Do you think Killugon will end up becoming canon, and if so, what would need to happen?

hamliet:

Oh, I don’t know. I honestly don’t think it matters for the story, because their bond is beautiful and powerful and thematically important. I care about them ending the story affirming their bond, be that friendship or romantically, and I don’t personally have a preference either way. HxH isn’t very focused on romance (like, at all), so it’s not like other series that set up romances and then don’t deliver.

I genuinely don’t think it’s queerbaiting in any way because they’re like fourteen and again, HxH doesn’t have romance playing a prominent role except for Meruem and Komugi in the CA Arc, so the expectation simply is not there narratively. It isn’t incorrect to read Killua and Gon’s relationship as platonic and at the same time people who read it as romantic aren’t like, pulling it out of nowhere either. The set up is definitely there so that if it wanted to go romantic, it wouldn’t feel like it came out of nowhere: it’s ambiguous enough especially in term of Killua’s feelings, and in how their relationship foils Hisoka and Illumi’s incredibly messed up dynamic which is, of course, containing a somewhat romantic element (in how Hisoka mixes up fighting and sex), so Hisoillu is engaged but it’s a death contract. Killua and Gon do have a very yin/yang design and dynamic as do Hisoka and Illumi, but Killua and Gon mostly bring out the best in each other, whereas Illumi and Hisoka kind of encourage the worst in each other.

In short, Killugon is a relationship that every reader can interpret how they like to interpret it. Whether that eventually veers in one definitive direction or the other I don’t know. They gotta come back to the story first.