One Piece season 2 is setting sail really soon. After the premiere of the show in 2023, the Straw Hat Pirates will be returning and beginning their new journey by officially venturing into the Grand Line via a special location: Reverse Mountain — and Teen Vogue has the exclusive first look at what the massive river mountain will be like in the live-action adaptation.
Ahead of the long-anticipated premiere of season 2 of One Piece in 2026, Netflix is releasing the first look at Reverse Mountain with a brand-new poster and two exclusive images from the show, which Teen Vogue has the honor of debuting.
For fans of the anime and manga, Reverse Mountain will undoubtedly be a familiar landscape: a visually striking peak where the Four Blues meet, flowing upward from the sides and meeting at the top to descend as one into the Grand Line.
In the brand-new poster, which you can see below, we see the Straw Hat Pirates' beloved Going Merry sailing up one of the rivers on Reverse Mountain. (A little reminder, season 1 saw the crew begin their adventure in the East Blue Sea.)
“Like nearly everything we do on our show, Reverse Mountain was a huge ‘how the hell are we going to do this’ feeling,” Emily Rudd, who plays the Straw Hat Pirates' navigator Nami, tells Teen Vogue about the new location.
“Our priority is always to do right by the anime and manga, Oda-san, and the fans, and since it’s the make-or-break beginning of the Straw Hats’ journey into the Grand Line, it needed to feel like the big, exciting feat that it is," she continues. "Luckily, we have an absolutely amazing production team that took it in stride, as they do with anything the One Piece world throws at them. It was a massive undertaking, but it truly paid off.”
The scope for season 2 is bigger and better than before, and, aside from the production team, the actors also took on new challenges to bring that larger scale to life in a way that feels prescient and realistic.
“Filming Reverse Mountain was unlike anything we did in season 1,” Rudd says. “The Merry was set to a 26-degree incline or decline (we wanted to make it steeper, but that was the highest Risk Assessment would allow us to go), so it created a fun challenge for us when it came to our stunt work. Simply walking around the ship without a hand on a safety line was pretty much asking for an unexpected fall on your *ss and a nice slide to the other end of her. At the same time, it made it feel more real, even though we were just working with ourselves, the Merry, and blue screens."
Reverse Mountain will be more than just a stunt work flex, though. The site will mark a before-and-after for Luffy's crew as they set sail into the Grand Line. “For Nami, it was a new test of her navigational skills, but on Reverse Mountain, she and the fans will soon find that even with a lot of teamwork, not everything — or, maybe, everyone — can be anticipated or avoided," Rudd teases.
Netflix revealed season 2 of One Piece will officially be titled One Piece: Into the Grand Line back in August and, though specific plot details are being kept under wraps, there are plenty of adventures waiting for the Straw Hat Pirates beyond Reverse Mountain. “I honestly don’t think I can choose just one. Compared to last season, we have more new friends, more foes, more islands, more adventure — the whole thing is just more, and I’m so excited for the fans to see it all,” Rudd says of what awaits.
One place we know for sure the Straw Hat Pirates will be taking us to before heading into the Grand Line is Loguetown, where the very first scene of season 1 — i.e., Gol D. Roger's execution — took place.
“It’s such a beautiful moment to be able to return to the place that sparked Luffy’s dream and ultimately brought the Straw Hats together,” Rudd says. “It’s their first stop on their way to the One Piece as a real crew, and I think fans are going to have a lot of fun watching their family dynamic (and more) in action.” (A little souvenir from Loguetown that anime and manga lovers will certainly recognize in these new exclusive photos is Usopp's trademark goggles.)
As we get ready to see more arcs and more characters than ever before (both human and beyond), Rudd has one final word of advice: “If you thought last season was crazy, you’d better buckle up.”
