One Piece Episode 1148 Review: Vegapunk’s Global Warning Rewrites Everything as Joy Boy’s True History Comes to Light

Spoilers ahead for One Piece Episode 1148. I went into this one hoping for big swings and bigger answers. The episode mostly delivers that second part, with Dr. Vegapunk hijacking the world’s screens and dropping lore bombs that yank the Egghead Arc out of island-of-the-week mode and into full-on history lesson with consequences.

Vegapunk hits send, and the story tilts

Once Vegapunk’s broadcast kicks in, the series reframes itself. He starts pulling on threads the show has teased forever: the Void Century, who really built the current world order, and why certain truths were buried. The World Government is not just nervous about this getting out — the way the episode stages their reaction, they are rattled.

• The broadcast claims the official history is a lie, carefully scrubbed to hide what really happened.
• Vegapunk says the Government has known the world is literally sinking and has an escape plan for when things go bad.
• He outlines an Ancient Kingdom that was more technologically advanced than anything in the modern era.
• And he positions Joy Boy as a real person — basically the first pirate — whose clash of "ideologies" with 20 allied kingdoms led to a war. Those kingdoms became the World Government.

That is a lot to process, but the episode keeps it clean: this isn’t random myth-building; it’s a pivot. If these claims hold, nothing about the power map stands. That’s the energy — and it lands.

Cutaways that actually matter

The best choice here is how the show lets the world react in real time. We get brief check-ins with old faces — Doflamingo smirking from his corner of hell, Akainu simmering at Marine HQ — and it sells the scope. These are tiny scenes, but they put weight on the broadcast without slowing it down, and yeah, they scratch that nostalgia itch.

Ancient Kingdom, Joy Boy, and the Luffy of it all

Here’s where the deep-cut lore turns into character stakes. Vegapunk doesn’t treat Joy Boy as a fable; he presents him as a historical player who sailed with a powerful crew and went to war against the soon-to-be World Government. The show then lines that up next to Luffy in a way that is not subtle. The parallel is intentional: Joy Boy as the spark, Luffy as the liberator who might finish the job. It makes Egghead feel like a launchpad for the endgame rather than a detour.

Mother Flame, Emet, and the Government’s panic button

The episode also slips in quick beats on Mother Flame and the return of Emet. They’re brief, but they do their job: they raise the temperature and underline why the Government wants this broadcast shut down yesterday. The sci-fi scale of those elements pairs nicely with the revelation that the world used to be more advanced than it is now.

Bottom line

Episode 1148 is less about the fight-of-the-week and more about pulling the curtain back. It’s cleaner and bolder than I expected, and it makes the Egghead Arc feel bigger in the best way. If the show keeps this momentum, next week should be fun.

One Piece is streaming on Crunchyroll.