So, idk if this is new or has been posted a million times already but anyway.
It’s based off of mostly established canon, with some minor reaches, but has one lynchpin that while it would make sense, is nowhere near confirmed yet.
What is that lynchpin?
Imu is Joyboy‘s shadow.
Why that makes sense:
Shadow people are confirmed to be real, during Thriller Bark.
Moria has the shadow shadow fruit, but isn’t named a shadow human, but the ruler of shadows. Since they already exist.
Why that would mean that Imu is a shadow person?
- silhouette form
- connection to joyboy (friendship?)
- Chekhov‘s Gun rule ( why make shadows into people if it isn’t important)
Okay, let’s say I’m correct.
Another important part of Thriller Bark is the explanation of the connection between shadows and humans.
The shadows are described as eternal slaves, doomed to copy their master and die when they do.
They are only free in total darkness.
But Moria shows us that bodies must also copy the shadow. Which is when he made oars do all those funny gomu gomu like poses.
What the shadow can do, the body must do as well.
This might explain why Blackbeard can eat two fruits.
He can’t. He ate the darkness devil fruit.
Then when he was about to steal whitebeards, he covered him in a blanket, creating total darkness. And since he is darkness, he probably absorbed the fruits power before it could leave to manifest elsewhere and either forcefed it to his shadow ( more the style of Blackbeard)
Or his shadow copied his darkness power and ate it itself. Either works.
What the body can do, the shadow can must do as well, and vice versa.
Hence when his shadow „ate“ the Gura Gura no mi.
Blackbeard gained possession of the fruits power himself.
But okay, that’s two fruits, but we’re all sure that Blackbeard will have three fruits by the end. Logia, Paramecia, Zoan.
But how, he can’t eat another devil fruit, and his shadow can’t either. That’s the ironclad rule, which this theory claims even he can’t break. So how?
Simple. Absorb another shadow. The strongest shadow of them all. With possibly the strongest Zoan fruit in the series.
Imu.
As we’ve seen with Luffy, a human can absorb more than one shadow. And if their will is strong enough, retain their personality.
But there comes another problem. Blackbeard’s will isn’t nearly as strong as luffys, from what we’ve seen. He is a coward.
And strong enough Haki can negate devil fruit effects, and imu‘s Haki is more than strong enough.
So how then?
Well we conveniently found out that Haki is a resource that can be spent, in the fight between Roger and Garp vs. Xebec. After which you would be down for the count. Defenseless.
For example, after fighting a Pirate King who has the power of your Nemesis.
I think at that point when the fight reaches a climax and everyone is tuckered out, Blackbeard will do his signature drive-by power snatch, and devour imu and his power.
As for strong will, he doesn’t need it. He has the darkness fruit, which has the ability to absorb the power of the devil. And Imu‘s power IS the power of the devil.
( a weak point, but my guess is that that’s how he negates the devil fruit powers, not by absorbing the devil fruit power itself, but by being the darkness that absorbs the shadow at the moment of contact, and abusing the rule of connection between people and shadow people, if they are connected. If the shadow can’t morph into a flame like shape and it’s connected to Ace, neither can he.
This isn’t ironed out though.)
Therefore I think the final fight will be probably about liberating The shadows from Blackbeards body.
Or about luffy separating his own shadow with his fruit powers and tag teaming Blackbeard, like Joyboy and imu might have done.
But why would he separate his shadow. And why did joyboy, if Imu really is his shadow.
Well simple. Because they’re inheritors of nika.
The warrior of LIBERATION.
I think the only way to unlock the full power of the nika fruit is to liberate your own shadow from yourself.
And that joyboy did it, not because he wanted power. But he wanted to be free, and he wanted others to be free ( possibly).
And luffy is the same. He doesn’t want people serving him, because he doesn’t want to be responsible for them, because it makes him less free.
He has friends, not servants.
But in actuality he owns one slave that has no say in its existence, and can only obey, and then die when luffy dies. Kind of makes him akin to a celestial dragon. I think luffy would find that disgusting.
And he wants to become the pirate king, the most free person in the world. For that he needs to be free from his shadow. To become pirate king, and to become Nika.
Why Nika? Well because Nika is named the „Sun God“. It’s his power he presumably possesses.
Why „Sun God“ though?
Well by logic.
If the true power of Nika requires freedom from your shadow, what doesn’t have a shadow? A light source.
What is the greatest know light source in the world?
The Sun.
So if a man walks under the Sun itself, freely. ( which people without shadows can’t do or they die)
What else can he be but the „Sun God“. The greatest source of light in existence.