There are some casting decisions that, the second you hear them, make you stop and say, "Of course." Not in the sense that they were obvious from the start — but in the sense that once the puzzle piece drops into place, you can't imagine the picture looking any other way. Xolo Maridueña playing Portgas D. Ace in One Piece Season 3 is exactly that kind of casting.
The announcement hit the internet on November 5, 2025, and within hours, the One Piece community was in full celebration mode. Fan artists were already drawing Maridueña in Ace's iconic freckled face and open coat. Reaction videos flooded YouTube. Iñaki Godoy — who plays Monkey D. Luffy and is Maridueña's real-life best friend — was practically vibrating with excitement in every interview. And frankly? The whole thing makes so much sense that you almost suspect the universe planned it.
Let's break down everything you need to know: who Xolo Maridueña is, who Portgas D. Ace is, why this casting is so perfect, and what it means for the future of Netflix's One Piece live-action series.
The Casting Announcement That Broke the Internet
When and How Was the Casting Confirmed?
The live-action series recruited Xolo Maridueña to portray Portgas D. Ace in Season 3, which has begun production in Cape Town, South Africa. The series secured an early Season 3 renewal in August 2025, and the casting announcement came through Netflix's official Tudum platform.
Netflix confirmed the casting in an official announcement, calling Ace "one of the most beloved characters in the One Piece universe." Showrunner Matt Owens told Variety: "Ace is such an important part of Luffy's story and the world of One Piece. We wanted to find someone who could bring both the warmth and the intensity the character deserves. Xolo fits that perfectly."
The timing was particularly elegant. Netflix had just revealed that ONE PIECE: Into the Grand Line — Season 2 — would premiere on March 10, 2026. By dropping the Season 3 Ace casting before Season 2 had even aired, Netflix was sending an unmistakable signal: this franchise is not an experiment. It is a long-term commitment.
Why Fan Campaigns Actually Worked This Time
Here's a story that warms the heart of every fandom activist who has ever signed a petition or flooded a studio's Twitter mentions with casting suggestions: this time, the fans won. Xolo Maridueña had long been rumoured for the role and was the fan favourite choice across the One Piece community. Casting campaigns can often feel futile — a collective cry into the void — but in this case, a combination of fan lobbying, real-world friendship, and one very motivated Monkey D. Luffy changed the outcome entirely.
Who Is Xolo Maridueña? A Complete Introduction
Born to Be on Screen: Early Life and Career Beginnings
Xolo Maridueña was born on June 9, 2001, in Los Angeles, California. Of Mexican and Cuban descent, he grew up in a family where entertainment wasn't just background noise — it was the air. He began acting as a child, landing his first significant role at just twelve years old in the critically acclaimed NBC family drama Parenthood, where he played Victor, an adopted son navigating a complex new family dynamic. That performance — nuanced, emotionally intelligent, and completely natural — established immediately that this was not an ordinary child actor going through the motions.
The Parenthood alum had been cast as Portgas D. Ace in Season 3 of One Piece, which begins production in Cape Town, South Africa. The journey from Parenthood to Cobra Kai to One Piece is not a random zigzag — it's a deliberate, disciplined build. Each role prepared him for the next. Each challenge stretched him further.
Miguel Diaz in Cobra Kai — The Role That Made Him Famous
If Parenthood introduced Xolo Maridueña to the industry, Cobra Kai introduced him to the world. He is best known for playing Miguel Diaz on Cobra Kai. For six full seasons, he was the emotional anchor of a show that somehow turned a 1980s karate movie into one of Netflix's most beloved series — a genuine multi-generational hit that balanced nostalgia, action, and genuine dramatic depth with impressive consistency.
Miguel Diaz is not a simple character. He begins as a scrappy underdog learning karate to defend himself, evolves into the best fighter in the Cobra Kai dojo, suffers a devastating physical injury, rebuilds himself, struggles with loyalty and identity, and ultimately becomes someone who transcends the conflict between the rival dojos entirely. It is a six-season character arc of considerable complexity, and Maridueña played every beat of it with total commitment.
Six Seasons of Growth — What Cobra Kai Taught Him
What Cobra Kai gave Maridueña that most young actors never get is time. Six seasons means six years of returning to the same character, discovering new layers, navigating shifts in the story's tone and priorities, and learning how to hold the audience's emotional investment through radical changes in circumstance. That's the kind of experience that produces actors who are genuinely ready for the biggest stages. And as any One Piece fan knows, the role of Portgas D. Ace demands exactly that kind of emotional range and resilience.
Beyond Cobra Kai: Xolo Maridueña's Expanding Career
Blue Beetle (2023) — Becoming a Superhero
Maridueña also had the starring role in DC's 2023 superhero film Blue Beetle. Playing Jaime Reyes — a Mexican-American teenager who accidentally bonds with an ancient alien scarab and becomes the Blue Beetle — was Maridueña's first lead role in a major studio feature film, and he carried it with the kind of natural charisma that superhero movies desperately need. The film was a warm, family-oriented origin story that wore its Latin heritage proudly, and Maridueña's performance was its beating heart.
DC Studios head James Gunn already hinted that the actor's Blue Beetle might return someday, saying he'll "fit in very nicely" in the new DC universe. So not only does Maridueña have a flagship Netflix franchise ahead of him — he may also have a DC career running parallel to it. Not bad for a twenty-four-year-old from Los Angeles.
Voice Acting, Awards, and Global Recognition
Maridueña currently stars in the English dub of Sakamoto Days, playing Heisuke Mashimo, and has recently voiced Brainy in the 2025 Smurfs movie. Despite having a handful of credits under his belt, Maridueña has won a handful of awards, including "Best Younger Actor in a Film" at the 2024 Saturn Awards and "Favourite Male TV Star (Family)" at the 2025 Kids' Choice Awards.
The Kids' Choice Awards win is particularly telling. It means his fanbase isn't just comprised of Cobra Kai loyalists and superhero movie enthusiasts — it's genuinely cross-generational, spanning viewers who grew up with him on Netflix and a new wave of younger audiences who discovered him through Blue Beetle. That kind of broad appeal is exactly what playing Portgas D. Ace in a global phenomenon like One Piece requires.
Who Is Portgas D. Ace in One Piece?
Fire Fist Ace: Powers, Personality, and Legacy
The character, known as "Fire Fist" Ace, was the captain of the Spade Pirates before being recruited into the Whitebeard Pirates. He is often seen shirtless with a large hat on his head and a machete on his hip. But describing Ace purely by his visual iconography or his crew affiliations is a bit like describing a symphony by its instrument list. It misses the entire point.
Portgas D. Ace is known as the older adopted brother of the protagonist Monkey D. Luffy. In the One Piece storyline, Ace commands respect across the seas as a pirate with the power of the Flame-Flame Fruit, which allows him to control and become fire. The Flame-Flame Fruit — one of the most visually spectacular Devil Fruit abilities in the entire manga — transforms Ace into a living embodiment of fire. His signature technique, Fire Fist, is the source of both his nickname and his legend. Watching enemies try to fight a man who is literally made of flames is exactly as chaotic and magnificent as it sounds.
But powers don't explain why Ace is beloved. Ace is beloved because of who he is — his enormous warmth, his fierce loyalty, his complicated relationship with his own identity and lineage, and his absolute, bone-deep devotion to the people he loves. He is one of the most fully realised supporting characters in manga history, which makes the weight of his storyline and the emotional stakes of casting him correctly genuinely enormous.
Ace and Luffy — The Brotherhood at the Heart of One Piece
The relationship between Ace and Luffy is not a background detail or a supporting subplot. It is one of the central emotional pillars of the entire One Piece story. These two boys — raised together as brothers despite having no blood relation — represent the series' deepest conviction: that family is not biology but choice, commitment, and the willingness to burn the world down for someone you love.
The role marks a pivotal moment in the live-action series, as the story begins to expand into some of the manga's most emotional arcs. Every interaction between Luffy and Ace in the source material crackles with the specific warmth of siblings who have been through everything together — the teasing, the fighting, the absolute certainty that they would die for each other without a moment's hesitation. Getting that dynamic right in live action is everything.
Why Ace's Storyline Is One of the Most Emotional in Manga History
Without venturing too deep into spoiler territory for anime newcomers, here is what we'll say: Ace's arc in One Piece is one of the most emotionally devastating storylines Eiichiro Oda has ever written. It asks the reader — and now the viewer — to invest completely in a character defined by joy, loyalty, and warmth, and then it tests that investment to its absolute limit. The Marineford War arc, which is where Ace's story reaches its climax, is widely considered the single most emotionally impactful sequence in the entire manga's history.
Casting Ace wrong would not merely disappoint fans — it would hollow out the emotional architecture of the most important storyline the live-action series has yet to tell.
Why Xolo Maridueña Is the Perfect Choice for Ace
The Physical Resemblance That Convinced Everyone
There's a practical dimension to great casting that doesn't always get enough credit: sometimes the actor just looks like the character. Maridueña's warm, expressive features, his natural charisma, his lean physicality, and his ability to project both genuine playfulness and sudden fierce intensity — all of these make him look and feel like Ace in a way that goes beyond surface resemblance. When you put his face next to Oda's original drawings, the comparison is almost startling.
After carrying Cobra Kai as Miguel Diaz and suiting up as Jaime Reyes in Blue Beetle, Maridueña has proven he can handle both emotional drama and action — and that's basically the One Piece recipe. Ace requires someone who can be effortlessly funny and endearing in one scene, devastatingly intense in the next, and genuinely vulnerable in the one after that. Maridueña has demonstrated every one of those gears, in multiple projects, at the highest level.
Iñaki Godoy's Campaign for His Real-Life Friend
Here's where the story gets genuinely lovely. The friendship between Xolo Maridueña and Iñaki Godoy is not a product of the One Piece casting — it predates it. Netflix helped fuel speculation when Iñaki Godoy visited the set of Cobra Kai Season 6 in September 2024. In the behind-the-scenes video, Iñaki spent most of the time alongside Xolo, and fans quickly noticed how closely their interactions mirrored the dynamic between Luffy and Ace.
Iñaki Godoy is a close personal friend of Maridueña's who spent months campaigning for the Blue Beetle star to get the Fire Fist Ace role. Think about the layers of that. The actor playing Luffy was so convinced his real-life best friend was the right person to play his fictional older brother that he actively lobbied the showrunners on his behalf. And he was right. In the best possible version of this story, the people making One Piece looked at two young men who clearly already had an effortless brotherly chemistry and recognised that what they were watching was not performance — it was the real thing.
One Piece Season 3: What We Know So Far
Production Details — Cape Town Returns
Netflix officially renewed One Piece Season 3 on August 9, 2025, announced during One Piece Day in Tokyo. Principal photography began in November 2025 in Cape Town, South Africa — the same filming location used for Season 2.
Season 2 filmed from June to December 2024 and released March 10, 2026 — roughly 15 months after wrap. If Season 3 wraps in June 2026 on a similar timeline, a late 2027 or early 2028 release is plausible. Cape Town has become the de facto home of live-action One Piece, and the production infrastructure built there across the first two seasons means Season 3 can hit the ground running with unprecedented efficiency.
Other New Cast Members Joining Season 3
Maridueña isn't arriving in Season 3 alone. He joins recently announced cast member Cole Escola, the Tony Award-winning star of the Broadway play Oh, Mary! — who will play theatrical assassin Bon Clay in the third installment.
Additionally, Daisy Head joins as Miss Doublefinger and Awdo Awdo as Mr. 1, both as recurring guest stars from Baroque Works. Four Season 2 cast members have also been promoted to series regulars for Season 3, including Mikaela Hoover as Tony Tony Chopper and Joe Manganiello as Mr. 0. Season 3 is shaping up to be the largest and most ambitious installment yet — with the Alabasta Arc's full-scale political war on the horizon and a cast list that just keeps getting more exciting.
When Will One Piece Season 3 Release on Netflix?
No official release date has been announced yet as of March 2026, with production still ongoing. However, based on the show's established production timeline, a Summer 2027 release — likely July or August — seems the most reasonable projection, with late 2027 or early 2028 also plausible depending on post-production timelines.
Given that Netflix greenlit Season 3 before Season 2 had even aired a trailer — an almost unprecedented expression of confidence in a franchise — the platform is clearly committed to making this the best season yet. Maridueña's Ace, the Alabasta war, the full emergence of the Baroque Works endgame, and whatever other surprises the One Piece creative team has been hiding — it's all coming. The wait will be long. But based on everything we've seen from this production so far, it will be worth every second.
Conclusion
The casting of Xolo Maridueña as Portgas D. Ace in One Piece Season 3 is one of those rare Hollywood decisions that feels less like a business calculation and more like destiny quietly doing its job. An actor with the warmth, the fight experience, the emotional range, and the real-world brotherly chemistry with Iñaki Godoy needed to bring one of manga's most beloved characters to life — already at Netflix, already a global star, already his co-star's closest friend. Fire Fist Ace couldn't have found a better flame to carry him into live action. And when Season 3 finally arrives — whenever that may be — the world will be ready to burn.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
1. Who plays Portgas D. Ace in One Piece Season 3? Xolo Maridueña, best known for playing Miguel Diaz on Cobra Kai and the title character in Blue Beetle, has been cast as Portgas D. Ace — also known as "Fire Fist" Ace — in One Piece Season 3. The casting was officially confirmed through Netflix's Tudum platform on November 5, 2025, and was widely celebrated by fans who had been campaigning for Maridueña's involvement for months.
2. Who is Portgas D. Ace in the One Piece story? Portgas D. Ace is the older adopted brother of the protagonist Monkey D. Luffy and one of the most beloved characters in the entire One Piece universe. He commands respect across the seas as a pirate who possesses the Flame-Flame Fruit, which gives him the ability to control and transform into fire. He is the captain of the Spade Pirates, and later, a commander in the Whitebeard Pirates, and his storyline is widely considered one of the most emotionally powerful arcs in the entire manga.
3. What is the relationship between Xolo Maridueña and Iñaki Godoy? Iñaki Godoy is a close personal friend of Maridueña's who spent months campaigning for the Blue Beetle star to get the Fire Fist Ace role. Netflix helped fuel fan speculation when Godoy visited the set of Cobra Kai Season 6 in September 2024, and fans quickly noticed how closely the two actors' real-life interactions mirrored the dynamic between Luffy and Ace in the manga. Their genuine off-screen friendship is considered one of the primary reasons the casting feels so natural.
4. When does One Piece Season 3 start filming, and when will it be released? Principal photography on Season 3 began in November 2025 in Cape Town, South Africa. Based on the production timeline of Season 2 — which filmed from June to December 2024 and released on March 10, 2026 — a Summer 2027 release is the most reasonable projection, with late 2027 or early 2028 also plausible. No official release date has been confirmed as of March 2026.
5. What arcs will One Piece Season 3 cover, and how does Ace fit in? Season 3 is expected to cover the manga's Alabasta Arc, weaving Ace's storyline into the next phase of Luffy's journey. The Alabasta Arc — spanning manga chapters 155 through 217 — is the full-scale political war that Season 2 spent eight episodes carefully setting up, and it is widely regarded as one of the greatest arcs in One Piece history. Ace's introduction in Season 3 marks the beginning of the emotionally highest-stakes chapter in the entire live-action adaptation, setting the stage for storylines that will define the series for seasons to come.
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