So the focus of this theory is going to be Mother Caramel.
It seems that everyone has forgotten about Mother Caramel. It doesn’t make much sense to me for her role in the story to have ended already. A mother figure is generally too important and there are plot holes in the story that, if filled, would probably make a huge difference in the progression of this arc.
So Mother Caramel‘s role so far in the story has been to:
1) show how Big Mom gained her Devil Fruit powers and that one can gain a Devil Fruit power by eating a person who has already eaten a devil fruit.
2) provide a Big Mom weakness (presumably relating to her haki, based on other theories I’ve read)
3) mess up the tea party by getting her portrait broken
4) make the Giants enemies of Big Mom
Now, there are several plot holes with this story:
i) What does Big Mom know about how she got her Devil Fruit powers? Has she been lied to? Does Pudding and her Devil Fruit have a role to play here?
ii) What would happen if Streussen (one of the two witnesses of Mother Caramel getting eaten and the one responsible for Totto Land’s candy-like environment) told Big Mom the truth about Mother Caramel?
iii) Who exactly was the giant who, besides Streussen, witnessed the events of the Semla Tea Party?
Just some questions for us to think about that might become relevant in the future of the story. Now, about Mother Caramel’s future role:
FIRSTLY
I want to emphasize that it seems as if Big Mom’s past repeats itself. Just as her original parents disappeared, Mother Caramel “disappeared” too. Just as Big Mom destroyed everything and everyone while craving for Semla, she now does the same for the Wedding Cake. She was even shown to become thinner, just as she is now. So can we use the past to predict the future? In the past, just before she ate the Semla, Big Mom was referred to as resembling a demon. Later, when she ate the Semla, she instantly fell asleep(!), making herself extremely vulnerable (at that time, to the Giants), until Mother Caramel decided to save her by taking her away to a land we now know as Totto Land. Will that happen again? Will Big Mom turn into a demon-like presence? Will she fall asleep after eating the cake, and if that happens, will someone try to kill her? Will Mother Caramel, in some way or another, come to save her once more? Perhaps take her to the Heavens, where she is now? Admittedly this seems a bit too far-fetched, but I think it’s worth considering.
SECONDLY
Mother Caramel has been repeatedly linked to the heavens, the sky, the God, and specifically the Sun. At Elbaf, they worshiped the Sun, and Mother Caramel created a sun she named Pandora, after young Big Mom’s tantrum.
Soon after gaining her DF powers, Big Mom was shown with two “minions” beside her, a sun and a cloud, Zeus and Prometheus, respectively.
Seriously, Pandora and Prometheus are exactly the same. I can’t help but thinking that Prometheus IS Pandora, just under a different name. So I speculate that Prometheus still has Mother Caramel’s soul, while Zeus has Big Mom’s soul (despite Big Mom and Prometheus having said in two different occasions that they are both made of “Mama’s” own soul/remember: mama=mom=mother). OR, that in a some strange way, Mother Caramel could still be alive inside Big Mom. Perhaps the souls of the two have been intermingled somehow, and depending on the situation, one takes over the other. There is some evidence to support this speculation:
a) Prometheus is generally much more disciplined than Zeus, just as Mother Caramel was compared to Big Mom.
b) Zeus was the one that got lured in so easily by cloud-food, to which Prometheus held a very reprimanding stance towards Zeus, just like a mother would do.
c) During Big Mom’s first tantrum, Zeus told Prometheus that it was useless trying to talk to her during her tantrums, as she would not hear them. As if Zeus knows Big Mom better than Prometheus does!
d) It seems as if Big Mom has inherited Mother Caramel’s Will, about creating a free and equal land and all, but is that really what happened? Or does Mother Caramel still strives to make her dream come true through Big Mom?
THIRD
It has been stated that Mother Caramel had underworld dealings with the Cipher Pol. Could Stussy be one of the children that Mother Caramel raised? Stussy is a secret agent in the underworld, working for the Cipher Pol. It does make some sense. And if not Stussy, perhaps another, older CP member could be related to Mother Caramel.
Lastly, I am aware that it has not been explicitly stated that Big Mom ate Mother Caramel. She just disappeared, along with the other children, after the Semla Tea Party. Notably, in the manga we can see Mother Caramel’s clothes lying on the ground, so if Big Mom had eaten her, she would have eaten her clothes too (she even ate parts of the wooden table). Big Mom is being repeatedly presented as insisting on Mother Caramel having actually disappeared, so that might actually be the truth. But what happened to Mother Caramel, if she wasn’t eaten by Big Mom? This just generates so many unanswered questions:
1) What really happened in the Semla Tea Party that made young Big Mom appear so monstrous?
2) How did Big Mom gain her DF powers? Were the DF powers transferred somehow?
3) Did Mother Caramel die for another reason and that caused her DF powers to be transferred to a fruit in the Semla, which Big Mom later ate?
4) Where is Mother Caramel now? If she’s dead, how did she die?
The only thing I can think of is that Mother Caramel realised that she was going to be eaten, so in order to protect herself she used some ultimate Soru Soru No Mi power, which could perhaps entail the user (Mother Caramel) transferring their entire soul to another person (Big Mom). So far we know that this is not possible. Maybe an awakening of some sort?
One final point relating to this is that Big Mom states in the manga that her favourite food is lifespan (chapter 863). How could that relate the points above?
SUMMARY
– Mother Caramel is still alive somehow, either within or out of Big Mom.
– Judging from Big Mom’s past, she may fall asleep after eating the cake and make herself vulnerable.
– Mother Caramel may make her appearance and try to save Big Mom.
– Prometheus is Pandora, the sun made by Mother Caramel.
– Mother Caramel’s soul interferes with Big Mom’s soul in some unknown way.
– Streusen may reveal to Big Mom what really happened to Mother Caramel, thus entirely shifting the progression of the Whole Cake Island arc.
TWO FINAL POINTS ABOUT BIG MOM
1) I want to point out that, contrary to Doflamingo for example, Big Mom was never presented as being authentically bad or evil. Her past shows that her original intentions were good (even before her alleged original parents abandoned her), and some fans may have grown some sympathy for her. That could hint towards the end of the Whole Cake Island arc. Remember that Franky was also portrayed to be bad in the beginning.
2) If one sees things from a psychological perspective, Big Mom’s craving for food and candy is an unconscious way for her to deal with having to wait for things to happen and more specifically to cling onto the hope that her loved ones will return. And this is a learned behaviour, presumably from her original mother and father.
– She ate while waiting for her parents to return.
– She craved for food while waiting for the Sun God celebration.
– She has undergone two eating tantrums while waiting to obtain the Vinsmokes’ power.
– She has been eating all her life waiting for Mother Caramel to return.
That’s it! I hope you have enjoyed reading this! And please let me know if I’m missing something
*Theory by Bishop D. George
