The Boys Dropped The Perfect One Piece Easter Egg

An excellent One Piece Easter egg was just found in the unlikeliest of places: a five-part superhero story on Prime Video. One Piece season 2 was released on Netflix in March 2026, immediately rocketing to the top of streaming charts worldwide. With One Piece season 3’s story on the way, the world of Netflix’s live-action anime adaptation is only set to get bigger, more popular, and more epic.

Although One Piece has always been one of the most popular manga and anime stories in that circle of storytelling, it has never exploded into mainstream media like other massive franchises. However, this may be changing thanks to Netflix’s streaming success with One Piece. The adaptation is making the franchise more accessible to wider audiences, explaining its excellent reception, strong viewership, and references in other TV shows.

One such TV show is found on Prime Video: The Boys. The Boys season 5 has just dropped on Prime Video as the last installment of the popular superhero series, featuring its titular heroes fighting against a fascist regime implemented by a dangerous supervillain, Homelander. One of the characters, Starlight, is the face of the rebellion against Homelander and is shown hiding out in a bunker as a result.

Herein lies the One Piece Easter egg. In the background of the bunker, the Straw Hat Jolly Roger can be seen hanging on a wall. While this could simply be a reference to one of The Boys’ main 2026 competitors, it has a deeper, thematic meaning that makes it truly perfect.

Why The Boys Includes A Straw Hat Flag Easter Egg

It would be easy to dub The Boys‘ Straw Hat Easter egg as a fun reference, but it could mean a lot more than that. The entire story of The Boys season 5 surrounds the opposition to Homelander’s rule and the totalitarian ways he is trying to implement this in the United States. From “Freedom Camps” and police brutality to imprisoning innocents and making liking social media posts of his enemies a crime, The Boys depicts a draconian government and how anyone with righteous moral standing should oppose that.

This leads to the Straw Hat Jolly Roger and its deeper meaning. In the world of One Piece, pirates rule the seas and, in the case of Luffy’s crew, often represent true, heroic freedom. Luffy and his Straw Hats do not follow the often oppressive rules of the World Government, even going so far as to declare war on the institution in the source material.

In many ways, the Straw Hat flag represents Luffy’s fight for freedom against tyrannical governments. Therefore, including the Straw Hat flag in the background of Starlight’s bunker must be intentional, given she is the face of freedom in the world of The Boys. Even in the real-world, such as in Indonesia in 2025, the Straw Hat flag has been used in protests against governments with fragile democracies that limit civilian freedom.

The Boys‘ entire plot in its final season is the exploration of rebelling against such regimes, which the Straw Hat pirates represent in anime, in the real-world, and even in a completely unrelated streaming show.

The Boys Proves One Piece’s Global Reach Is Only Getting Bigger As The Years Go By

On a more surface level, The Boys referencing One Piece shows that the latter is becoming more global. As alluded to, One Piece has always been one of the most popular manga and anime series among fans of the medium, but it never reached the mainstream heights of franchises like Game of Thrones, Stranger Things, or many others in Western countries.

Even other anime shows, like Naruto and Dragon Ball, have been much bigger in Western countries than One Piece in terms of popularity. However, evidently, that is changing. Netflix’s One Piece is a massive factor in proving this, given how well it was received by critics and audiences, and how strong its viewership numbers were upon release.

Building on that, though, One Piece is starting to impact wider shows. While The Boys is definitely not the first live-action mainstream show to reference One Piece, it can certainly be argued that it would not have included this Easter egg if it had been made 10 years ago, when One Piece had a much smaller global reach.

Now, One Piece is becoming a mainstream IP thanks to the ever-increasing popularity of its source material, the Netflix adaptation, and the timely thematic messaging it contains within its storytelling. The Boys recognizes this, explaining why the Straw Hats were with the titular fascist-fighting team in spirit in season 5, episode 1.

Release Date

2019 – 2026-00-00

Showrunner

Eric Kripke

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