Will Turner survived many sticky situations in the movies, and this may never have been an accident. Long before he got roped up with Jack Sparrow, the son of Bootstrap Bill Turner defied the odds and survived a shipwreck. This set the trend for his life—including in when he survived a stab wound and became captain of the Flying Dutchman. Luck always seemed to be on his side regarding his life (not so much love), but there might have been more to it than that.
Jack Sparrow using Will Turner's hand to stab Davy Jones' heart was the twist ending of . It meant that Will would have to serve as captain of the Flying Dutchman and only see Elizabeth every ten years. Of course, it also ensured that Davy Jones' reign over the sea ended and that Will could survive the sword emerging from his heart. Really, it made sense that he would be the next doomed captain since the tragic love of a woman seemed to be the prerequisite. However, one theory says Will was destined to take Davy Jones' place long before he fell in love with Elizabeth Swann.
When Bootstrap Bill Turner stole the cursed gold of Cortés with Captain Barbossa and the rest of the Black Pearl's crew, he jumpstarted Will's destiny. He sent the boy a piece of the gold so that his crew mates couldn't break their curse, which made Will a target. The ship he was on was set upon by Barbossa to the point that there was hardly anything left. However, somehow, he survived. Elizabeth and company chanced upon him, and he was saved. This in itself was a miracle since it should have been near impossible for Will to escape the Black Pearl, which was known to leave no survivors.
Then, years (and a sequel) later, Will again survived a shipwreck when it shouldn't have been possible. on a ship that had rescued him in . The villain did it as a definitive end to Will Turner, and Elizabeth certainly believed it was. Of course, this wasn't the case, and Will turned up on the Flying Dutchman soon after. Much like the Black Pearl from the first movie, Jones' Kraken is noted for its remorselessness. This was a lot of good luck for one man, to the point of seeming almost unbelievable. Given what audiences now know about Will's future, it seems more like a touch of destiny.
When Jack Sparrow introduced his unlikely group to Tia Dalma, there was no way to know she was the goddess Calypso cursed into a human's body. She certainly seemed to possess a mystic kind of power, but there was no indication that she might have been the one to spurn Davy Jones after he agreed to captain the Flying Dutchman. Therefore, when audiences learned the truth about , it changed the way her first interaction with Will Turner was perceived.
As soon as Tia Dalma got a glimpse of Will, she became intense and told him that he had a "" about him. In hindsight, she was referring to the fact that he was doomed to take up her curse from Davy Jones. Whether she knew precisely what would happen is unknown, but she must have felt some draw or connection to Will. Or, perhaps, it was his love for Elizabeth that she could sense. Regardless, this moment makes it clear that Will's destiny was set before Jack used him to stab Jones' heart—and this might have had a lot to do with his close-call survivals.
The "" that Tia Dalma sensed in Will meant that the sea couldn't kill him. This might have been a different story on land—so it's not as if he need never have worried about his various duels off-ship—but it may be that shipwrecks wouldn't cut it. Will was destined to rule the sea and its dead. Therefore, whenever he was thrown into it without hope, things worked out in his favor. This allowed him to kill Davy Jones and take his place, but when considering his continued story in his destiny may have gone further than that.
Will's story started with his father but ended with his son. In , Henry Turner became determined to break the curse that kept his father away for a decade at a time. Moreover, into a sea beast like Davy Jones (though it never explained why). Henry used Jack Sparrow (another character with a touch of destiny) to get the Trident of Poseidon and break the Flying Dutchman's curse altogether—and it would never have been possible if Will hadn't survived so many shipwrecks.
The complexities of fate and destiny in the franchise make Will's role in the story unclear. Given that the extent personal destiny plays in the wider story is rarely explicitly explained, Will's resilience could still be put down to pure luck. However, the combination of his eventual significance as a character, involvement with supernatural forces, and continuous improbable survival at sea all suggests that Will was kept alive by more than fortune and his own wits. Whether his eventual fate in the franchise was predetermined is never confirmed. However, the fact that Will Turner so consistently beat the odds to take Davy Jones' place on the Dutchman has huge implications for his status in the wider mythology.
