OLD MAN OTAKU / ANIMANGA NEWS • AUGUST 23, 2026
One Piece Live Action Adds Four Key Alabasta Characters for Season 3
Netflix is not only assembling Alabasta's villains. Its newest casting reveal adds Koza, Toto, Pell and Chaka, filling out the rebels, civilians and royal defenders who make the kingdom's civil war matter.
One Piece Day '26 delivered another update for Netflix's live-action voyage: four more characters have officially joined One Piece: The Battle of Alabasta.
Emilio Sakraya will play Koza, Omid Abtahi will portray Toto, Jamie Ward has been cast as Pell, and Nabeel Khan will play Chaka. The four actors are joining the third season in recurring roles ahead of its planned 2027 release.
Netflix is building Alabasta, not just Baroque Works
The most interesting part of this casting batch is who these characters are. Recent Season 3 announcements have already filled major roles surrounding Crocodile and Baroque Works, but Koza, Toto, Pell and Chaka occupy a different side of the conflict.
Koza is deeply tied to the rebellion threatening Alabasta, while Toto connects that conflict to the ordinary people living through the kingdom's crisis. Pell and Chaka, meanwhile, are key defenders of the Alabasta royal family.
Together, the four additions help give the civil war faces on both sides of the kingdom rather than reducing the arc to another sequence of Straw Hat battles.
The Battle of Alabasta is already a crowded season
The newcomers join the returning Straw Hat crew led by Iñaki Godoy as Monkey D. Luffy, alongside Mackenyu as Zoro, Emily Rudd as Nami, Jacob Romero as Usopp and Taz Skylar as Sanji.
Season 3 will also continue with major Alabasta-era characters already established or announced for the live-action adaptation, including Charithra Chandran as Miss Wednesday, Joe Manganiello as Mr. 0, Lera Abova as Miss All Sunday and Sendhil Ramamurthy as Nefertari Cobra. Xolo Maridueña has been announced as Portgas D. Ace, while Cole Escola joins as Bon Clay.
That increasingly large ensemble makes sense for Alabasta. The original storyline works because the crisis is bigger than Luffy's confrontation with one villain. A kingdom is destabilizing around the Straw Hats, with rebels, royal forces, civilians and Baroque Works all colliding.
Production is already wrapped
This is not an announcement that Season 3 is only now entering production. Netflix has already confirmed that filming for The Battle of Alabasta wrapped in Cape Town, South Africa. The season is planned for 2027.
That puts today's casting reveal in an interesting position: audiences are learning more about a season that is already in post-production rather than watching the ensemble assemble before cameras roll.
The Old Man Otaku take
Alabasta is one of the first places where One Piece stops feeling like a chain of colorful islands and begins feeling like a genuinely enormous world with politics, history and consequences.
Koza, Toto, Pell and Chaka matter because they help sell that scale. Crocodile and Baroque Works may provide the central threat, but the arc only works emotionally if viewers care about the country being torn apart around them.
Netflix's willingness to cast these supporting roles rather than collapsing several characters together suggests The Battle of Alabasta intends to preserve more of that social structure.
Netflix isn't just casting the people trying to conquer Alabasta. It's casting the people who make Alabasta worth saving.