Netflix’s One Piece Warps Series Timeline With Surprise Debut in Season 2 Premiere

One Piece just shook up the timeline of the live-action series in a big way, and the Season 2 premiere with Netflix brought in a character way before their original debut. One Piece‘s live-action series is in a unique position as not only is it directly adapting much of the material as the way it was seen in Eiichiro Oda’s original manga and anime adaptation, it’s been offering its own kind of experience for new fans jumping into the franchise for the first time. And with the benefit of decades of stories to draw from, it’s been able to tease bigger future events much earlier than expected.

One Piece: Into the Grand Line is now streaming with Netflix and is quickly on its way to becoming just as big of a hit the series was with its first season. But as Monkey D. Luffy and the Straw Hats make their way through the Loguetown port in the premiere episode ahead of their journey into the Grand Line, fans were surprised to see Bartolomeo make his debut in the series far earlier than he was originally supposed to in the anime and manga versions.

Bartolomeo Shockingly Debuts in One Piece Season 2 Premiere

One Piece: Into the Grand Line Episode 1, “The Beginning of the End” sees Luffy and the Straw Hats deciding to head to Loguetown, the final port before the Grand Line. Needing to grab supplies, each of them splits up and makes their way around town. It’s not long before Nami is approached by a mysterious green haired individual who tries to scam her and quickly fails. After she gives him tips on how to scam better, Bartolomeo (Nahum Hughes) ends up running into Luffy and gets dragged into all sorts of Luffy trouble as a result.

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Bartolomeo showing up this early in the live-action series sort of warps the timeline a bit. He first made his debut in the original One Piece manga during the Dressrosa Arc, and is revealed to be a massive fan of Luffy and the Straw Hats. This cameo still lines up with the official canon, however, as while Luffy didn’t cross paths with Bartolomeo in Loguetown originally, Bartolomeo did state that he saw everything that went down and that led him to tracking Luffy’s journey across the Grand Line in the years since.

What Does This Change Mean for Netflix’s One Piece?

Netflix’s One Piece has the ability to pull from decades of the manga’s future events to plant their seeds even earlier in the live-action series, and this is just one fun example of this. It makes Bartolomeo’s later fanboying over Luffy make a ton more sense because he not only saw everything that happened at Loguetown, but also interacted with Luffy directly too. But also this is a more practical move for the live-action series too.

There’s a good chance that Netflix’s One Piece won’t be running forever, and creator Eiichiro Oda already has a place in mind for where the live-action series could end. This is just a fun way to tease events that happen in the anime and manga that might never make it to the live-action series. It’s an Easter Egg for fans, but doesn’t completely ruin the current momentum of the story to do so.

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