Thatch

A tall figure, Thatch wore his light brown hair in a pompadour that tapered to a point at the rear of his head, paired with a goatee around the chin. A stitched scar traced down his face and circled his left eye, echoing the mark Garp carries. He typically dressed sharply in a refined uniform, calf-length trousers cinched by a black belt, with brown shoes. Early anime appearances gave him spiky blond hair, a black goatee, a white foulard, blue shirt, and gray pants, before a later recolor shifted his hair to orange-brown, his foulard to yellow, and his outfit to a lighter blue throughout.

Cheerful and easygoing, Thatch ranked among the warmer and more sociable of Whitebeard's commanders, being the first to reach out to Ace once the Spade Pirates were brought aboard. He held firm moral lines, snapping at Teach for picking fights or joking about murdering a crewmate over a Devil Fruit. His confidence carried a fatal flaw: by the crew's custom that whoever finds a Devil Fruit may eat it, he chose to hold off on consuming the Yami Yami no Mi he had recovered, an opening Teach exploited to kill him for the fruit.

Born in the North Blue, Thatch joined the Whitebeard Pirates and rose to command the 4th Division while running its galley. Roughly two years before the main story, he reminded Whitebeard to take his medicine and relayed news of Jinbe's departure, with the emperor praising his sea snake soup. He became one of the first to befriend Ace after the newcomer arrived on the Moby Dick, meeting his cynicism with an amused, unbothered look. Alongside Ace and Teach he helped beat a pirate named Raccoon, and during the celebration that followed he half-joked about marrying the girls who thanked them. He maintained that Teach was not a wicked man at heart even while scolding him. Everything changed when Thatch unearthed the Yami Yami no Mi, the very fruit that had drawn Blackbeard to the crew in the first place; Teach murdered him and fled with it. His death sent Ace chasing Blackbeard for vengeance, a quest that ended in Ace's capture and execution. Whitebeard's own attempt at revenge cost him his life against the Blackbeard Pirates, and a year after Marineford the surviving crew under Marco clashed with Blackbeard in the Payback War, lost, and disbanded.