 Hello and welcome to the Grand Line review your source for everything One Piece and today I'd like to take some time to discuss the ever-looming threat that assumedly awaits us at the end of the series being Blackbeard. Now I really haven't felt a strong desire to make a video like this before now because I'm not really one to look too far into the future of One Piece and more often than not I prefer to live in the present as well as look back on adventure's past. But with the ever-increasing sense of I guess end game that the series is entering I do think that it's time to have a bit of a serious discussion about what appears to be our ultimate enemy. But going into this I can already hear some people saying that there's no guarantee that Mr Blackbeard is going to be our final antagonist and that there are plenty of other villains that could take that mantle. I happen to disagree with that thought quite strongly and I believe that with everything the series has set up for us Blackbeard is like 99% going to be our final climactic struggle. Although I will admit that there are maybe you know one or two characters that could theoretically usurp that position and I will go into them eventually but for now I would like to focus on the wonderful world of ZEHAHAHAHA. Blackbeard is a pretty profound presence within the history of the series both in terms of its publishing past as well as actual chronological events of the world. Like apart from Luffy himself and maybe someone like Roger I personally believe that Blackbeard is one of the most important and impactful figures in this long long running series. Particularly in regards to fated events that heavily impact Luffy actually as well as the straw hats. So for example the very first time we ever hear of the Blackbeard Pirates is when we discover that they sacked Drum Island just prior to the straw hats arriving which led Wapol to fleeing in fear and thus directly set up everything that we experienced during the Drum Island arc. Later on Blackbeard also directly sets up Luffy's entire path in Amazon Lily impaled down Marineford, the post war events and even the decision to take two years to train all entirely as a result of capturing Ace on Benaro Island which was an event that he also effectively set up due to betraying the Whitebeard Pirates and killing Thatch. And that is a massive chunk of the series right there and it is crazy to think how Blackbeard has inadvertently manipulated pretty much the entire first half of One Piece. Which did of course continue when he used his position as Warlord of the Sea to invade impaled down thus greatly assisting Luffy's quest to break out. And at the same time Luffy was a great help to the Blackbeard Pirates because their jailbreak distraction prompted Magellan to free shoot you who then saved the lives of Teach and his crew allowing them to proceed all the way to level 6 and implement their nefarious plan. And this incident to me is what really solidified that Luffy Blackbeard connection. But it certainly was not the first hint of Luffy and Blackbeard being bound by a force of fate either because their very first encounter on Jaya also raises this idea with Teach originally planning on using Luffy's head to become a Warlord of the Sea but not quite being able to reach him due to the timing of the knock-up stream which led to the Ace conflict which prompted Whitebeard to attack Marineford and resulted in Blackbeard acquiring the Guruguru No Mi. Just incredible to think that that one minor event led to this string of world-changing chaos. So Luffy and Blackbeard really do have a unique dynamic. An almost narrative partnership happening whereby one could not have survived this far into the series without the other. It could almost be seen like a Harry Potter Voldemort sort of thing but much more better because Luffy and Blackbeard do have one sliver of the Venn Diagram in common which is their profound belief in dreams which is epitomized in Blackbeard's speech on Jaya. One of the most iconic speeches in the series really where he boldly claims that a man's dreams never die. And that was very important here at the time because the rest of Jaya and even one piece as a whole up until this point had seen Luffy encountering a world of non-dreamers. People who laughed at him when he said he would become the pirate king. And it's pretty insane to think that one of the first people Luffy encounters who actually believes in crazy dreams like finding islands in the sky is one of the most profound antagonists in the entire series. And I mean yes there are other people in the world like Big Mom or Kaido who believe in their own ability to one day become the pirate king but they don't have faith in the concept of dreams themselves and they exist primarily to crush others and exert their own will over the world. And I'm sure that Blackbeard does that to some degree but he really does not belong in the same basket as any other profound one-piece antagonist which really does set him up to be something special. And I mean if anything you could almost call Blackbeard a kind of anti-Luffy. He's a man who holds the same dream of freedom and becoming the pirate king. He just chooses to go about it in a much more destructive and at best morally ambiguous manner. And I've already brought it up vaguely during this video but what further ties Luffy and Blackbeard together is the fact that they are both characters who are highly subject to fate. At any moment during either of their journeys everything could have ended. Think of the amount of times that Luffy has almost died only to have some ridiculous stroke of luck save or propel him into the future. It's a lot of times because it happens in almost every arc. Every arc where there's a big threat to take on anyway. And Blackbeard is exactly the same. He has a fair bit of seniority on Luffy but in the grand scheme of things this man isn't all that powerful or at least he wasn't for much of the series. He could have been easily killed at any given moment. One great example of which was already mentioned in Nipel Down where he was on the verge of death after being doused and poisoned by Magellan. But wow a stroke of miraculous luck later and he's in a stronger position than ever before. Just like what often happens with Luffy. And we probably shouldn't go any further into this without recognizing the connection that these two also have in regards to Inherited Will. Now I'm sorry to be doing this but I will be delving into manga spoilers for a bit which details something that was discovered between Acts 2 and 3 of Wano. It's pretty substantial and if you don't want to hear it then please do skip to this time for more on this discussion but for everyone else here we go. So Inherited Will is a core concept of One Piece. I mean pretty much every major character within the series exists either to implement an Inherited Will or to pass on their will to another. A simple example of this would be Zoro who has the Inherited Will of Kuina to become the world's greatest swordsman. Cool simple yeah. Well it goes a bit deeper than this because those that carry the initial D are subject to this on a far more potent level to the point where it has been heavily implied that Luffy has directly inherited the will of the former pirate King Goldy Roger. Despite the fact that he has never met him because it was somehow passed on through the magic of the D. And up until recently this was thought to be the only case of this. However a character by the name of Rockstee Zabeck was discovered to have existed in the pre-pirate King times who was defeated by a combination of Roger and Garp at a location known as God Valley. And Zabeck would appear to have a direct connection to Blackbeard or at least Blackbeard believes that there is some sort of connection as he has gone so far as to name the flagship of his fleet the Saber of Zabeck. Furthermore Blackbeard's headquarters is currently on Hachinosa Island which was prominently used by Zabeck to form the Rocks Pirates. And if this whole Inherited Will were the case then it practically guarantees that Blackbeard is Luffy's ultimate enemy or at the very least he is destined to face off against Blackbeard in the same way that Zabeck and Roger fought all those years ago. And yeah Roger fought Zabeck long before he became the pirate king. However at the same time you know after Zabeck's defeat we really don't know of any world-shaking threat to Roger's reign. Meaning he had a friendly rivalry with Whitebeard and constant skirmishers with Garpons and Goku but nothing truly antagonistic to stop his rise to becoming the pirate king. So it may certainly be the case that Zabeck was Roger's ultimate enemy in the same way that Blackbeard is almost certainly going to be Luffy's. Alright with the spoiler talk over other elements to support Blackbeard's candidacy as the final antagonist is that his crew greatly mirrors out of Luffy's as well as the idea that teaches technically a member of the worst generation which means that he is more or less at least narratively considered Luffy's equal. I use the word narrative there very strategically don't try and make a power levels argument because narratively they are part of the same group and you know what they're even part of another group together as well as they are both considered emperors but in any case it's quite fitting with the general structure of the series thus far which seems to be playing out by generation. So what I mean by that is that the first half of the series culminated in the end of Roger and Whitebeard's generation through Whitebeard's death at Marineford. Meanwhile in the New World Era we are currently focusing on the Kaido, Big Mom and Shanks generation all of whom are going to have to fall in order for Luffy's worst generation to finally take the stage and making the world their own and with every other generation's figures gone by this point Blackbeard becomes the natural ultimate antagonist and Luffy also has a deep emotional reason to be facing off against him in the end because if not for Blackbeard Ace would not have been captured and killed. Furthermore Blackbeard also has this incredible connection to Shanks and I personally believe that Blackbeard is going to be the figure who ultimately kills Shanks thus providing Luffy with even more profound motivation in this world to bring this figure down as well as the fact that Blackbeard will be Luffy's most vicious rival to becoming the pirate king. I mean everything just seems to line up even if you do discount my crazy Shanks speculation but we would be remiss not to consider others at least briefly and I feel like the figure that most people are going to bring up first is Sakazuki who derives most of his notoriety from being the individual who actually killed Ace and he's also a natural antagonist as the fleet admiral of the organization determined to rid the world of pirates but in the end Sakazuki he just doesn't necessarily call for Luffy to defeat him in the same way that Blackbeard does. Sakazuki could theoretically be taken out by a wide array of people one of which I would identify as Sabo. Sabo has inherited the will of Ace as well as his devil fruit and it would be quite the dose of poetic justice for the merimeranome to overcome Sakazuki this time around or it could be Kuzan stepping in to make a comeback or even Dragon if he was forced into such a situation plus he just doesn't have that finality about him because there is no doubt that Luffy will need to beat Teach to become the pirate king where his beating Sakazuki is kind of like an optional extra and the only other candidate I would seriously consider is Eam which I think is crazy because we know nothing about him but at the same time Eam is a figure beyond anything we've seen in this world. With control of the entire world government currently Eam does technically possess greater power than anybody and they could be a great 11th hour final villain that the world needs to team up against and ultimately defeat. Once again though Eam seems more like the kind of guy who would be the target of the revolutionary army so Dragon or Sabo rather than being someone for Luffy to deal with directly so I'm very much convinced that Luffy's and thus one piece's climax can only possibly lie in Blackbeard. He's just far too bound to Luffy and he is the direct obstacle for Luffy to achieve anything and everything. But that pretty much does it for this general discussion on Blackbeard, the final villain of One Piece. If you enjoyed this video and the content this channel produced in general then please do consider donating to the Grand Line review Patreon because the support of all of your amazing people is what continues to make this channel possible. And if you'd like to see more videos like this but applied to other anime and manga series then please do feel free to check out my second channel New World Review for all of your wider needs. And if you'd like to join the fun at any time then please do head over to my Discord server where a wide array of shenanigan retakes place on a daily basis. And finally please do comment with your thoughts on Blackbeard potentially being the final antagonist of the series. This has been the Grand Line review and I'll see you next time. Who from the worst generation would you like to see teaming up with Luffy and Zoro? So despite the entire topic of this video I'm going to say that I would love to see Blackbeard teaming up with them. Why you ask? Because he's probably the only worst generation member who won't form a temporary alliance with them over the course of the series. Everyone else just seems like such a natural ally to take down something bigger. But Blackbeard is kind of the something bigger. It would be a fantastic twist though to see a Luffy Blackbeard combo alliance needed to take on the marines like Sakazuki or Eem. And to the credit of this possibility Oda is pretty great at making left field ideas like this work. I just personally can't ever see it happening which is why I very much want it to happen.