Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-27419019-20151218053933/@comment-6001958-20160614070200

(I tried posting this once but it didn't show up--apologies if this ends up double posting.)

Keep in mind that Gon's goal was to become strong enough to defeat Pitou. Theoretically speaking, if he had been in a situation where he were fighting post-rose Mereum instead, it's possible that a goal to defeat him could have made Gon even more powerful. We also never saw the full extent of his power and abilities when he did fight Pitou, as he only threw a few punches. There's no way of knowing if transforming into his adult form might have unlocked any special techniques or abilities, or if he was even using his full strength against Pitou. In addition, Pitou also only assumed Gon's power to be on par with pre-rose Meruem. While she was a highly advanced nen-user, ut's unlikely that she could 100% accurately gauge their power levels just by looking at them. It's possible that both of them, Gon and Meruem, were at such high levels beyond Pitou as for her not to be able to accurately read their power levels at all, and thus she placed them at the same level simply because she knew they were much stronger than she was.

That said, this is all hypothetical, of course. It's unlikely Gon would have been able to achieve this transformation if he fought against Meruem pre or post rose. Perhaps if he discovered that Meruem had "killed" Netero, technically, or if Meruem had harmed or killed Killua. Otherwise, he most likely would have lacked the intense feelings of anger and vengeance that led up to the transformation against Pitou.