Who Is Bartolomeo In Netflix's One Piece Season 2 And Why His Debut Is A Big Deal

Spoilers for the "One Piece" anime and manga ahead.

Netflix's live-action "One Piece" is a miracle. Eiichiro Oda's original "One Piece" manga is now tied with "Superman" as the best-selling comic series ever, and that legacy comes with huge expectations for a live-action TV adaptation. Combine that with the story being set in an impossibly fantastical world populated by giants, fish-men, talking reindeer, and more, and you get a manga that's quite hard to translate to live-action.

And yet, Netflix's "One Piece" manages to do just that. It's a show that makes its setting feel like a real place full of real people, all the while maintaining its source material's cartoony and imaginative sensibility. Even its casting is remarkably perfect, so much so that characters often appear to have leapt straight from the page.

Of course, it's still an adaptation, and the biggest change Netflix's series makes to the original "One Piece" anime and manga is to tell their story chronologically. Oda's manga, specifically, constantly revisits earlier events in its narrative to reveal incidents or characters that we didn't previously know about. So, instead, the live-action TV version merely shows us those things right off the bat. Because of this, certain fan-favorites tend to pop up much earlier than expected.

Such is the case in the first episode of "One Piece" season 2, which introduces Bartolomeo (Nahum Hughes). A weird little would-be pickpocket with a green mullet, the beloved character has a fairly brief encounter with the Straw Hats here and may seem of little importance to newcomers. However, longtime fans know that Bartolomeo eventually plays a critical role in the Dressrosa arc, a storyline from the "One Piece" anime and manga that sees him competing in a colosseum fighting tournament before becoming a close ally of the Straw Hats.

If you're wondering why Bartolomeo appears when he does in the live-action "One Piece," well, it's because he was there. Allow me to explain: During the Dressrosa arc (which takes place long after the events of the second season of the live-action "One Piece"), Bartolomeo informs our man Luffy that he saw him at Loguetown two years earlier when he was almost killed on the same platform where Gol D. Roger was executed. Sure, we didn't know this at the time, but Bartolomeo was there.

Hence, Netflix's live-action adaptation elects to have the character interact with some of the Straw Hats directly. We also get to see him being inspired by the sight of Luffy (Iñaki Godoy) laughing in the face of death on the execution platform.

Why is this a big deal? Well, the "One Piece" anime and manga are filled with side stories and plot threads that are never shown in full yet ultimately tie into the main narrative; all the live-action TV version is doing is showing us those things explicitly. Does this make it better? Not necessarily, but it does make the show a different storytelling experience. Indeed, whenever a fresh adaptation or a remake of a beloved property is announced, it always begs the question: How will this retelling justify its existence creatively? In the case of the live-action "One Piece," it's offering a different take on the events of its source material, and it's all the better for it.

Mind you, it's anyone's guess if the live-action "One Piece" will actually run long enough to adapt the Dressrosa arc itself. Nevertheless, for certain fans, Bartolomeo's appearance in season 2 will be a real treat.

The live-action "One Piece" is currently streaming on Netflix.