Enel will make his grand return in Elbaf - One Piece

For a while I’ve had this idea that Enel will return in Elbaf, and I have a lot of plot points/statements that ultimately led me to this conclusion!

Why do I think this?

Well, for starters, Bellamy and others have mentioned that there is an entrance to the Sky Islands in the New World. Given that Elbaf would likely center around the Mythical Gods of the One Piece World, wouldn’t it make sense for the God-themed island to have an entrance to a part of the world that also has God and Heaven themes?

Enel thought of himself as a God. So it makes sense to me that he would return when we finally start exploring the Gods of the One Piece world. Especially given that recent revelations surrounding Luffy’s fruit have made his fight with Enel have more narrative weight to it. A human who thought he was a God fought a God who thought he was a Human.

We also know that even if Luffy doesn’t want to be a God, and doesn’t want to be given a leg up in the race for the Pirate King, he will have to accept it at some point.

Which will likely lead to a reveal where Enel realizes he ISN’T a God coupled with another similar panel of Luffy figuring out he IS one. And both of them won’t accept it. So now we have the thematic fight of, “Human who can’t accept he isn’t a God,” fighting a, “God who can’t accept he isn’t a human.” Imagine the parallels Oda could do here with this! So Enel learns some of the true History, and denies it. Enel refuses to accept he isn’t a god and falls to his arrogance by Luffy, who learns to accept his Godhood by accepting responsibility.

Also, assuming Elbaf is the island with Nordic themes, wouldn’t it make sense that someone who would have claim to the title of, “Thor,” would come to the island from a sky island, ready to conquer the new world after conquering the moon? If he conquered the moon and gained knowledge, technically he’ll call himself the Moon God, so we’ll have the thematically appropriate fight of Moon God Enel vs Sun God Luffy. The Moon God, who shuns knowledge and history, thusly repeating the cycle, vs the Sun God, someone who learns some of the history and chooses to fix the mistakes of the past.

And finally, I’ll leave you with this tidbit. Oda has stated before that he wished that he had introduced Crocodile and Enel much later into the story, because he wanted them to be much stronger and wanted to show off many of their crazy powers, but was limited in his use of powers because of the placement of them in the story, so as to be opponents that Luffy could realistically defeat. So to me, with Crocodile just having made his reappearance into the story, don’t you think Oda would want to bring back Enel too so he can finally show what both of these characters are capable of?