The question right now is... who&how is going to die?

They are giving a lot of credit to Sai so I will say that Yamato is going to die on this arc. They are heading into a trap and will get their asses kicked. There a lot of plot lines that could converge here. 2 new characters... a trap... is too obviuos what is going to happen in the end.

For example:

1- Akatsuki simple fight: Yamato dies saving naruto (from akatsuki... or maybe from Sai??) naruto goes kyubii and rips of some akatsuki wannabe or makes some member to retreat (due to severe damage and the imposibility of getting naruto alive).

2-Akatsuki + Sound nins fight: Same as above but at this time we came to see the all desired Sasuke appear (maybe helping... maybe fighting on a battle royale akatsuki vs. sound vs. konoha, or maybe kills Yamato and makes naruto go berserk), the end would be something similar, with everyone scaping with some casualities, or badly injured. In these case having so many enemies I have the felling that kakashi is going to wake up and go to backup or something like that.

I just come to this imaginative ideas because we get 2 new characters. If we only had 1 he would be too clearly the cannon fodder, too obvious, too cheap. New character=character that I can kill to make my manga feel real (mature) again. But having 2 gives kishimoto the oportunity to kill a nontrascendet character and regain the favor of the public and keep another new character and avoid the feeling of cheapness and cannon fodder.

I want to see what he has planned, I dont give too much credit to Kishimoto but sometimes he knows how to surprise. Even if its without any deepness on the plots he makes surprising turns.