Fans awaiting the arrival of One Pieceseason 3 have a special treat waiting for them today on Netflix’s shores, in the form of a two-part animated LEGO® One Piece special. While the two-parter takes viewers from the East Blue to Drum Island once again, there is a fun twist in which Usopp (Jacob Romero Gibson) is now the narrator and Chopper his captive audience.
The first 2 seasons of One Piece have faithfully, if quickly, adapted the long-running anime — but its LEGO® counterpart plays fast and loose with some of the details thanks to Usopp’s penchant for self- aggrandizement. Nevertheless, it’s a delight to see yet another adaptation of Eiichiro Oda’s iconic manga, especially with the live-action cast members reprising their roles in animated form.
ScreenRantinterviewed showrunner Tom Hyndman, who wrote episodes for the live-action series as well, about how his team reconfigured the Straw Hat Pirates’ journey to the Grand Line. The EP shared some of his favorite moments to bring to life, and explained the reasoning behind the look of Luffy’s Devil Fruit powers and the choice of certain set pieces.
Going Behind-The-Scenes With LEGO® One Piece’s Tom Hyndman
ScreenRant: At what point in the process
ScreenRant: At what point in the process of working on live-action One Piece were you approached with the LEGO® special, and what was the pitch? Is it deeply intertwined with the merchandise sets, or was it more of an open canvas?
Tom Hyndman: We started working on it two Novembers ago. We wanted it to be a bite-sized way for people to get into the live-action, and they made sets based on the biggest moments in the show. That made it pretty easy. We knew where we needed to go on the journey, but pretty much everything other than that we could fuss around with, which was the selling point – for me, at least – to want to do it. It’s not just a straight retelling of the first two seasons. There are a lot more craziness and fun and jokes and stuff built into it.
ScreenRant: Adapting Devil Fruit powers to the medium seems like it would be difficult, but the end result is so natural. What discussions happened around what Luffy’s stretching would look like?
Tom Hyndman: I think the main discussions were about how LEGO® has a way that they do things, and they’re pretty specific about it. You completely understand why because they basically want what you see on the screen to be something that you could build at home. That is a big thing, and that makes it really cool because it wouldn’t be that fun if, “Oh, I can never actually do that thing that’s on screen.” But thankfully, with Devil Fruit stuff, they let us fudge those rules a little bit.
There was definitely discussion of, “Is it like his arm is being built out, and we see it brick by brick?” I think ultimately, when we got to the end of it, it’s like, “Let’s keep this very One Piece-y, and we’ll keep everything else very LEGO®.” And thankfully, they were very cool and very easy to convince to do that. Not that we really needed to even convince them; I think it was just a pretty clear thing once we dug into it.
ScreenRant: It’s fun to hear the live-action actors transfer their talents to voice acting the same characters. What were those recording sessions like? What sticks out most?
Tom Hyndman: It was a lot easier than it would’ve been to try and get new people into it, that’s for sure. I think the only real note that we gave them was just to crank the energy up to 11 on everything.
But they’ve lived with these characters for so long that it was just so nice to be able to jump in and not have to really find the voice of these characters at all, because they are the voice of these characters. It made for a really fun recording process with a lot of collaboration.
There were definitely moments of the actors being like, “I don’t know if X would say this, maybe it’d be more like that.” And I’m not going to question that. You’ve been living here for five years. I think it also just made the story and the authenticity of it even greater because of that. It’s easy for them to improvise and mess around with it because they’re not going to break the character. It’s not going to go too far or whatever.
ScreenRant: Much like Usopp, you are editing
ScreenRant: Much like Usopp, you are editing and spilling around to get to the bits you want. How do you decide what gets LEGO’d and what doesn’t even get a mention? Beyond the available sets, of course.
Tom Hyndman: Yeah, those conversations shifted throughout the creative process, but I think it ultimately landed on where we wanted and it made sense. There was one big change in the second episode that happened late in the game, but it was 100% the right change. The work that we needed to do to make it happen was worth it, thankfully.
But we knew, even just going by the story of the first two seasons, that it was pretty obvious where things needed to happen. I think the bigger part was figuring out how to differentiate them from the live-action series. We’re keeping the big moments that everybody would want to see if they’ve seen One Piece, but surrounding it with new fun elements that make people who have seen everything not feel like, “Oh, this is just another version of the thing that I’ve seen a thousand times.” Although I’m sure they would love that because these fans will eat up anything One Piece, which is so wonderful. But I hope that they feel that this is a nice little twist on something that they’ve seen a lot.
ScreenRant: Buggy the Clown is one of my favorite villains, so it was a delight to welcome him in a new form in part 1. Did you have a moment or character that you were most excited to tweak in either episode?
Tom Hyndman: I mean, I would say an interesting one to tweak was Whiskey Peak, only because I wrote that episode in the live-action too. It was an interesting question of, “What do I want to keep? Am I going to feel like it’s too close to my heart to change anything?”
I think, initially, I felt that way. Luckily, I was able to let it go a little bit and smooth it out and figure it out. But that was a lot of fun to do, and to have the opportunity to do it twice is extra cool. Not that it was a do-over, but just a different take on something that you’ve worked so hard on.
ScreenRant: The LEGO® rendition of “Bang!” was perhaps the greatest moment in streaming television history. What went into bringing that moment to life? And is there any one sequence that you guys had the most fun with?
Tom Hyndman: I think we always knew we wanted to see if we could LEGO-fy the music, and I think it just fits so well. We love kazoos, so I think there’s a lot of kazoos in it. That was always a big part of it: how can we keep the music?
I still remember the day that the first trailer came out while we were in the writers’ room for season 2, and the music was the part that was like, “Wow, this is hitting a note that I didn’t know we could hit.” Being able to mess around with it, but still keep it and have it be iconic and still give it that earworm feel was something that we were very keen on doing.
ScreenRant: Are you returning to One Piece live-action for future seasons?
Tom Hyndman: Not at the moment. I wish them the best of luck. That’s the thing with One Piece, every season it only gets bigger and bigger. There is no calm, little, intimate season 5 that they’re going to do, but they’re all so capable and so great at bringing it all together.
LEGO® One Piece is now streaming on Netflix.
TV-Y7
AnimationComedyFantasyAdventureAction
Release Date
September 29, 2026
Network
Netflix
- Iñaki Godoy
Monkey D. Luffy (voice) 
Emily Rudd
Nami (voice)
Mackenyu
Roronoa Zoro (voice)
Jacob Gibson
Usopp (voice)
