One Piece star reveals update on season 2's Netflix release window

Nevertheless, one of its stars has shared an update on when we'll be able to see season 2 at the latest, along with aspirations for a third and fourth season.

Revealed by Vincent Regan, the actor who plays Vice Admiral Garp, One Piece season 2 will hopefully be ready by Christmas 2025, although we haven't got a specific release date just yet.

Still, Regan also gave an additional guess that the filming of a One Piece season 3 will take place soon as well.

This news came through the below interview with Cerealkillerz during Vienna Comic Con 2024 - talking about Regan's prep for playing Garp, what made the show successful, and his other roles.

At around the 3:54 mark, Cerealkillerz asks Regan about behind-the-scenes details on season 2's production and how far along it might be. Surprisingly, the actor generously goes into quite a bit of detail.

"Well, I've come back from South Africa now. I've filmed season 2; everything that my character's done in season 2's finished, and now they are finishing in about a month I think," said Regan.

"So I think the show will be ready for Netflix before Christmas next year, I hope, and I guess they'll start filming season 3 pretty soon.

"And I think they're doing, I think it's called the 'Arabasta story arc'. I think it's gonna take two seasons."

Regan's wording makes it sound like his thoughts might have come from early production targets or second-hand information, so we should take all of this with a pinch of salt.

After all, as the Welsh actor points out, production has still been ongoing in South Africa after he was done filming his scenes.

Christmas or even early December 2025 is a great aim, but any number of unexpected challenges during the remainder of filming or post-production can always shift things along before an official announcement.

Seasons 3 of the live-action One Piece is still yet to be confirmed by Netflix, but needing a third round of episodes to wrap up the show's current story comes as no surprise when you know the amount of source material they're looking to cover.

We've known for a while that the Arabasta arc would be covered in at least some form with the reveal of Joe Manganiello joining the One Piece season 2 cast as Crocodile (aka Mr 0).

However, from where season 1 ends, at the conclusion of the Arlong Park arc, there are five smaller arcs that take in the anime and manga before the Straw Hat Pirates even get to Arabasta: the Loguetown arc, Reverse Mountain arc, Whisky Peak arc, Little Garden arc, and the Drum Island arc.

These are all quick arcs, to be fair, only ranging from three to 14 roughly 20-minute episodes in the anime.

We at least know that Drummer Island will very likely be covered, due to the below September 2024 announcement of Tony Tony Chopper being added to the show.

A key member of the Straw Hat crew and one of the cutest characters around with a big arc, at least Drummer Island will need to be covered as it was in the anime and manga to have the same impact.

Nevertheless, the first season of the Netflix One Piece series was so successful because of its devotion to the source material and its various arcs in general.

Thanks to the supervision of the manga's creator, Eiichiro Oda, the adaptation was able to faithfully condense the first 100 chapters of the manga and 61 episodes of anime covering the East Blue Saga into eight episodes which were around an hour each in length.

On the other hand, season 1 did take some creative liberties to speed through the anime and manga's main events.

Since the Arabasta Saga is a bit longer than East Blue's as well, Netflix, Oda-sensei and showrunner Joe Tracz likely agreed they would need more episodes to adapt this next saga properly compared to the first.

That's especially true since they now know the show has a big enough following the back up a larger budget.

At the end of the day, this all just means we're getting a steady flow of high-quality One Piece content. So, keep it coming, Netflix.

One Piece is now available to stream on Netflix. Sign up for Netflix from £4.99 a month. Netflix is also available on Sky Glass and Virgin Media Stream.

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