I never doubted that Luffy/Ulti would amount to nothing. Oda is predictable, his style is to create tension through chaos and random encounters. That's why he likes to keep his characters in motion like have them running all the time. Happened in Dressrosa, WCI, and now Wano.
It has good flow when you binge read because the tension ramps up and there are no pauses. But it's not so great when read weekly.