Trunks and Vegeta share a father-son training session together before everyone gets ready to face off against Goku Black for the second time.

The sparring scenes between Vegeta and his son are a lot of fun to watch and there’s a quiet respect between these two that goes a long ways. Future Trunks even thinks back to their time together during the Cell Saga when they both unlocked the powers of Ultra Super Saiyan. Future Trunks may be proud of his progress since then, but he begins to understand what progress really is when he starts to spend time with his father. It’s cringe-worthy when Future Trunks reveals that he’s still using the archaic, ineffective transformation. Even his seven year-old counterpart is further along than that.

Unsurprisingly, Future Trunks quickly learns that he’s greatly outmatched by Vegeta. In fact, he can’t even land a single hit him on him, but this excites Future Trunks rather than dishearten him on his “weak” nature. Future Trunks figures that if his father and Goku are this much stronger than he is, then maybe they’ll actually stand a chance against Goku Black.

Maybe he’s been worrying too much about this showdown. He even briefly considers the idea of stepping aside entirely and letting the Super Saiyan Blue duo extinguish the threat on their own. Future Trunks is of course exactly as concerned as he should be here. Goku and Vegeta have taken on Gods and won at this point, but nobody expects the upcoming battle to be a piece of cake. That’s not Dragon Ball.

Future Trunks may be stoked over the results of his training session, but Vegeta takes it the opposite way and is rather disappointed in his son (“3/10,” he tells him). Sure, Future Trunks is still incredibly strong, but that doesn’t stop him from believing that his son has let down his race in a certain way. The episode makes a point to highlight that Future Trunks still suffers from flashbacks and PTSD to his battles with Goku Black. They even interrupt his attempts at training and stunt his development, so to speak.