Netflix's One Piece: Nami's Deal With Arlong Explained
In Netflix's live-action adaptation of "One Piece," Eiichiro Oda's popular manga, the Straw Hat Pirates have a traitor problem. Nami (Emily Rudd), their navigator, is secretly working for Arlong (McKinley Belcher III), the sawshark fish-man captain of the Arlong Pirates. While Netflix's audiences are treated to a partial reveal at the end of Season 1, Episode 2, "The Man in the Straw Hat," Nami makes her allegiances publicly known toward the end of Season 1, Episode 6, "The Chef and the Chore Boy," just after Monkey D. Luffy (Iñaki Godoy) takes a vicious, near-fatal beating at the hands of her true captain. So what's going on, exactly? Season 1, Episode 7, "The Girl with the Sawfish Tattoo," and Season 1, Episode 8, "Worst in the East," explain Nami's plight through a series of flashbacks and present-day POV sequences.
As a bold, brash, and sometimes foolish child, young Nami strikes up a deal with the villainous fish-man — she offers her services as a master mapmaker in exchange for the chance to buy her village's freedom. Arlong, who sees the potential fortune he could make from her skills, agrees but sets an outrageously exorbitant price for Nami to raise: 100,000,000 Berry. By Arlong's own admission, she can get the money however she sees fit so long as she serves him with unwavering loyalty. Left with no better options, little Nami agrees to his terms. Their pact is sealed the moment she receives the Arlong Pirates' tattoo on her shoulder.
Nami and Luffy are pirates with honor ... Arlong isn't
Before Arlong entered the picture, Nami was an orphan. She, along with Nojiko (Chioma Umeala), grew up under the earnest care of Belle-Mere (Genna Galloway), a former Marine who gave up her life fighting pirates to live peacefully, if not poorly, on the Conomi Islands. Unfortunately for both Nojiko and Belle-Mere, Nami channeled her trauma into trouble, even stealing from a shop in the village. Maybe Belle-Mere could have eventually helped her find a better way ... we'll never know, thanks to Arlong and his crew, who raided the Conomi Islands and placed the entire population under their debt, demanding an exorbitant amount of money per person to allow them to live. Belle-Mere couldn't afford to pay for all three of them, so she sacrificed herself to save her adoptive children.
Fast-forward to the present. In Season 1 of "One Piece," Nami — who has never revealed to anyone why she joined Arlong — steals everything she can to buy back what matters to her. She doesn't care who gets in her way. Initially, her run-in with Monkey D. Luffy (Iñaki Godoy) and Roronoa Zoro (Mackenyu) only serves as a means to an end, but after Arlong double-crosses her when he realizes that she's actually scrounged up the cash, it's her newfound companions who come to her aid. They're the ones who believe in her. Well, Luffy believes in her, anyway. Zoro doesn't, nor does Usopp (Jacob Romero); Sanji (Taz Skylar) does, but he's not exactly thinking with his brain. All this is to say that there's a reason Luffy is in charge, and it's he who changes Nami's calloused belief that there's no good left in the world.