The first season of Netflix’s One Piece is just the beginning of an epic pirate saga. The end of the eight episodes already sets up the setting and a popular villain for season 2.
Netflix has snatched up the best-selling manga of all time and turned it into an acclaimed live-action series. One Piece, however, only films a fraction of the epic pirate saga surrounding Monkey D. Ruffy and his Straw Hat crew. After season 1, there is far more material for many more seasons.
Whether Netflix will continue the One Piece series is not yet known. However, the end of the first eight episodes sets the stage for a future season 2. How episode 8 sets up the next adventure of the Straw Hat gang, who the mysterious villain is at the end, and what the manga and anime already reveal about season 2, we’ve summarized for you here.
The end of One Piece explained: the Grandline and Rivers Mountain are near
The entire first season of One Piece is basically a long prologue for the actual adventure of the Straw Hat Pirates. Over the course of eight episodes, Monkey D. Ruffy (Iñaki Godoy) rounds up a crew in the Eastblue that, after defeating Arlong (McKinley Belcher III), finally sails together toward the Grandline.
Dangerous pirates are not the only ones who hang around on this dangerous stretch of sea. The legendary One Piece is also said to be located here. But the way to the Grandline is not as easy as thought. Navigator Nami (Emily Rudd) points out a narrow and strange strait at the end of the season, through which the Flying Lamb must first sail.
Fans of the anime and the manga, of course, know what this realization alludes to. The strait that appears to be going up a mountain on the map is just that. The so-called Rivers Mountain is a mountain where the four oceans converge (uphill). It is one of two known approaches to the Grandline.
Who is the cigar smoker at the end of Netflix’s One Piece?
Smoker
After the end of the first season, there is a short bonus scene that shows a mysterious person holding two cigars in his hand and burning the freshly exhibited wanted poster of Ruffy. This is the villain Smoker, known from manga and anime.
Smoker is a dangerous naval officer. In season 2, he may now take on the role that Ruffy’s grandfather played in season 1. He will chase the Straw Hat Pirates on their new adventure all the way to the desert state of Alabasta. Unlike Garp (Vincent Regan), however, Smoker has the powers of the devil fruit Moku Moku no Mi, the Smoke Fruit. This allows him to control smoke and turn himself into smoke.
Are Buggy and Alvida returning in season 2?
Alvida and Buggy in One Piece
In addition, two more possible antagonists for Season 2 are getting into position at the end of the eight episodes. The pirate Alvida (Ilia Isorelýs Paulino), who was thought dead, has survived and now seems to be teaming up with the murderous clown pirate Buggy (Jeff Ward). Their next destination could also be the Grandline, where they will once again clash with the Straw Hat crew.
Looking at the template, season 1 of One Piece skipped part of its story. Even before Ruffy’s departure for the Grandline, the allied pirates try to take revenge on him in the Eastblue city of Loguetown. The Netflix series may have saved Alvida and Buggy’s shared path of revenge for Season 2, bringing it in a modified form. Because in the manga, they don’t play any role during the next saga.
What’s next in the anime? One Piece season 2 could adapt the Alabasta saga
The first season of One Piece adapted the so-called Eastblue saga and thus the first 53 anime episodes or the first 100 manga chapters. In the original, the epic pirate tale of Ruffy and co. divides larger story arcs into sagas, each consisting of smaller story arcs. Next up would be the Alabasta saga, which spans 117 chapters in the manga.
For the Straw Hat Pirates it goes for the first time on the Grandline, where they get directly into machinations of the already in season 1 repeatedly mentioned Baroque company and conspiracies in the desert state of Alabasta. In the process, the crew meets new enemies and new allies, two of whom even join the pirate gang in the future: the reindeer Chopper and the archaeologist Nico Robin.
