Did Netero Really Say “Thank You” to Meruem?

Unverified. Isaac Netero's last word to Meruem is often given as a simple "Thank you." We found no trusted source that prints those words as his. What the sources record is a gesture of thanks and, as his final spoken line, something much harder.

What the sources say

Wikiquote's Hunter × Hunter page transcribes Netero in the 2011 episode "Zero × and × Rose": "Meruem, King of the Ants, you really don't have any idea, do you? You know nothing of the bottomless malice within the human heart." Its stage note then has him kill himself to trigger the bomb. On that record, the last thing he says to Meruem is not thanks. It is a warning about what humans are willing to do, which is on Netero's page here.

Screen Rant describes the end of the fight in the body of its article: Netero reveals Meruem's name to him, then pierces his own heart to set off the Miniature Rose. One of its image captions says Netero "forms a heart to thank him for their fight." That is a gesture in a picture caption, not a line of dialogue.

The other thanks

The arc does end on thanks, from the other side. Sportskeeda's account of how the King dies says that "in the end, Mereum thanked her before dying in her arms": Meruem, to Komugi. Wikiquote transcribes Meruem's last words as "Will you say my name one last time?" A story with two deaths, a famous gesture and a famous thanks may have had them folded together, with the short version landing on Netero.

What would settle it

VIZ's English chapter for the end of the fight, or a named English track of the episode, showing Netero saying the words. We did not read either. Not finding the line does not prove it is absent, which is why this is unverified rather than fake. The series is in the Hunter x Hunter buying guide, and the verdict is logged in the fact-check database under the verification method.