One Piece Made Luffy's Straw Hat Fleet Betray Him (And No One Noticed)

Luffy's Straw Hat Grand Fleet just inadvertently betrayed him in One Piece's latest chapter, which could have dire consequences for him.

Warning! Contains spoilers for One Piece #1084!

Luffy's Straw Hat Grand Fleet is incredibly loyal to him, but One Piece showed that they actually unintentionally betrayed him. One Piece's mangaka Eiichiro Oda introduced the Grand Fleet in Dressrosa, but it didn't really have a major impact on the plot until the Reverie arc. The manga is only just revealing how big of an impact it has had in its latest bombshell of a chapter.

Chapter #1084, translated by Stephen Paul, reveals more of what happened at the Reverie. The Celestial Dragon Charlos chained up the mermaid princess Shirahoshi attempting to enslave her. Two members of the Straw Hat Grand Fleet, Sai and Leo, rush to her rescue and the force of their combined attack actually kills Charlos, brutally crushing his head. This is a major event given that even defying a Celestial Dragon will cause the World Government to come after someone in full force. This means that the World Government will likely become more intense in their efforts to destroy Luffy's Straw Hat Grand Fleet. But more tragically this death also represents a betrayal of Luffy's ideals.

One Piece has often been criticized for its seeming unwillingness to kill its characters. Oda has claimed this is because in One Piece's world, crushing someone's dreams is even more devastating than killing them. This trait of the series has also allowed some great antagonists from earlier arcs to resurface in surprising new ways, like with Buggy becoming one of One Piece's new Yonko, forming the Cross Guild with Crocodile and Mihawk. It also makes the few deaths that do happen like with Ace and Whitebeard even more devastating. Similarly, it has also made Charlos' death even more brutal.

By killing Charlos, Leo and Sai have potentially jeopardized the reputation of Luffy's Straw Hat Grand Fleet, making them appear to be bloodthirsty killers. Of course, neither probably intended to actually kill Charlos, but they must live with the consequences anyway. More importantly, as the leader of his Fleet, Luffy must live with these consequences. He was already on the World Government's radar, but now he may have public opinion turning against him as well even if Luffy would never actually condone murdering his enemies.

Luffy has not yet had to reckon with the major consequences of the formation of his Grand Fleet, but this event may cause him to realize that it may not be an entirely positive thing to have. It may also be part of why One Piece's powerful five elders are getting directly involved in the ongoing Egghead Island Incident. So no matter the reason for their murder of Charlos, Leo and Sai have caused Luffy's Grand Fleet to betray him, which will surely cause major problems in One Piece's upcoming chapters.

One Piece Chapter #1084 is available to read from Viz Media.

Ben Sockol has been writing articles for the comics section of Screen Rant since early 2022. Growing up watching a variety of Saturday morning cartoons and then voraciously reading through the comics they were based on, Ben developed a love of the superhero genre from an early age. And upon discovering anime in high school and college he became a manga fanatic as well. After double majoring in Physics and Mathematics at MIT and doing a brief stint as an Analyst at an investment firm, he realized that writing about his nerdy interests was his true calling. When Ben isn’t writing about comic books, he is most likely reading them or engaging in one of his many other hobbies like card magic. Ben has his own YouTube channel YGOFrom0 where he does deep dives into historic formats of the Yu-Gi-Oh! trading card game. You can occasionally find him on Twitter @bsocks8.