They’re really opening the doors for even higher levels of Luffy’s power (from a Whole Cake perspective)
Like we know that there’s a whole other awakening or whatever they call it to devil fruit, and Luffy’s is particularly evolved given his is Nika.
But the way Oda gradually opens the door for that possibility.
Obviously you enter the New World knowing the fights are gonna be harder but Luffy (putting aside the other circumstances that affected his performance) defeated Hody quite easily. Caesar was also a relatively quick defeat.
Then you get to Dressrosa and he activated Gear 4 for the first time and you’re like ok, new level. This is gonna be the New Thing Luffy uses to defeat opponents for the next little while (which is what Gear 2 and 3 were like from Enies Lobby until timeskip) with maybe a little customisation here’s and there.
But it’ll usually only be restricted to the final boss or the second to last boss and then the final boss might get a little customisation via a new move.
But then here comes Cracker with his more powerful Armament Haki (??) where Haki has been established to have different levels, and Luffy has to whip out Gear 4 when you’re only a quarter of the way through the arc. He hasn’t even MET Big Mom yet. He doesn’t even know there’s a bigger boss on the horizon.
This is different stakes. Different metrics to judge the fights by.
Even tho we pretty much JUST left Dressrosa (where Luffy barely even used Gear 2 in Zou), Luffy needs another level up bc that’s just how much more difficult his opponents are. I know he has 2 other versions of Gear 4 in the Whole Cake arc, showing the need for him to adapt. BUT ALSO the fact he ends up having to use Gear 4 so often shows how tough he has it.
And given that rate of acceleration in his power ups, and knowing how much Kaido had been hyped up by this point, you have to wonder how much MORE he needs to power up in order to tackle that beast.
So the door is slipping open bit by bit until you are forced to face the fact that if Luffy doesn’t have another level up past this, then he will absolutely lose (I say this as someone who absolutely watched the Gear 5 awakening despite only being up to Fishman at the time XD)
