After the time skip, Deidara and his partner were sent to capture the one-tail demon Shukaku. Gaining access to Hidden Sand, Deidara faced off against the village's Kazekage Gaara. As Deidara moved swiftly through the air on his clay bird, Gaara managed to surround his opponent in a huge sphere of sand to crush him. Deidara moved quickly but not quickly enough to escape the trap. Gaara managed to encase Deidara's left arm in sand and crush it.

Hurt but not out of the fight, Deidara used his ability to manipulate clay into explosive pieces of moving art. He was able to take in some of Gaara's gourd sand and imbue it with his highest form of explosive chakra, called C3. Unknowingly Gaara returned this imbued sand to near his body. Deidara sent a huge explosive towards Hidden Sand, forcing Gaara to use a massive amount of chakra to create a sand barrier to shield the village from the blast. Deidara used this opportunity while Gaara was weakened to detonate the C3 sand. Unable to protect himself, Gaara took the brunt of the blast and was defeated, falling into Deidara's and Akatsuki's control.

Deidara would take Gaara to the River Country where Akatsuki would remove the Shukaku demon that was sealed inside him. When Naruto and his teammates arrived to save Gaara, they found the process completed and Gaara lifeless. Deidara and his partner Sasori then began to battle Naruto and his team. Sasori stayed behind while Deidara flew away on his clay bird with the lifeless Gaara. Naruto and Kakashi followed in pursuit and Kakashi revealed his long range attack jutsu, a technique given to him by the Mangekyou Sharingan!

Kakashi managed to implode Deidara's right arm rendering his ability to use clay attacks almost powerless. Naruto then managed to partially destroy the bird. Deidara jumped away to hide and marveled at Naruto's jinchuuriki strength. Feeling cocky Deidara failed to see the real Naruto sneak up behind him and give him a crushing punch across the face. Naruto then began to pummel the injured Deidara but the Akatsuki member managed to escape quickly using Kawarimi.

Deidara then spied on his opponents and saw Sakura and Chiyo return to the group, having vanquished Sasori. Deidara was surprised that two pathetic ninja were able to take out such an "art" master. Deidara moved to flee but was stopped by Team Gai. Seeing the chances of escape grim, Deidara bolted to the clay bird and bit off a huge chunk with his real mouth. Ingesting the clay Deidara focused chakra to his stomach and activated the explosive clay, causing a huge explosion in a suicide move. The quick thinking of Kakashi allowed him to use his implosion technique one more time to suck away Deidara before his explosion could injure the group.

Thinking the battle won the teams left the area. Afterwards a figured emerged from the ground, it was Deidara who was forced to use his last ditch exploding mud bunshin to get away. He then went on a journey to find his sucked away arm. He finally found his arm in the company of Zetsu and his associate Tobi. Deidara had a tit for tat relationship with Tobi and was annoyed by the man's eagerness and jests. Deidara got his arm back, but not before having to leg strangle Tobi for his annoying statements.

A short time later Tobi was officially admitted into the group and he was partnered with Deidara. Deidara traveled with Tobi as he was directed to capture the Sanbi turtle demon. Though Tobi himself was supposed to go it alone, he helped the new recruit subdue the demon. Deidara did his part to show Tobi the ropes, but Tobi responded by merely snoozing through his diatribes.

Deidara next set his sights on Sasuke, the man who took out Orochimaru. With Tobi at his side, Deidara witnessed Sasuke first attack Tobi, who clumsily got in Sasuke's way and ended up being cut down but survived, somehow. Noting Sasuke's speed, Deidara first tested him with simple exlpoding clay spiders, but found himself outclassed. Teaming up with Tobi for his next attack and using a more powerful variety of explosive chakra, Deidara took to the skies on a clay dragon, attacking from the air while Tobi littered the ground with explosive clay mines. However, Sasuke's ingenuity led Deidara to Deidara crash into his own minefield. Angered, Deidara used his most powerful form of exploding clay to make a gargantuan duplicate of himself that scattered trillions of microscopic clay explosives, which when inhaled, traveled through the body and exploded, cell by cell, until the target simply dissolved into thin air. Deidara watched in amusement as Sasuke seemed to vanish slowly into nothingness, but Sasuke appeared behind him and stabbed him, non-lethally with Chidori and revealed his dissolving demise to be Genjutsu. However, Deidara then collapsed into clay and a hand belonging to the real Deidara emerged to grab Sasuke by the ankle, revealing that due to an encounter with Itachi years earlier, he had developed a resistance to Genjutsu in his left eye.

Trapping Sasuke in a full-body tomb of explosive clay, Deidara descended, but Sasuke tore it open and pursued him with a Chidori as Deidara detonated it. The two landed, with Deidara's victory once again snatched away from him as Sasuke used the Sharingan and his knowledge of elemental weaknesses to defuse all Deidara's clay Earth bombs with his Lightning based Chidori jutsu. With one last act, Deidara revealed his ultimate art, exposing a mouth on his chest like the one on his palms and feeding it a lump of clay. With apologies to Tobi, he then transformed himself into an explosive that covered the land for miles around, reaching high into the sky and once more proclaiming “Art is a bang!”. Deidara died happily, blissfully unaware that Sasuke escaped, but also that he had become what was in his opinion the most perfect form of art.