 Now there's this unfortunately common idea floating around out there that Kaido just up and flung himself off of Sky Island in order to see if he could end his own life. I'm really sick of hearing this, it is blatantly not true, and it is clearly shown in both the manga and the anime that Kaido jumped off of Sky Island in order to very dramatically and quite literally smash the subscribe button for the Grand Line Review, which has now resulted in Kaido receiving regular One Piece content uploaded straight into his YouTube feed. Hello and welcome to the Grand Line Review, your source for everything One Piece, and today I would like to attempt, perhaps poorly, to peer into the not-so-distant future of the series to discuss how the events of Wano are almost certainly going to radically reshape everything we know, especially in regards to the Yonko, aka the four emperors, aka the five emperors, including Luffy. But before we get started, I just wanted to say that for you anime only watches, so long as you are caught up with the anime, there will be no spoilers in this video. I will be addressing primarily vague concepts with information that you already have, and if something else comes up, I will make sure to provide the appropriate spoiler warning. However, what I will be primarily referring to and using as a launching point is the core piece of information we now have in the anime, which is the presence of Big Mom on Wano. Now, this was something that was heavily hinted at during the events of the Reverie, but this narratively puts One Piece in a very interesting place because as many of you may have picked up on by now or not, just about every single arc in the New Old Era has been building towards the inevitable defeat of Big Mom and Kaido. It's been an awfully, awfully long journey, but we are now at the stage where, incredibly enough, the downfall of these two arguably strongest living beings in the entire world is within sight. I don't know how they are going to be beaten, and for the sake of this video, that's not important. I mean, that is Oda's problem to solve, but what we do know is that Wano looks like it is going to act as the climax of the last decade of storytelling, and one way or another I guarantee you that this is where we wrap up Big Mom and Kaido. In much the same way that Marineford was the climax of the pre-times Kibera, which was also marked by the defeat of an Emperor being Whitebeard, and we all know how the world radically changed as a result of that. But we are now in a situation where the stakes are far, far higher. We are talking about the potential dismissal of two Emperors, which means that after Wano, the world is going to be completely unrecognizable. Even without a time skip, things are going to be very different, and in fact it even calls the integrity of the entire Emperor system into question. So take Luffy out of the equation for now because I'm sick of having the debate about him being an Emperor and all that, but setting him aside, this is half of the four Emperors being removed from relevance, which not only destroys the balance of power in the New World, but also the entire planet at large. And this is because for the entire run of One Piece as we have known it, there has existed a great balance of power in this world, which was a bit of a three-way affair. You have the World Government, the Seven Wallards, and the four Emperors. And somehow these powers produced a perfect stalemate, and it's weird to say it, but a certain level of I guess peace within the One Piece world. However with the capacity of the Emperors halved, this creates a supreme imbalance because I highly doubt that Blackbeard and Shanks would be able to rule the entirety of the New World on their own. So this very much would open the floodgates to the Marines to expand into this territory, which has been flagged as the goal of Fleet Admiral Sakazuki ever since he was promoted to top dog, from his former position of red dog. Now, Margaritas will know that this idea is not as simple as I've made it sound, because the situation has developed regarding the wallards as well, however I don't believe this changes the outcome I'm proposing too much. Because the way I see things, One Piece is a story in three parts. Part one, the pre-time Skip Stuff had a meta-focus on the old guard of the world, the remnants of the Roger era of pirates if you will, and that succinctly ended with the death of Whitebeard. And as for the post-time Skip so far, this has focused on that middling generation, you know, the Big Moms, the Kidos and even the Shanks as of the world, who were all around in Roger's time, but they were either apprentice pirates or just hadn't fully matured into the positions they hold now. And as for the third part, well that would be the most recent generation, Luffy's generation to be precise, which does of course consist of our fun supernovas as well as Blackbeard and Marines like Kobe and Smoker, and how they will inevitably clash to determine the future of the world, and of course have Luffy become the pirate king. So with this in mind, we have two main options that I would like to explore following the fall of the middle generation, one of which is that the emperor system does continue albeit with new members, and the other is that the emperor system is dissolved completely. Starting with the former though, taking down Big Mom and Kido does create the largest power vacuum that we would have ever seen in the series, but I suppose it is not impossible for that to be filled and establish a new sense of balance. For example, Luffy would emerge to be a natural candidate as a core emperor rather than being referred to as the fifth emperor, and in fact, whether he likes it or not, Luffy's actions on Wano are going to earn him quite possibly more notoriety than any other single character in the series Bar Goldie Roger himself, because I mean how many people can say that they were instrumental in defeating two emperors at the same time. And regardless of how that plays out, we know how the media will portray these events. Once again, the mastermind Monkey D. Luffy has pulled off an impossibly clever plot and done the unthinkable, this time making subordinates of Eustace Kidd, Basil Hawkins, Diaz, Drake and all that kind of stuff. You know, the same sort of fluff that happened after Hulk Egg Island. And no, that is not a spoiler, it's just pure speculation at this stage that Hawkins and Drake will join the fun. But for anyone who argues that this sort of media portrayal will not happen because Wano is isolated, do not forget that CP0 has a presence on Wano, as do the Marines actually for some spoiler related reasons. So the events of Wano are not going to go unnoticed, and if any of this does get back to Big News Morgan's and it will, then he is going to publish the most sensationalist article about Luffy imaginable, and he will solidify his position in this world as everyone else's is thrown into pure chaos. But even adding Luffy properly into the mixer only makes three. So for this whole rebalancing thing to work, we probably do need another emperor, and a very natural choice for that role might be the aforementioned Eustace Kidd. Of all of the worst generation members, he is the one most similar to Luffy, or at least in my opinion anyway. And in fact, he was the more notorious of the bunch when this group was first informally formed to weigh back on Sabati, although that is primarily because of his sheer brutality. But hey, commanding fear is what has sustained Big Mom and Kaido, so why not give Mr. Kidd a shot? And in theory, he would also be credited with assisting in the defeat of two former emperors, so it would not surprise me at all if he developed quite the following as well. And the reason why I single out Kidd is almost purely because of narrative reasoning. There are plenty of worst generation members present, I just don't feel like any of them are better technically positioned to take on such a mantle. Like say a law for example, he is an officially reported ally of Luffy, so anyone who wanted to flock to law would naturally see Luffy as their leader as well, so there's no real point in splitting that faction. Then there are characters like Hawkins who are dangerous, but have been established as lacking that same level of ambition as the Kidd Luffy class. No matter how I look at it, Kidd is the natural choice in this pool of characters, but that doesn't mean that someone else can't spring up. And another example here might be Seikata Curry. He is a logical natural choice for me, because in the event that Big Mom is defeated, he is very much next in line to lead the entirety of her forces, and they would fall behind him rather rapidly because of all of the people in that massive crew, he commands the utmost respect, despite what Paris Barrow would like to believe. So the emperor-related infrastructure is already there for Kata Curry to more or less inherit that role, assuming Big Mom's forces aren't completely destroyed. But I do think they have a much better chance of enduring than say the Beast Pirates do, because their home base is one-o and that is going to be taken from them. Meanwhile, Totoland is a set of colonies settled by the Big Mom Pirates, so they don't have to worry about losing their home territory unless someone like Blackbeard uses this opportunity to invade it, and perhaps even sees, say, a roadponyglyph. You know, it's definitely not out of the question. And very briefly, though, I suppose it is also theoretically possible to have one of our warlord figures ascend into the position of emperor. I mean, if Mihawk so desired it, all he'd have to do is gather a crew, and bam, it's his. He's a bit of a loner though, as is Edward Weevil, so actually, to be completely honest, I'd say the most likely of the warlords to become a future emperor is Buggy, and I want to emphasize that is not a joke. Like I said, it isn't going to be Mihawk or Weevil, it certainly isn't going to be Kuma, and let's be real, it's probably not going to be Boa Hancock. Whereas Buggy could, hilariously enough, potentially develop a following large enough that he follows that loofy path to power, just without the individual power of his own. But all of that is making the grand assumption that the emperor system actually survives past Juano, which I'm not at all certain it will. The idea of emperors is such a standard feature of the One Piece world that, you know, it almost doesn't necessarily fit in with the idea of a new age. I mean, how can one truly revolutionize the world by using the tools of the Old Guard? And so given everything else that is currently happening with the series, I don't see why the emperor system wouldn't just collapse in on itself, and the New World could become a free-for-all battleground. Yeah, Shanks and Blackbeard are still around, but the Marines are now here in full force, and there is very little left to crush the worst-generation members, each of whom could be causing their own individual threads of anarchy. But just on Shanks and Blackbeard briefly, we really only are one emperor's defeat away from unquestionably removing the system, and that emperor for where to come down to it, let's face it, would be Shanks. My personal belief for the last decade or so has always been that Shanks is going to be killed by Blackbeard, and I just feel it in my poor One Piece soul, that they have been continuously set up to be major players in each other's stories. Whether it's the scar Blackbeard gave Shanks, or the warning Shanks attempted to give Whitebeard about pursuing Blackbeard, or even the ever ominous statement made by Blackbeard at Marineford that it was not yet time to fight the red-haired pirates, yet being the operative word. So who knows, maybe we will come out of Juano to find ourselves in a state where while Luffy was dealing with Big Mama Kaido, Blackbeard has managed to deal with Shanks. And you see that would be a proper removal of the Old Guard, and it would give rise to an idea that greatly excites me, which is that with nobody else left to claim power, the members of the worst generation inherit the New World, which of course includes Blackbeard. But instead of the four emperors, this power is carved up between them, with each competing faction aiming directly for the goal of becoming the next pirate king. And that would be the story of how Luffy's generation rose up all the way from rookie level to becoming genuine pains in the arse, and then finally, to the most notorious figures alive. Plus they could also be given a new collective name, kind of like how they were the super nervous pre-time skip and then became the worst generation post-time skip. There's a pattern of gradually getting more respect of the world in play, so with nobody else to oppose them, they could just be called the world's most fearsome or the world's most powerful or something much better than that. Look, there is very good reason why I don't write One Piece, and coming up with names is one of them. But I do very much feel like this is the natural trajectory of the series. One Piece is a very generational focused story, and the only thing we really have left to do after Wano is focus on the worst generation members properly stepping into power and becoming the figures revered by the next few generations in the exact same way that Roger rose from nothing to become the pirate king along with his contemporaries like Whitebeard. And the end of Wano is going to be the perfect transition into this. So as much as we still have quite a long way to go to end this arc, even in the manga, I could not be more excited for what the future holds with One Piece, as we inch within the tantalizing grasp of Luffy finally becoming the pirate king. But what do you guys think? Please do leave your thoughts in the comments below or even join my Discord server. And if you'd like to see more videos like this, then please do go and check out some of my other content or even subscribe to the channel for more glorious One Piece business uploaded straight into your YouTube feed. But for now, this has been the Grand Line Review, and I'll see you next time.