One Piece is now in the works on Season 3 of the live-action series, and fans need to start getting used to the idea that no matter how long it gets to go on for, it’s going to have its own original ending. Eiichiro Oda’s One Piece is not only one of the most popular franchises to ever come out of Shueisha’s Weekly Shonen Jump magazine, but it’s also one of the longest. With nearly three decades and nearly 1200 chapters dropped in that time, the series has been building towards a massive endgame.
That length has been at the center of a lot of discussion when it comes to the live-action series. Because while the anime and manga can continue on for as long as the story and characters need it to, the live-action One Piece is under a much heavier time crunch. Not only that, but it’s streaming with an unsteady platform like Netflix where no show is ever guaranteed to continue. Despite hopes from the producers to last for 8-12 seasons, the live-action series is going to need to end long before it can even sniff at the manga’s finale.
One Piece might have tightened the production on the live-action series for Seasons 2 and 3 as there is only going to be a single year in between episodes, but that’s still unfortunately a pace that will never hope to catch up to the Oda’s original version of the story. Even if the live-action series could somehow adapt all current 30 years of the story, there’s just no way you can expect a live-action cast and crew to dedicate so much of their lives to a single project. We’ve already seen showrunners exit the series in these first three seasons alone.
Narrowing it down to a more hopeful 8-10 seasons that Tomorrow Studios executive Becky Clements has noted about the hopes for One Piece’s future, that still means a minimum 10 year commitment from when the team started with the series. It’s hard to imagine that the main Straw Hat cast are all willing to stick around through the entire run, and it’s even harder to imagine that Netflix is going to want it to last for that long either. Season 2 unfortunately has been tracking worse than the first season, and while it’s still a major hit, that’s just the nature of Netflix shows.
There are very few shows on Netflix that have managed to keep their entire audience across multiple seasons. Even when it comes to their biggest blockbusters or hits, it’s rare to find one of their shows to run for longer than eight or fewer seasons before Netflix decides to move on. No season is guaranteed with the streaming service, and that’s sadly even true for mega franchises like One Piece. Even with its built in franchise loyalty from outside releases, it’s still just another show within Netflix’s wider library. If Season 3 continues to lag, that could end up being the end of it.
With both a real life time crunch overhead and the potential for Netflix to end the show prematurely with basically every season, the sad truth is that One Piece‘s live-action series is going to need to end either way. A live-action show does not have the same grace as a manga or anime release, and is facing a ton of other pressures. TV show audiences tend to crave closure for their stories. It’s much easier to sell an anime or manga fan on a never ending swashbuckling adventure, but you can’t really do that with TV audiences. They’re expecting to get something more concrete out of their invested time.
TV show stories are much more condensed with that in mind and often have more of a direction towards some kind of conclusion. It’s even more prominent in the streaming era as show orders have been trimmed down to such an extent that any episode that doesn’t deal with the overarching plot is automatically deemed as “filler” rather than an opportunity to just spend more time with the characters. That’s the complete opposite of Oda’s original philosophy for the One Piece series itself. It’s literally written with the intent to be enjoyed casually and waste time, as Oda confirmed himself.
Those philosophies have collided into this new version of One Piece, and it’s likely going to result in many more of the kinds of changes to the source material that we have already seen in the first two seasons. Changes that will not only trim down certain elements to better fit this live-action version of the world, but will also likely fold future elements into the story that the live-action show could never possibly get to. That’s not saying the live-action show couldn’t pull off major arcs like Thriller Bark or Dressrosa with the same budget, care and attention seen with the first two seasons, but fans might want to get used to the idea of some of these arcs never making it into the show.
Oda might be nowhere near the end of One Piece’s story, but the live-action series is going to need to end either way. That likely also means it’s going to have its own original ending. Oda has hinted that he has a hope for where the live-action series could get to, and potentially has an idea as to how to end the series at that point. With so many eras of the One Piece story, there are also possibly several chances for the live-action series to use as a runway towards a fulfilling conclusion for TV show fans. It won’t be necessarily satisfying to fans of the original, but it needs to work for the TV audience.
One Piece’s live-action series is going to need to change and bend in order to come to as satisfying of a conclusion it possibly could. That might even happen with this third season as well. The Alabasta saga is going to be the entirety of the third season, and it’s capping off the teases of a much wider story that we’ve gotten since the first season. It might technically be Luffy and the Straw Hats’ first major adventure in the Grand Line, but it’s also going to be the wrapping up for Vivi’s story after all of the teases in the second season. It’s going to feel conclusive for the TV show audience.
That’s the kind of vibe that the One Piece live-action series should chase when it needs to come to an end. Rather than try and adapt all of the future events and villains from the original, Netflix’s One Piece is going to instead use the characters and ideas seen in the show specifically to build to as conclusive feeling of a finale as it can. And the great thing about One Piece is that it really is about the journey rather than the destination. It can have one of those open endings where the Straw Hats’ journey continues, and TV fans will likely be fine with it if the final battle felt big enough.
Whether it happens with Season 3 or Season 20, Netflix’s One Piece is going to need to have its own original ending. It’s time to be ready or whatever that might look like. What do you think? Leave a comment below and join the conversation now in the ComicBook Forum!
