Meanwhile, the Revolutionary Army has declared war on the World Government and the Seven Warlords have been disbanded.
All of the Worst Generation members aside from Bonney and Urouge have now been present in at least one major story arc. With the fall of Kaido and potentially Big Mom, the only major player left in the New World, and likely the one guarding the final Road Poneglyph and thus the path to One Piece will be Red Haired Shanks.
We will thus likely see a struggle between the Straw Hats and other members of their cohort culminating in the discovery of the treasure, the key to bringing about the Dawn of the New World, by the one destined to inherit Roger and Joy Boy’s will. All the while, the escalating conflict between the Revolutionary Army and the World Government makes waves around the world.
I mentioned in a previous theory video that I believe this conflict between the Worst Generation members; notably Luffy and Blackbeard, could come to a head on the lost island of God Valley. Considering the current saga building to the battle between the Straw Hats, Big Mom, and Kaido began with Punk Hazard in 2012 and is unlikely to conclude for another year, a war among the Worst Generation for supremacy in the New World, culminating in the coronation of a new Pirate King can easily take five years worth of chapters.
And so as Oda said, in five years, the story of One Piece ends….
But not the publication of the series.
Despite the huge scale of the One Piece world which features hundreds of characters, each with their own story, the central narrative arc, even in its most dramatic moments, has been focused on the Straw Hat Pirates on their epic adventure along the Grand Line in pursuit of the legendary treasure One Piece. Every action taken by Luffy and crew has been in pursuit of that goal.
All of the world building has really just been a backdrop for the adventure. And so when the treasure is discovered and Luffy becomes the Pirate King, the narrative will fundamentally be shifted. Once the mystery of One Piece is answered, a new question will be asked. What then must the Pirate King, the person in the world who has maximized freedom then do with the will they have inherited?
Luffy’s fun adventure in pursuit of an impossible dream will be complete. Laugh Tale is the point of apotheosis in Luffy’s hero’s journey beyond which, he will need to now shoulder the burden of history, as Whitebeard foretold, and complete that which Roger could not, bringing the light of the New Dawn. The last phase of the mythic hero’s journey is the return voyage from the special world, here rendered as the Grand Line, the world of pirates. The hero who has confronted their own shadow, represented in One Piece by Blackbeard, must then become the master of two worlds and attain the freedom to live if they have completed this voyage successfully.
I’m going to tackle this topic in more depth in a future video, but it’s important to note that the hero’s journey is only complete when they take the power or knowledge acquired, the fire of the gods stolen by Prometheus, and return to the ordinary world from which they departed.
In five years, the story of One Piece concludes when Luffy’s fun globetrotting adventure is complete and the mystery of the treasure is revealed. And so begins the story of Romance Dawn, in which Pirate King Luffy, the paragon of freedom, must confront the World Government and the dark forces which presently hold power, bringing about a global restoration.
*Theory by Straw Hat Jedi
