Worstgen

-gave to Luffy. So the question becomes, is the Straw Hat acting as some kind of parasitic object that is slowly gaining power as Luffy does? And once Saint Shanks takes the hat back, would he himself gain this power for himself?

This would successfully completely recontextualize every single moment of Saint Shanks and Luffy interacting with each other. We -

Elder Lee Hung

- are constantly shown moments throughout the series of Saint Shanks being happy to see Luffy grow as a pirate. Is Saint Shanks happy to see some fucking twerp he knew for 30 seconds becoming a big time pirate? No, Saint Shanks is excited because the Straw Hat he gave to Luffy is gaining power as Luffy does, and one day Saint Shanks will be able to reclaim that power for himself by stealing the Straw Hat back from -

Elder Lee Hung

-Luffy. This would breathe an entirely new, dark meaning into Saint Shanks telling Luffy to return the straw hat to him. No longer is Saint Shanks telling Luffy to come have gay buttsex with him in the new world, now Saint Shanks is secretly intending to take advantage of some kind of power that Luffy is giving to the Straw Hat for himself, and this is why he wants Luffy to bring the hat back to him.

Elder Lee Hung

This also has interesting implications for how Saint Shanks relates to Imu. If Imu successfully is stealing some kind of power from Joyboy, then this essentially means Saint Shanks is intending to do the same thing with Luffy. What could that power be? I suspect it is something Voice of All Things related, something far more horrifying than Haki, more like something that allows Imu to peer into the depths -

Elder Lee Hung

-of the human soul, or into alternate realities or some shit like that, idfk, we really need an explanation for what the VOAT is and why objects in the OP world seemingly have their own other-worldly voice that certain beings are capable of perceiving.

Anyway there you go. Evil Saint Shanks.

Elder Lee Hung

@Uncle Van @Red Admiral @ConquistadoR @ZenZu @Fujishiro

soupongo

In retrospect, it is clear that he noticed something special about Luffy. He told Rayleigh that Luffy had the same dream Roger had, and at the time we assumed this meant becoming the pirate king, but now we know that Luffy has some secret dream, there's no way he didn't notice Luffy having the will of d as well(I don't know if he knows what it means, but he would still probably notice it exists)

soupongo

The RHP maybe enjoyed hanging out with some random kid to some extent, but they also had no interest in Yasopps kids 5 mins away. They also don't have any kids on their crew like Roger did and even Kaido raised Ulti/P1.
Most interesting moment to me is that after Kaido was overthrown, Shanks didn't want to party in Wano and hang out with Luffy(his entire image is a party loving guy) but he wanted to go for the OP

Uncle Van

With all this new "storing haki" for 800 years that releases when you untie a knot, I wouldn't surprised lol