Confirming the Timeline
The cover story showing Bartolomeo burning the Red Hair Pirates’ flag on Gurthal Island appeared around the time Sanji was rescued and the crew escaped from Whole Cake Island.
In this article, we’ll confirm the timeline assuming that the main story and the cover story take place on the same day.
First, that day was a full moon.
As we know, the next full moon comes exactly one month later.
During the previous full moon, Carrot and the others were on Zou.
Time Spent in Wano
The full moon after Zou was Whole Cake Island.
In other words:
- From when Luffy’s crew left Zou to rescuing Sanji and escaping took exactly one month
- The next full moon was the day of the Fire Festival
So Kaido was defeated exactly one month after the escape from Whole Cake Island.
(Not two months, because Franky’s carpentry work was completed in a matter of weeks.)
After the battle against Kaido, Luffy and Zoro woke up one week later.
The Straw Hats departed Wano a few days after that.
Right after departing Wano, Robin learned about events in the outside world from a newspaper.
That’s about 1 month and 2 weeks from the full moon of Whole Cake Island.
The Egghead Arc
Right after Robin read the newspaper, the Lulusia Kingdom was wiped out by an ancient weapon.
Four days later, the Straw Hats landed on Egghead.
So it took about 4 days to travel from Wano to Egghead?
The stay on Egghead lasted 2 days.
That puts us at about 1 month and 3 weeks from the full moon of Whole Cake Island — the day Bartolomeo burned the flag.
So then…
From Shanks’ Perspective
Bartolomeo probably stayed on the island for about two weeks after burning the flag.
During that time, Shanks came for revenge, doing this:
Then shortly after that, he passed near Wano and used Haki to warn off Ryokugyu.
But he didn’t meet Luffy.
If they met, he’d have to fight for the sake of pride.
The reason is…
He sank Bartolomeo’s ship and made him pay the price personally — but Luffy, as Bartolomeo’s boss, also needs to settle the score, or other pirates won’t respect it.
The Red Hair Pirates’ flag was disrespected.
→ Friends protected by that flag are in danger.
But he doesn’t want to go to war with Luffy just yet, so he passes.
Because of Bartolomeo’s actions, the moment Luffy and Shanks meet has been determined to be the time to settle the score.
That said, when Luffy and Shanks reunite it will be an all-out war for the title of Pirate King — that was a promise set in stone from Chapter 1. So Bartolomeo directly striking the spark doesn’t really change much in the end.
And with that, we’ll wrap up for today.
See you next week.