Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood introduces us to various villains who are created by Father to carry out his plans. He has seven homunculi children who are dedicated to aiding his pursuit of power. Every one of them has special powers, and they usually work in teams that help them complement each other’s skills. However, not all of them are supposed to act as a classic Shonen villain in battle. Homunculi like Gluttony are weak and are mere tools to be used by Father and others.
The plan can only be accomplished on the Promised Day if every other aspect of the strategy is carried out perfectly by the villains. The plan requires assassinations, arranging sacrifices, orchestrating wars across Amestris, ensuring the creation of the nation-wide transmutation circle. While most of the homunculi are powerful and can be instrumental in war, Gluttony is not a skilled fighter. He struggles to put down the enemies of the Father, but he was never made for that purpose. He is supposed to support the rest of the homunculi with his abilities. So, Gluttony’s inability to fight is not something that hurts Father’s plans; he was never made for that purpose in the first place.
Gluttony first made his appearance on the show along with Lust and Envy. Although they worked together, the squad leader, Lust, and the shapeshifting Envy were much more powerful and skilled fighters than Gluttony. They pooled their talents together to accomplish difficult tasks and complemented each other. Lust was the leader and led the other two. She would assassinate the enemies of Father using the Ultimate Spear. It was the task of the shapeshifting Envy to gather information while Gluttony would use his ability to smell objects far away to track down targets and help the squad escape any harm.
Although Lust was the leader of the squad, when they were on the field, Gluttony was tasked to sniff out the enemies. Once Gluttony was done finding out all threats, it was time for Envy and Lust to take over from there as Gluttony was not of much use in combat. His ability was recognized even by Kind Bradley, who relied on him on several occasions to track down his adversaries. So, despite being weak in combat, Gluttony was essential for the villains in the show.
His abilities were made even more special because other homunculi can borrow it if they were in need. When Pride and Gluttony were fighting Edward and his friends in the dark forest, it soon became apparent that the former were getting the upper hand. Pride was struggling to track down his adversaries, but Gluttony had little difficulty. So, Pride swallowed him to add Gluttony’s sensory abilities, which helped him track down Edward and his friends. The fight instantaneously became one-sided as Pride was now much more potent with the newly acquired sensory abilities.
Gluttony was not only helpful in tracking down enemies and disposing of evidence, which helped Father’s plans immensely. Gluttony was aware he could not use martial arts for attacking his enemies. All he could do was devour whatever was in front of him. Surprisingly, it proved to be crucial when Lust and the rest of her squad dispatched Father Cornello. Gluttony proved to be instrumental in erasing all the evidence and devoured him, which allowed Envy to assume his form.
Gluttony was given a lot of freedom, and he could devour anyone who Father did not care about. Ling Yao and Roy Mustang, who were prominent characters, were also on his menu. It appears that as long as the enemies were of no use to Father, Gluttony could devour them. It gave the other homunculi a lot of freedom since they knew that Gluttony was always there to take care of all the evidence. His ability to devour anything in front of him was so impactful that he can swallow an entire house at once.
When Father was creating Portal of Truth, he proved to be instrumental in identifying false Portal of Truth. Although Father’s experiments were not successful, Gluttony proved to be an impressive test subject. The false Portal of Truth was later used for eliminating all the evidence of Father’s schemes, and it almost succeeded in getting rid of Ed and Ling. Ed was able to survive only because of the skilled use of transmutation and Philosopher’s Stone; otherwise, both Ed and Ling would have remained in Gluttony’s stomach realm forever.
Although Gluttony was not a skilled fighter, he proved to be an essential tool for the homunculi. His sense of smell helped track Father’s enemies whenever he wanted to eliminate them. He could even devour every single evidence, which made the task of Father’s aids much easier. Despite being poor in combat, Gluttony was, therefore, very crucial in ensuring Father’s missions were accomplished.
