User blog comment:Soyakii/The Future of the Big Mom Pirates/@comment-24850639-20180326214225

Thanks for your blog, and the way you wrote everything out. You'll find that most people don't like to read too much, and so blogs that keep the question/prompt relatively short and sweet will always get more attention than ones like yours that approach an issue from multiple angles.

As it stands, I'd say the BM Pirates are done for as serious antagonists for the Straw Hat Pirates. Sure we haven't seen the entirety of the crew, but we've been exposed to enough of their follies and foibles that I find it rather difficult to take them seriously as a threat from here on out. I look at it this way: regardless of Big Mom's personal strength and whether Luffy has fought her or not, the structure of her crew hasn't/won't change. There are her top leiutenants, dubbed the Sweet Commanders, and then there are her various categories of subordinates named after chess pieces. Bege was a "Rook", and Tamago is a "Knight" for example. I find it rather safe to assume that a Sweet Commander outweighs any of these classifications of strength. So 3 of Big Mom's top 4 fighters have gotten a beating; 2 of them by Luffy, the other by a fellow member of Luffy's orientation class. While I know the level of "Supernova" hasn't necessarily been used as a tier in and of itself for power scaling, they are important enough characters to the series where I don't believe that their level of strength is inconsequential. A Yonko's top commanders have gotten curbstomped by the Worst Generation, and there's no way this isn't big news. If a supernova can pose a threat to Big Mom, why can't a bunch of actually experienced New World Pirates? Or the Marines? Or Cipher Pol?

So with that said, it's hard for me to see these guys as future antagonists when we've already kinda seen them throw the best they've got at the Straw Hats minus Big Mom herself. What can honestly be done to make them seem like serious threats again? As I said before, the most intimidating aspect of her forces have already been defeated, minus Smoothie. Luffy will only get stronger, so it's hard to sell a post-Wano arc Luffy having the exact same struggles against Katakuri that he had the first time. It's also a little dull to see a different Straw Hat take on these same Sweet Commanders, as we've already seen the extent of their combat capability thanks to Luffy. I can't call the actual future of the crew, as it's hard for me to see them joining the regular story again as anything but allies or non-serious enemies of the Straw Hats. They've already learned not to take the Straw Hats lightly, that will be even truer after they escape her territory, and subsequently defeat an "allegedly" even stronger Yonko.