The first teaser for One Piece season 2 has landed, and it pretty much confirms the story the season is going to tell and which characters are going to appear in it.
The tease was a video uploaded to TikTok, in which Iñaki Godoy celebrated Monkey D. Luffy’s birthday with a cake that looks like a big ol’ candle. That cake had a candle on top, which was shaped like the number three – and that is almost certainly a very big hint about which story arc we’re going to see this time around.
Where Netflix‘s One Piece season one went with the East Blue story from the manga, the teaser suggests that we’re going to follow the Arabasta story arc. That focused on the Baroque Works criminal syndicate, which features an array of villains named after numbers and holidays – including a certain Mr 3, who – as IGN notes – can create and control candle wax.
Netflix’s teaser all but confirms the fans’ speculation
One Piece fans were already pretty sure that the next season would follow the Arabasta story arc, not least because there was a reference to it early in the first season. A red-haired Baroque Works character called Mr 7 featured in one of the opening scenes of season one, and was promptly killed off by Zoro.
That raises the tantalizing possibility that we’re going to see a whole bunch of the Baroque Works baddies this time around. And there are lots of them, with the male agents given numbers and the female ones given holidays – so in addition to mastermind Mr 0, there are agents Mr 1, Mr 2, Mr 3, Mr 4 and Mr 5 plus Miss All Sunday, Miss Doublefinger, Miss Goldenweek, Miss Merry Christmas and Miss Valentine, among others.
With each character having their own odd abilities, there’s scope for a lot of fun here. And there could be more: fans are hoping that Tony Tony Chopper, a shape-shifting reindeer absent from the first season, could also make an appearance.
Other details are still under wraps, but we’re expecting the second season to begin filming this summer for a streaming release in 2025 – it’s a long wait for the return of one of the best Netflix shows of the last couple of years, but it’ll be worth it, we hope.