User blog comment:Ghmorello/Chapter 887: Hot Pounding/@comment-24769684-20171201073703/@comment-9022101-20171201223947

I have to disagree. I think Pound really is dead. Oda framed Pound and Pedro's sacrifices in a very similar way. Both made their sacrifices so that people close to them could escape, and very short flashbacks were shown to develop their characters a little bit more to make their deaths satisfying. What Oda did with both seems reminiscent of the tragic flashbacks of each of the Straw Hats, Jinbe, and Law: he kills a character that we don't know very well but feel a strong emotional attachment to for the sake of another character's development. Pedro died to give Carrot that tragic loss common to all main protagonists in the series, and I could easily see Pound being the same thing for Pez. Why Oda would do this for Pez, I have no honest-to-god clue, because he's only a baby, but Oda has a very interesting way of framing things and making everything important eventually.