Board Thread:Theories and Speculation/@comment-36300243-20180723092044/@comment-3523655-20180826034645

Let's look at this from a storytelling POV:

If he's good: Basically Itachi all over again.

If he's evil: It's all been done with Obito already. Both the reveal (the obvious hints turn out to be the obvious choice) and what the reveal implies (just like Kakashi discovers everything he believed in was a lie because of Obito and comes to terms that those principles stand on their own without obito being the one to utter them, Naruto would basically go through the same psyhcological journey with Jiraiya, and come to the same conclusion).

It's already been done.

And yeah, it doesn't matter whether Jiraiya is a Teacher or a Friend like Obito. The point is, Kakashi learned from Obito. He learned his principles. Just like Naruto learned Jiraiya's. It being Jiraiya will generate the exact same reaction, replace the word "friend" with "teacher" and there you have it. It's un-original, it's déjà-vu.

Jiraiya is Obito's equivalent on the other side of the chessboard, let's say they're a "bishop" (doesn't matter if that's an accurate simile, my point is let's associate a random chess piece to him).

Both influence Nagato. One is driven by logic and rationale, the other is an idealistic buffoon a dreamer. Obito says it himself: at the end of the day, it's not Naruto or Minato or Nagato who beat him. It's Jiraiya and his dreamer ways, that made it so that they'd tell him to shut up no matter how much sense he made.

We've already seen the corruption of a "bishop" piece on this chessboard, with Obito. We don't need to see the corruption of another "bishop" because it's already been done.

Jiraiya is the figure-head of the Dreamer side. Would it be impactful if he was corrupted? Sure! But guess who else was a key figure-head on the Dreamer side? Obito, who - you guessed it - turns out to be evil.

So honestly, IF it is Jiraiya, it would be bad writing, as simple as that.

Now the question is: why do they want us to think it's Jiraiya?