Entertainment

One Piece Season 4 Is Officially Switching Villains

Nairavoice · Nov 5, 2026 · 5 min read

The opening arcs of Eiichiiro Oda’s One Piece deliver some of the best worldbuilding in anime and manga history, and Baroque Works is a major reason why. Once Luffy and the Straw Hats reach the Grand Line, the Baroque Works make the ocean’s dangers feel bigger, stranger, and more connected than anything his crew encountered before. Its eccentric agents have some iconic abilities, but their coordinated operations also help link Luffy’s journey to a wider world of sprawling conspiracies, powerful institutions, and conflicts over the fate of entire nations.

With season 3 adapting Alabasta, Netflix’s live-action One Piece is positioned to capture that same narrative magic. Since arriving in season 2, Baroque Works are already providing both unforgettable antagonists and an introduction to the forces shaping the seas beyond the Straw Hats’ immediate adventures. However, the next chapter in Eiichiiro Oda’s story means a substantial change is coming after the live-action Alabasta. The next step for Netflix’s One Piece would be the Sky Island saga, which replaces Baroque Works with a very different central threat: the self-proclaimed god Enel.

In the Sky Island saga of the One Piece manga and anime, Enel rules the floating nation of Skypiea through fear, wielding the lightning powers granted by the Rumble-Rumble Devil Fruit to make his claims of divinity terrifyingly persuasive. Since his kingdom exists above the clouds, his villainy is detached from the familiar struggles between pirates, Marines, and criminal organizations that define Alabasta and Baroque Works. Bringing him into live-action for season 4 will send Netflix’s One Piece into a stranger, more fantastical adventure, one that offers much greater changes than a new central villain.

Enel Is A Completely Different Villain To Baroque Works

Unless the Netflix show radically departs from Eiichiiro Oda’s original manga story, Enel will be the next major antagonist in the live-action One Piece after the Alabasta arc concludes in season 3. Rather than simply being another secretive pirate warlord like Crocodile (Joe Manganiello), however, Enel is a Devil Fruit user with little interest in disguising his tyranny. This means he represents an entirely different kind of threat.

Baroque Works engineers instability through secret identities and political manipulation. Enel, on the other hand, sees no need for secrecy. He’s openly established as the ruler of Skypiea, demanding obedience from people who have every reason to believe he is a genuine god and fear the wrath that disobeying him would bring. Thanks to his lightning abilities and his extraordinary sensory power, Mantra, Enel can remotely monitor Skypiea and punish dissents from afar. Crocodile influences events from the shadows, Enel boastfully controls them in the open (and makes sure everyone knows he’s doing it).

This means that Enel changes what the Straw Hats are fighting against on a deeper, more thematic level. Baroque Works turns Alabasta’s population against itself for the benefit of the World Government, and confronting them means metaphorically confronting the wider political inequalities that plague the One Piece world. Enel, on the other hand, is a single despot subjugating a population for his own selfish gain. The conflict shifts from exposing a political conspiracy to challenging a dictator who openly rules with an iron first.

It’s a distinction that brings themes like fate and destiny to the fore, and also makes Enel a particularly satisfying opponent for Luffy. The captain of the Straw Hats has an instinctive rejection of authority anyway, but against a singular ruling power like Enel, this becomes hyperfocused. Defeating Baroque Works means stopping a criminal organization from stealing a kingdom. Confronting Enel means demonstrating that absolute power over others is never a path to greatness. With Enel at the center, season 4 of the live-action Netflix show would push One Piece‘s central theme of freedom to shape one’s own destiny into its most explicitly defiant territory yet.

Season 4 Of The Live-Action One Piece Is Going To Be Its Wildest Yet

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Enel would be a striking departure from the live-action show’s previous villains and give a sharper thematic focus to the live-action One Piece, but this is far from the biggest change in store if the Netflix show adapts the Sky Island saga after wrapping up Alabasta in season 3. Following Alabasta’s desert kingdom, the Sky Island saga sends the Straw Hats, as the title suggests, into a realm of floating islands. Reaching it involves the Knock Up Stream, a colossal ocean current that launches their ship skyward. It’s exactly as bombastic as it sounds, and it only gets stranger once the Luffy and his crew arrive.

The realm Luffy finds himself in when confronting Enel makes literally everything seen in the live-action One Piece so far look almost restrained by comparison. Skypiea features everything from navigable cloud seas to villages with winged inhabitants, giving the aerial setting a distinct flavor and depth that pushes it well beyond the realms of standard pirate fantasy stories. Then there’s the Dials, shells with remarkable practical applications, including storing and releasing different forms of energy that prove pivotal to stopping Enel. Translating those details convincingly will inarguably be one of the greatest challenges yet for the live-action One Piece.

The Sky Island saga’s adventures also include ancient ruins, a lost golden city, a gigantic snake, and a flying ark powered by Enel’s electricity. None of these elements are disposable, either, as all of them are part of a mystery that connects Skypiea’s present to a centuries-old history of displacement, friendship, and an extraordinary promise. With all this in mind, it’s clear that if One Piece season 4 brings the Sky Island arcs into live-action it will be the wildest batch of episodes for the Netflix adaptation yet. What’s more, just like in the manga, Enel is the ideal antagonist for that escalation: a man whose terrifying abilities make a borderline-unbelievable world feel authentically dangerous.