@Cockycent:
Not really shine, more so anything significant to matter. No one can give me example of competence or significance that changes WCI arc.
Through all of your replies in this entire thread, you are fixated–for reasons that I cannot fathom--on the idea that only end results matter. And I don't think literally anyone else here is arguing that point with you. We all KNOW the end results in WCI, because they were the same in every arc: Luffy has to survive, the Strawhats have to get away, the adventure has to continue. No one is arguing against you on that front.
It's the HOW that makes the story interesting--the execution, not the result. We all know Simba becomes king, Romeo and Juliet dies (spoiler alert), the Strawhats reach Raftel. But the HOW makes the story memorable; and the characters. And HOW Smoothie has been portrayed in the story, when compared to the BMP the story tells us are her equals, has been booty. We don't need her to have changed the results of WCI--Again, the results are already set in stone. But she should have been used to make the execution of that arc more interesting/dramatic/tension-filled/etc. And she was not. If there were no Oda-box intros, you could be forgiven for thinking that Kata, Cracker, and Peros were the top members of Big Moms Crew.
And it's particularly glaring when you see how much the characters of Katakuri, Cracker, Perospero, Mon't-Dor, and Pudding, DID change the execution of Whole Cake Island. Sure they didn't change the end results of the arc--they never could have. That's why it's not the point.
And now here we are in a brand new arc (in which the results are already known to all of us), and Oda seems to be going out of his way to have her play no part in the execution of events AGAIN. For...ahem...some reason. And it's super frustrating because the opportunity is (imagine me doing big gestures to my right with both arms, please) RIGHT! THERE! Seriously, how hard would it have been to have her standing atop the candy slug with Perospero in her giant form, ready to wreck stuff?!!!
More simply put: Which character(s) from the Big Mom Pirates top echelon could you remove from the story, and it would have had no impact on the execution of the events within the Whole Cake Island Arc? You are right, Cockycent: Since Oda has decided to bring the BMP back for reasons that I still don't understand, there's still a chance for Smoothie to have an impact. But so far I'm having PTSD...