User blog comment:Fliu/The Reasons Big Mom Has To Go Down/@comment-24850639-20170313193655/@comment-24850639-20170314183229

I obviously didn't mean her dying, just her being defeated to a point that the Straw Hats no longer have to worry about her seeking revenge for what happened on their friends and loved ones. And the people that escaped from Impel Down may still be villains, but they will never be THE villain of an arc anymore. We don't have to worry about Crocodile taking over a new island, forming a new Baroque Works, and being a new arc antagonist. Buggy and Alvida weren't really the "antagonists" of Loguetown, Smoker was. Both of them were jokes to Luffy at that point, and still are.

As far as Big Mom goes, her trying to befriend the giants and subsequent failure doesn't fully explain her interest in gigantification. Her interest in them predates Caesar's work, it predates Lola's failed marriage. There's a HUGE chunk of Big Mom's past that we just have no information on, and I'm sure whatever her relationship with the giants is, is part of that. I'm not inclined to believe that it's as simple as her liking them for being strong. Assuming a 9-month (ish) pregnancy, that she didn't have any children until she was 18+, and that most of her kids aren't twins/triplets, Big Mom is easily 70+ years old. There's too much history behind her I feel for Oda to just gloss over it in a few flashbacks. I definitely wouldn't expect him to be skimping out any details on Kaido's past when we get to Wano.