By all accounts, the second season of Netflix’s adaptation of One Piece (2023) has been a resounding success. While the first season was popular and well-liked by fans, the show now feels like it’s truly come into its own and is one of the best live-action adaptations of an animated series, right up there with Avatar: The Last Airbender (2024). The series now sits at #7 on the JustWatch streaming charts, and fans all across social media are talking about how great characters like Tony Tony Chopper, Miss All Sunday, and Mr. 3 are.
And yet, not all is well within the One Piece community. While the live-action series has taken some liberties in the past, remixing previous arcs and adding some details here and there, it has refrained from adding totally original content to the story up until this point. However, the last episode of Season 2 adds a completely non-canon fight, and it has been rubbing some fans the wrong way. While this change may be controversial to longtime viewers, it’s a necessary inclusion for the second season that helps to make it end more naturally.
The Fight Against Wapol Is Vastly Different In The ‘One Piece’ Manga
The primary focus of One Piece Season 2 is to set up the threat of Baroque Works, an assassin’s guild. Between introducing the various officers and the threat that Sir Crocodile will pose in Season 3, there’s a lot that needs to happen in Season 2, including ending the season on a satisfying note.
Season 2 ends with a three-part story arc focusing on Drum Island, which is removed from the drama surrounding Baroque Works. Instead, it focuses on a new threat, King Wapol. However, the scale of the fight is far smaller in the manga. In the manga, Luffy, Sanji, and Chopper defeat Wapol in his abandoned castle. In the live-action series, Wapol unleashes an army transformed by his Devil Fruit, the Munch-Munch Fruit, and has the entire Straw Hat crew and the citizens of Drum Kingdom fight his monstrous soldiers.
The problem with the live-action fight is that it makes a lot of assumptions about Wapol’s Devil Fruit. In the manga, the Munch-Munch Fruit gives Wapol the ability to merge whatever he eats into his body. He can also merge people together after consuming them, but that gets taken to new levels in the finale, where he merges his own soldiers with weapons, animals, and machines to create an army of abominations. Is it technically possible, given what we know about the Munch-Munch Fruit? Sure, but the homunculi don’t mesh with the style or tone the series has established up to this point. The fight feels like filler, since none of it really changes the result of the storyline. Wapol is still defeated, Chopper joins the crew, and together, they begin to make their way to Alabasta.
‘One Piece’ Season 2 Needed A Climactic Final Fight
While there are plenty of reasons for fans of the manga to dislike the changes made in the finale, they’re still necessary for One Piece Season 2 to end on a satisfying note. The problem with ending Season 2 with Drum Island is that it doesn’t contain a grand fight on the scale of Arlong Park in the first season. That fight had all of the Straw Hats tackle various members of Arlong’s crew and served as the first moment the team truly felt like a cohesive unit. But because the show doesn’t want to tackle anything related to Alabasta until Season 3 (a decision that is the correct one for the record), it had to manufacture a fight to deliver the same thrills that casual non-manga or anime viewers expect in a season finale.
At the very least, elevating Wapol into a big bad for the final fight makes sense. He’s a king with vast amounts of resources at his disposal. His Devil Fruit power, while definitely taking some creative liberties, at least contains some pre-established logic. Not only that, but the second season firmly establishes him as in the pocket of Baroque Works, with Miss All Sunday giving him his Devil Fruit ability in an attempt to foster an alliance between him and Sir Crocodile. It also helps to reinforce just how much of a threat Crocodile is. Sure, the agents of Baroque Works are tough, but if Crocodile can turn a king into his pawn, that only makes the threat he poses to the Straw Hats all the greater when they arrive in Alabasta.
Zoro And Usopp Actually Have Something To Do In Drum Island
Another reason why the Drum Island finale is excusable is that it gives Zoro, Usopp, and even Vivi something to do in the final episode. In the manga, only Luffy, Sanji, and Chopper fight Wapol. Nami is bedridden from disease, and the rest of the crew spend the entirety of the fight trying to scale the mountain to reach Drum Castle. If that went unchanged, it would have been a lame note to end on for fans of Zoro and Usopp, since they wouldn’t have had any conclusions to the arcs they underwent over the season.
For Zoro, his arc was dealing with the PTSD he endured from losing to Mihawk, striving to improve himself and insisting on how he can handle any threat by himself. Meanwhile, Usopp spends the season trying to become more courageous and be the brave warrior of the sea he claims to be. Giving both of them a chance to help each other out in the final fight helps to show just how far Usopp has come and how Zoro, despite his best efforts, isn’t a one-man show and needs the support of his crew.
As for Vivi, watching her fight against Wapol makes her play a more active role in the crew. Plus, it fits, given how much she detests Wapol and his totalitarian views on leadership. It may not be a perfect ending, but it was the ending that One Piece Season 2 needed to keep new fans happy and give everyone an active role in the last episode.
