Hisoka returns as Hunter x Hunter starts a new hiatus
Chapter 420 closed the current batch on 6 September and opened a fresh hiatus, with Hisoka back on the page for the first time in almost two years.
Hisoka is back. Hunter x Hunter chapter 420, published on 6 September, returned the character to the page after almost two years away from the story’s foreground.
What's actually going on
Chapter 420 is the final instalment of the batch that resumed in June 2026 with chapter 411, ending a break that had run for more than a year and a half. It is also the chapter that confirms a new hiatus: the run is over again, and no return date has been given.
Within the chapter, Hisoka confronts Tserriednich Hui Guo Rou, one of the Succession Contest arc’s most anticipated antagonists. Readers had been waiting for the character to re-enter the story throughout this batch, and the encounter arrives as the run closes rather than in the middle of it.
Hisoka has been part of Hunter x Hunter since chapter 5, during the Hunter Exam arc, and his role has expanded steadily through Yorknew City, Greed Island and the Chairman Election arc. His long-running rivalry with Chrollo Lucilfer, and their fight in chapter 351, is one of the series’ defining threads.
The Succession Contest arc itself has been running for more than a decade, and it is dense by design: a royal succession, a web of bodyguards and factions, and a cast that keeps growing. That is part of why a character return lands as hard as it does here.
Why you should care
Hunter x Hunter now runs in batches. Togashi publishes a run of chapters, the series pauses, and readers wait. That rhythm has been the norm for years, driven by the creator’s health, and it changes how the story reads: every batch needs to carry real weight, because the pause afterwards is not short.
A chapter that delivers a long-awaited character confrontation and then closes the run is doing the two things the format demands at once. It gives readers a payoff and leaves them with a cliffhanger.
The practical part matters too. Chapters are available through the official English release, and the current run is free to read there, so there is no reason to rely on scans when catching up on 411 to 420.
Our opinion
This is the strongest possible use of a short batch. Hisoka is the character readers most wanted to see, Tserriednich is the antagonist the arc has spent years building, and the collision happens in the chapter that signs off for an indefinite pause. Togashi has been playing this game for three decades and knows exactly what he is doing with a cliffhanger.
The honest reading is that the wait will sting. The arc is complicated enough that a long break costs readers threads they will need to reconstruct, and Hunter x Hunter has never been a series you can skim. Worth it anyway. If the payoff looks anything like chapter 420, the wait is the price of the story being this good.
Sources: VIZ Media.