#Oda plays his cards really close both to build some suspense but mostly to give himself flexibility in his story

[gumgumvibecheck]

do you have any theories/headcanons abt shanks im strangely obsessed w him bc why dont we know anything about him yet 💀

(THE FULL ANSWER CONTAINS SOME WANO FLASHBACK SPOILERS)

ok so like, my thing with shanks (which is 100% colored by sentimentality) is that i really don't particularly like him being some giant behind the scenes world shaping schemer. despite this, what do we know about shanks doesn't really take any heat off of him (whatever the fuck he was doing calling a meeting with the world gov't big wigs has me the most suspicious) so i really get whenever people think he's sus. however, ultimately when it comes to shanks my gut call is like, this doesn't seem like the type of story where someone who was so, so important to Luffy turns out to be evil.

i've always thought we'd see shanks take some heat from the world gov't while Luffy wraps up what he needs to do to get to laughtale, and honestly thats where I think it's still going to end up. I'm basing this mostly on two things, first of which being that Shank's said he bet on Luffy and his generation; which is then under girded by the second thing I use to bracket this - Rodger told Shanks something after Laughtale that makes him bawl, and we don't know what it is. What we do know is that down the line Luffy says something to Shanks, and then Shanks sacrifices his arm for him, gives him the pirate kings hat, and then tells everybody he bet on him

Personally, I've always read what Rodger says to Shanks as something along the lines of a 'you're not it' ie. you're not joyboy or you won't be finding laughtale etc, so instead Shanks focused his life on being the strongest he can be, and helping the person who would fill that role.

I don't think anything with the gomu gomu no mi was pre meditated on his end either, both because i don't like shit like that but also (and again, all of this is gut calls but) it just doesn't feel like that type of story to me, ya know?

So i guess to answer your question, I don't think Shanks is a big bad or has been plotting for Luffy's whole life to work like this. But i do think he knows something very important about his role in all of this based on what Rodger told him, and i think he's a damn good gambler