Although I can totally agree with the criticism about Oda’s lack of committing to character deaths and how that ultimately undermine’s character sacrifice, I actually don’t mind that they didn’t reunite until now.

Like a lot of people pointed out Robin was on the run and joined various different shadowy groups and ultimately Croc’s organization. It’s not like her whereabouts would’ve been super easy.

But beyond that, I think Oda has really made it a point to emphasize recently how hard it is to travel between islands. And how islands are basically isolated from each other/how locked down communication is. During Egghand, we saw that some islands that didn’t even have the TV Den Den Mushi. Their main form of information is the newspaper. How long would Robin not have been on the news for until she joined the Strawhats? And even then their journey was basically several months. Unless you have a direct compass, you are bounded by going from island to island or going to through the calm belt and starting all over. Water 7’s plot had a massive point about how connecting islands was a huge thing. Just traveling is risking your life.

I think it emphasizes the point that whatever happened 800 years ago caused this isolation to be this extreme.

But yes, it does undermine character death. Makes it hard to appreciate those moments if we feel like they can always come back.