The Mystery Man who’s drinking with Crocus

The Mystery Man who’s drinking with Crocus

Chapter 631 shows Crocus and Laboon for the first time after the timeskip. Crocus is drinking with an unknown person wearing a Samurai or Japanese clothes which it seems related to Wano Kingdom.

When this chapter came out, we all knew that this was foreshadowing for the events of Wano. After all, this arc was hyped up since Thriller Bark and we expected it to be heavy in reveals.

So far, it has been, but there is still one big mystery to uncover, who was this man casually drinking with Crocus? Since we know that the old man was the doctor of the Oro Jackson, seeing him being so friendly with someone clearly led us to believe that this man was part of Roger’s crew.

So a lot of people assumed that he was Scopper Gaban and that we would meet him in Wano. But the Wano Arc has ended and Scopper Gaban hasn’t been introduced this time either.

Another theory was Shiki the Golden Lion, due to the similar coat and haircut but I don’t see why Crocus would be so friendly with one of his captain’s former enemy (and not a friendly rival like Whitebeard, a true sworn enemy) and from what we know, the Golden Lion has no ties whatsoever with Wano Kuni.

During the second act of Wano, people expected him to be one of the two missing Red Scabbards (at the time, Kawamatsu and Denjiro) but Kawamatsu has been revealed to be a fishman and imprisoned in Udon for years and Denjiro was Kyoshiro (and not Zoro’s master, as a lot of people, including me, expected). So it couldn’t be either of them.

Others suspected him to be Oden, but we know for a fact that he died, executed by Kaido in front of everyone.

What does it leave us with? At this point, I personally expect this to be a plot line abandoned by Oda (yes, I know, “Oda never forgets” but he does create a lot of thing he leaves in a corner to be used in the future. Oda is a genius, but not because he planned everything from the beginning, he is a genius because he’s able to tie up a lot of little details into a satisfying continuity with no excessive plot holes) but I could be wrong.

This photo was from 2016/2017 so years before the beginning of Wano, that’s why I don’t think that Oda “forgot” about the character. If it was indeed intended to be Gaban the whole time, it is possible that Oda originally planned to introduce him during Wano but later realized that the arc was already packed with a lot of new characters to remember and introducing someone as big as the Roger Pirates’ third man would be too much.