A new production update from behind the scenes on One Piece Season 2 may be the first indication as to when the hit Netflix series will be released.
In late August, Eiichiro Oda's pirating epic came to live-action for the first time, with Season 1 of the anime/manga adaptation being met with rave reviews on Netflix and tearing up the streamer's top 10.
Pulling from over 20 years of storytelling, the live-action One Piece series laid the foundation for plenty of stories to come while telling an engaging tale of its own in introducing the world to the Straw Hat Pirates.
So when the streaming hit was green-lit for a second season, the announcement was met with fervent enthusiasm, including from some of the stars who made the series happen.
One Piece Season 2 Gets Production Update
Fans got a tease of what is to come in One Piece Season 2 thanks to a new image shared by the live-action series' official X (formerly Twitter) account.
The One Piece account posted, "Meet the writers' room for Season 2," with an image of the writing team putting the next chapter into the fan-favorite streaming show together:
"Meet the writers' room for Season 2. We can’t wait to share what adventures we have in store"
While this is the first look fans have gotten at the writers' room for One Piece's second batch of episodes, the team has supposedly been working since early October.
On October 5 (following the conclusion of the writers' strike in Hollywood), One Piece writer Randy Troy shared, "We're back in the kitchen, and we have Michelin star chefs cooking up these scripts:"
"We're back in the kitchen, and we have Michelin star chefs cooking up these scripts. I'm talking top-quality ingredients and distinctly familiar flavors. Trust."
This likely means the writers' room has been reopened for weeks; this new image is just the first time the series' social media channels are promoting that fact.
When Will One Piece Season 2 Release?
Given the writing team is back and putting pen to paper again, fan anticipation for One Piece Season 2 is only going to grow precipitously from here.
According to Season 1 Director of Photography Nicole Hirsch Whitaker, in an exclusive conversation with The Direct, the One Piece team had "definitely started writing" the second season before the writers' strike began in early May:
"Well, they definitely started writing and then the strike happened"
This means there may not be that much more writing for the writers' room to do, potentially hinting Season 2 could come quicker than some had initially expected.
CEO of Tomorrow Studios Marty Adelstein told Variety in September, "We’ve got scripts ready," indicating at least drafts for Season 2 were finished before the writers' strike kicked off.
Adelstein added he thinks the series will be back "somewhere between a year and 18 months:"
“Realistically, hopefully, a year away, if we move very quickly, and that is a possibility... Somewhere between a year and 18 months, we could be ready for air.”
That would put One Piece Season 2's release sometime between September 2024 and March 2025.
However, all this hinges on the ongoing actors' strike coming to a resolution of some sort. As time has gone on, this 12 to 18-month timeframe starts to feel less and less likely.
One Piece Season 1 took about five months to complete pre-production following its 10-episode order on Netflix in January 2020. From there, it filmed for eight months starting in January 2022 and premiered a year later.
This means that if everything goes according to plan, Season 2 will be ready to shoot starting in February 2024 (assumedly starting a few months later in spring 2024), with a release likely coming somewhere around 18 months following that production start date.
Based on these estimates, fans can likely expect to see Monkey D. Luffy and his Straw Hat crew return to Netflix in the second half of 2025.
This is a little bit outside of Adelstein's "a year and 18 months," but given realistic production timelines and the ongoing actors' strike looming large over major productions such as One Piece, it seems more than likely that Season 2 gets pushed back just a bit.
One Piece Season 1 is available to stream now on Netflix.
