Like everyone else, it is practically confirmed that the plan will fail. Simply because of the biggest rule in visual media: "Show, don't tell".
Reasons the plan will fail:
- Pekoms warns Mama
- Brulee warns Mama
- there could be homies everywhere. I can't believe not every member of the big mom pirates has a homie button on their clothes for mama to always be informed.
- Luffy being Luffy
- Pudding having a secret agenda
- the alliance betraying each other. I feel like Caesar is too smart to know that everything will work out as planned, and he just won't show up. Because if it fails, he will feel mama's wraith, and if he doesn't participate and it fails, he will be secure for the moment (until mama wants the gigantification serum)
- Mama actually not dying from the poison
- The Photo being somehow special
- unknown guests
- No one actually knows about the exploding box (do the strawhats know? I forgot if Neptune told the strawhats)
Just too much going on
Also, I already love the arc, and each chapter is hyping me up more and more. So much better than the Dressrosa arc, where I stopped caring halfway through (in the one pace version of the anime it's actually better). I just love a good revelation, big surprises and turn of events much more than months of pure fighting.
I'm just worried that my expectations of the actual tea party will be too high!
After reading through the thread I love the idea of a Dorian Gray-esque picture of Mama. It would fit very well, with her putting the majority of her soul somewhere else for safety reasons. It would also make sense for Linlin to call the picture version of herself "Mama" as a way to cover it up. With 80 kids Linlin must be old, like really old, but she just doesn't look like Dr. Kureha level old. If the picture of her ages instead of herself, than of course it might look like her mother, because it would look like/be an older version of herself. And when the picture is damage, she will actually get damage, and if the picture gets destroyed, she will instantly grow old…
Oooooh.... I can already see it, Big Mom's human body is a homie!
The poison will have no effect on Big Mom's body, the poison needs to be injected into the picture AKA her true self.
And I assume getting to the picture will be far more difficult than "the last time". Linlin must have prepared something. If someone simply touching it freaks her out, and the last time someone actually knocked it over, I can see it being in a tiny little cage ON TOP OF THE FISHMAN ISLAND BOX.