Quote Originally Posted by Gray Mage View Post
I think Van der Decken is the real big bad for this arch. Sure, he may not seem much, but creative use of a devil fruit can always surprise us (Foxy comes to mind of a devil fruit user that turns out to be way more dangerous then he appears).

It also seems that the princess is being set up to be with the straw hats, which is not something I'm looking up to.
Well, the flashback pretty much points to VDD being the BBEG, with Princess Shirahoshi being foreshadowed as the catalyst for the island's prophetic destruction.
And the way i see it, per the basis of (possible) match-ups, luffy will be the one to face VDD, thus protecting the arc's central character (princess). Zoro vs. Hodi, and Sanji rescuing the captured mermaids by beating Caribou (sp?) to a bloody, filthy, dried-swamp pulp.