I want to see Doflamingo cry.

Not just as comeuppance for all the awful things he’s done to our heroes over the course of the last few arcs of the manga, but I want him to cry for himself. Dressrosa has already become the longest story arc in the series, and conflicts with Doflamingo as the main antagonist go even further back than that. It’s not hard to see how much of a fan favorite the Dressrosa arc has become, and we have yet to even see what the climactic battle between Luffy and Doffy could possibly look like.

I love Dressrosa as much as anybody–it’s damn near close to my number one favorite One Piece arc–but as we continue to fire towards the big finish there have been a few things that haven’t quite yet clicked with me. I spent a lot of time worrying that Luffy’s investment in the conflict was underwhelming when compared to arcs like Enies Lobby or Marineford. Law’s own agency in the story thus far makes him a pretty different damsel-in-distress than Robin and Ace were in their respective arcs, making the immediacy of the emotion feel a little off.

However, with the release of Chapter 779, we saw Luffy’s rematch with Bellamy come to end. Luffy shouts Doflamingo’s name with passion, furious about the terrible ways Doffy has emotionally manipulated his subordinate. All this is while Bellamy himself laid on the ground, eating dirt and letting the tears fall from his eyes in humiliation. The thing I found myself so surprised by was the fact that I was finally satisfied with Luffy’s motivation in this arc. Luffy’s relationships with Law, Rebecca, and Bellamy combined still don’t hold a candle to the way he fights for his own crew and family members, but I was satisfied nonetheless.

Luffy’s investment in Doflamingo’s defeat now only partially involves helping others. As we’ve seen throughout the series, Luffy’s least favorite kind of people are those who hurt their own comrades, and now Doffy’s officially on his shit list.

“In Luffy’s era, men live by their beliefs and risk their lives to defend them,” said manga author Eiichiro Oda in his SBS Question Corner. “Luffy shatters the beliefs of his enemies by defeating them.” In the One Piece world, fights are a type of philosophical conversation. You’re right as long as you can overcome any opponent that says you’re wrong. That’s what having the most freedom in the world means. That’s what it takes to be the King of the Pirates.

The epiphany I’ve had recently is that the emotional core of this arc does not rest solely on the shoulders of Law and the various Dressrosa allies. I’m at the point where I’m no longer praying that Dressrosa can live up to the same spirit of the other big arcs like Enies Lobby, because I think it has the chance to deliver something totally new instead. This feeling hinges on the fact that this is a saga where the villain has a story to tell as well.

Obviously, Arlong and Crocodile both got a lot of backstory and development long after the fact, but Doflamingo is the rare kind of main baddie who’s been given an unapologetically tragic backstory while his arc is still in play. His inevitable defeat will mark the end of an actual character arc. When we first read the story of Luffy beating Arlong way back when, we weren’t supposed to use future knowledge of Arlong’s past as a factor in what his defeat meant. That’s clearly not the case here.

When Luffy topples Doflamingo, he won’t just be beating a manipulative bully, he’ll be beating someone who was once a child. Someone who experienced tragedy and loss and grew up to deal with it in an unhealthy way. He was somebody who learned about the world and decided for himself that the evil inside of him was the ticket to accomplishing his dreams. To him, a life of violence and destruction was the answer to the nightmares that kept reminding him of the awful things that happened to him as a child. His younger brother Corazon can be seen as a parallel to the kind of person Doflamingo could have been, but chose not to.

Doflamingo’s design constantly supports his iconic sunglasses, always obscuring his eyes. Not being able to to see his eyes keeps him distant from the reader, making it easier to for us to see him as a force of evil rather than something human. But we know he has eyes. We’ve technically seen one of them already in the scene where he wakes up from one of the aforementioned nightmares, and fans have been clamoring for the moment where his glasses finally shatter mid-battle. If his eyes represent his humanity, what will it mean when Luffy delivers the final blow and we actually get to see them? What does a Doflamingo who’s just had his way of life shattered by the future King of the Pirates look like? Maybe that’s where his humanity has been hiding this whole time.

This current “Pirate Alliance Saga” has been long. By the end it will likely be close to 150 chapters in length, which is by far the longest story line in One Piece to date. That’s an awful lot of adventure for something that’s ultimately the result of the villain’s own tenacity. This isn’t the Straw Hats versus the world this time. All this ugly history and all these antagonistic relationships are a product of Doflamingo’s beliefs. His demonic touch runs deep throughout the entire One Piece world, and he’s a rare villain in that he had a presence in the story long before he was relevant to the Straw Hats.

I want to see Luffy and Doflamingo push each other’s limits. I want them to hit each other hard, because they’re both fighting for what they believe to be the truth of the world. I want Luffy to break Doflamingo. I want Doflamingo to be scared of losing everything he’s built. I want to see a beginning, middle and end, where that evil child grows up to create one of the greatest pirate empires in the world, only to have his dreams crushed. I want to see him realize that despite all the strength and intelligence and ambition he had at his disposal, he still wasn’t quite Pirate King material.

I think we still have a lot to learn about Doflamingo before the end of this arc. His relationship with his crew, the secrets behind the Marie Joa treasure and his interest in gaining immortality. Hopefully we get one last flashback. Something small where we see Doflamingo as a child among the Celestial Dragons, listening to the boogeyman stories about those who carry the “Will of D.” This would be from a day before the glasses, before all the fear and selfishness.

I want it to rain in Dressrosa. I want the million subplots of this giant saga to come to an end as Luffy lands the final blow, shattering Doffy’s glasses and revealing his humanity. I want to see his bloody, pulverized body shed a couple humiliated tears of defeat as he is finally proven wrong.

Sam’s Piece is a bi-weekly column that releases every other Friday, only on the One Piece Podcast website!