Baroque Works Explained: One Piece's Secret Criminal Organization and Its Alabasta Conspiracy

Baroque Works is the secret criminal organization at the center of One Piece’s Alabasta Saga, and its entire design rests on one trick: almost nobody inside it knows who they actually work for.

That includes most of its own elite agents. Baroque Works answers to a president known only as Mr. 0, who is secretly Sir Crocodile, one of the Seven Warlords of the Sea. His plan is to topple the desert kingdom of Alabasta from the inside, and he’s built an organization specifically designed so that almost no one working for him could give him away even if they wanted to.

What Baroque Works actually is

Baroque Works is a mercenary syndicate built around secrecy rather than ideology. At its peak it ran roughly 2,000 members, from elite assassins down to disposable hired muscle, all mobilized around one goal: destabilize Alabasta from within, engineer a civil war, and clear the way for Crocodile to seize the throne.

Publicly, nobody in Alabasta has any reason to suspect Baroque Works exists. Crocodile operates as a Warlord in good standing with the World Government, a status that gives him legal cover and keeps the Marines from looking too closely at his business. Underneath that, his organization is quietly arming and provoking a rebellion he can later “save” the kingdom from — or rule outright once the dust settles.

Mr. 0’s actual goal: Operation Utopia

Crocodile’s endgame has a name: Operation Utopia. He wants Cobra, Alabasta’s king, removed from power, the kingdom’s civil war pushed past the point of recovery, and the ancient weapon Pluton — rumored to be tied to Alabasta’s history — found and put in his hands. With Pluton and a captured kingdom, Crocodile intends to build a nation powerful enough to answer to no one, the World Government included.

That’s the utopia in the name. Not a peaceful one — his own.

How the codename system works

Baroque Works’ ranking structure is built to keep its own agents from knowing more than they need to.

At the top sits Mr. 0, the president, with Miss All Sunday — Nico Robin — functioning as his vice president and closest confidante. Below them, elite male agents are numbered Mr. 1 through Mr. 12, with lower numbers meaning higher rank. Female agents take the names of days or holidays — Miss Wednesday, Miss Valentine, Miss Doublefinger, Miss Goldenweek — and unlike the men, their codenames don’t signal rank at all.

Agents work in male-female pairs, Mr. 1 through Mr. 5 forming the Officer Agents (the deadliest tier, most of them Devil Fruit users), and Mr. 6 through Mr. 12 making up the Frontier Agents, a lower rung mostly assigned to fundraising and logistics rather than direct combat. There’s exactly one exception to the pairing system: Mr. 2, Bon Clay, works alone.

Below the numbered agents are the rank-and-file: roughly 200 Billions answering to the Officer Agents, and around 1,800 Millions under the Frontier Agents — both considered expendable. And enforcing discipline from the shadows are the Unluckies, Mr. 13 and Miss Friday, whose job is simply to eliminate any agent who fails Baroque Works badly enough to become a liability.

It’s worth being precise about how much any of these people actually know. Robin is the clear exception — she knows exactly who Mr. 0 is and what Operation Utopia is really for. The wider agent corps is a murkier picture: most accounts of the Officer Agents’ reveal moment treat Crocodile’s true identity as a genuine shock to them, not confirmation of something they’d quietly known all along. Assume ignorance rather than complicity unless a specific agent is shown otherwise.

Joe Manganiello as Mr. 0 in Netflix’s live-action adaptation, before the Season 2 finale confirms him as Sir Crocodile. Credit: Netflix.

Key agents worth knowing

Mr. 1, Daz Bones, is the strongest Officer Agent under Crocodile, having eaten the Dice-Dice Fruit (Supa Supa no Mi), which turns his entire body into living blades. His partner, Miss Doublefinger (real name Zala), ate the Spike-Spike Fruit and fights with razor-sharp spikes she can extend from her body.

Mr. 2, Bon Clay — real name Bentham — is the organization’s lone unpaired agent, a flamboyant martial artist who ate the Clone-Clone Fruit, letting him copy the exact face and body of anyone he’s touched. He’s also one of the few Baroque Works members who ends up genuinely respected by the Straw Hats rather than simply defeated by them.

Mr. 3, real name Galdino, ate the Wax-Wax Fruit and turns his victims into wax sculptures — sometimes literally. He’s paired with Miss Goldenweek, whose hypnotic paints can manipulate anyone’s emotions by color. Mr. 5, an explosives specialist who ate the Bomb-Bomb Fruit, and his partner Miss Valentine, who can manipulate her own body weight with the Kilo-Kilo Fruit, round out the Officer Agents most directly involved in hunting down the Straw Hats.

Vivi’s infiltration, and why the Straw Hats get involved

The reason any of this becomes Luffy’s problem is Princess Nefertari Vivi, who’s been undercover inside Baroque Works itself as Miss Wednesday for a year, trying to identify Mr. 0 before he can finish what he started. Her palace guard, Igaram, went with her, operating inside the organization as Mr. 8.

Their mission unravels at Whisky Peak, a town where literally every resident is secretly a Baroque Works agent. Once Vivi’s cover is blown, Igaram disguises himself as her and sails off as a decoy — his ship is blown up moments later, an apparent death that’s actually his way of buying time to slip back to Alabasta and warn the king directly. Vivi, now exposed, ends up on the Going Merry with the Straw Hats, who get pulled into Baroque Works’ crosshairs simply by being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Charithra Chandran as Princess Vivi, whose undercover identity as Miss Wednesday sets the entire Alabasta conspiracy in motion. Credit: Netflix.

Whisky Peak to Little Garden to Alabasta

The chase follows a fairly direct line. Whisky Peak exposes Vivi and nearly gets her and Igaram killed. Little Garden, an island frozen in prehistoric time, is where Crocodile sends Mr. 3 and Miss Goldenweek to finish the job Mr. 5 and Miss Valentine failed at — a mission that also collapses, thanks largely to Usopp. From there the story pushes on toward Alabasta itself, where the rebellion Crocodile has spent years fueling finally comes to a head, and Robin’s true loyalties and Crocodile’s real identity both get dragged into the open.

What happens to Baroque Works after Alabasta

Operation Utopia fails. Crocodile is defeated in single combat by Luffy, stripped of his Warlord title, and later imprisoned in Impel Down — though he doesn’t stay a pure villain forever, briefly allying with Luffy during the Marineford War out of self-interest rather than redemption. Most of Baroque Works’ agents scatter or get arrested by the Marines once the organization’s cover collapses with its leader’s exposure. It never reconstitutes as a functioning syndicate after Alabasta; several individual agents, Bon Clay especially, go on to have their own separate stories.

What Netflix’s live-action has actually confirmed

Netflix’s live-action One Piece has been adapting this material gradually, and it’s worth keeping manga/anime canon separate from what the show has specifically shown.

Season 2 covers the Loguetown, Reverse Mountain, Whisky Peak, Little Garden and Drum Island arcs — the first half of the Alabasta Saga — and confirms the core reveals: Joe Manganiello as Mr. 0/Crocodile, Lera Abova as Miss All Sunday/Nico Robin, and Charithra Chandran as Miss Wednesday/Vivi. The show has also made its own design choices along the way — Mr. 13 and Miss Friday, for instance, appear as an actual otter and vulture rather than more stylized designs, which is a live-action-specific interpretation rather than something pulled straight from the source material.

Lera Abova as Miss All Sunday. The character is confirmed as Nico Robin in the Season 2 finale, exactly as in the manga and anime. Credit: Netflix.

Season 3, officially titled ONE PIECE: The Battle of Alabasta, is set for 2027 and finally brings the full Alabasta arc to the screen. Netflix has confirmed Manganiello, Abova and Chandran are all returning as series regulars, joined by Xolo Maridueña as Portgas D. Ace, Cole Escola as Bon Clay, Daisy Head as Miss Doublefinger, and Awdo Awdo as Mr. 1 — alongside Alabasta-specific characters Koza, Toto, Pell and Chaka. Production has already wrapped in Cape Town. None of that confirms how the show will handle Operation Utopia, the Officer Agents’ knowledge of Mr. 0, or Baroque Works’ eventual fate — those are manga and anime facts, not previews of what Season 3 will actually show.

Netflix’s official title card for Season 3, confirmed for 2027. Credit: Netflix.

For more on where the franchise is headed elsewhere, see our coverage of One Piece’s newly announced God Valley and BAAD films.