When we got to Egghead, we all assumed it would be a Franky-centric arc, given that so far he’s studied Vegapunk’s work.
However, we were disappointed to find that it seemed to take a back seat in favor of (really excellent and powerful) connections to the Robin and Luffy stories, in the form of Ohara’s second flashback and the story Devil Fruits.
BUT, what if we told you that this is still a Franky-centric arc, in a more direct way than you might think?
So far, the entire series has been about the new worst generation guard who inherits the will of the old guard of pirates and world rulers. So it makes sense that each of the Straw Hats and their dreams are tied to inheriting specific types of Wills.
Luffy, for example, inherits that of Roger/Ace, and we will discover later that it is related to Joyboy; Robin inherits Olvia’s and Saul’s wills, which are related to Ohara, Zoro has Kuina’s, which is more directly related to the Shimotsuki, etc.
And for Franky? Franky already inherits Tom’s will, who built a dream ship he loves for the future Pirate King. But what if he inherits Vegapunk’s will in this arc?
Vegapunk’s dreams are that free energy and free knowledge exist in the world. And to achieve this, he asked Luffy to take him out of Egghead Island. Why ?
He suspects the government of wanting to kill him because his dreams have brought him too close to understanding the ancient history of the world that the government so desperately wants to keep hidden. But here’s the problem. In Chapter 1064, Satellite Shaka tells Dragon that “being a genius means being able to see even what your own future holds…”
However, we don’t think Vegapunk will manage to leave the island.
CP0 or Kizaru will mortally wound Vegapunk, and he will be physically unable to join the SHs on their journey to Elbaf (I imagine he will ask them to go and give Nami a log pose for it). BUT, being the genius that he is, he had a backup plan.
A back-up plan: Kuma
Early on, Kuma and Vegapunk made a deal, for the sake of his daughter Bonney’s future, that he would allow himself to be transformed into a cyborg and become mindless, so that VEGAPUNK could upload himself into KUMA as a safety.
If Vegapunk did this, he would not only become a brilliant genius, but also an absolute UNIT capable of fending off his enemies. This is the reason why Kuma heads for Egghead.
However, Kuma is so incredibly damaged and/or fails to arrive in time, Vegapunk is unable to upload into Kuma in time. SO WHO IS THE NEXT BEST CYBORG? IT’S FRANK.
Franky inherits directly from Vegapunk’s drive for free energy and knowledge by logging into Punk Records and allowing Vegapunk’s consciousness to be uploaded into Franky’s systems. However, we doubt that Vegapunk’s genius will totally outweigh Franky’s, so we believe that Vegapunk will act almost like a virtual assistant for Franky.
Additionally, “Frankapunk” now takes control of the 6 satellites that it can interact with and use as research and defense satellites, which makes total sense, because what was it building in its origin story?
In this way, Vegapunk’s satellites become the spiritual successor to Franky’s Battle Frankies, and they would be machines Franky could be proud of.