'One Piece' Teases Luffy's Big Future

One Piece's Whole Cake Island has been building to a major climactic battle between Luffy and Katakuri in the Mirror World, and now that a winner has been decided in the most recent episode of the series it's now teasing an even bigger future for Luffy on the horizon.

Katakuri's big strength is his ability to look into the future with his mastery of the Observation Haki, and one big moment before his collapse has fans wondering if the series is teasing Luffy's Pirate King future.

When the action between Luffy and Katakuri comes to its impressive finish, the two of them end up using the last bit of their strength in order to make one final stand against one another. Neither one of them is willing to give up despite them making it this far through the fight, and then manage to make big declarations with one another. Katakuri asks Luffy whether or not Luffy would be coming back to "take down Big Mom somday" and Luffy responds, "Of course I am! Because I'll become King of the Pirates."

The real stinger comes from what Katakuri says next, "You're seeing quite far into the future" before he collapses, conceding his loss to Luffy. Katakuri's future sight has been a thorn in Luffy's side for this entire fight, but this could be the one time that it actually works in Luffy's favor. While this is most likely a showing of respect to Luffy, because he poses it as a question rather than a statement, this is still a big moment.

Fans expect Luffy to become the official Pirate King before the series comes to a close, and this victory against a one billion belly bounty man will definitely push him in the right direction. It's at the very least, teasing a future in which Luffy will come face to face with Big Mom again.

Eiichiro Oda's One Piece first began serialization in Shueisha's Weekly Shonen Jump in 1997. It has since been collected into over 80 volumes, and has been a critical and commercial success worldwide with many of the volumes breaking printing records in Japan. The manga has even set a Guinness World Record for the most copies published for the same comic book by a single author, and is the best-selling manga series worldwide with over 430 million copies sold. The series still ranked number one in manga sales in 2018, which surprised fans of major new entries.