Steel Ball Run's 2nd Stage Drops as Weekly Netflix Race Resumes

After a six-month wait, 'Steel Ball Run: JoJo's Bizarre Adventure' launched its 2nd and 3rd Stages on Netflix with 11 weekly Friday episodes through late November.

Netflix began streaming the 2nd STAGE of 'Steel Ball Run: JoJo's Bizarre Adventure' on September 25, 2026, releasing episodes from the 2nd and 3rd STAGE every Friday for an 11-week run, Inven Global reports. The series, an adaptation of Part 7 of Hirohiko Araki's manga, follows a paralyzed Johnny Joestar and the Spin-wielding Gyro Zeppeli through the cross-continental Steel Ball Run race. GamesRadar+ notes the franchise returned after a lengthy six-month wait since the single-episode 1st STAGE premiere on March 19, 2026 — a gap that sparked fan backlash and tested even devoted Joestar loyalists, according to Comic Basics.

The new episodes cover the 2nd STAGE set in the Arizona desert and the 3rd STAGE around the Rocky Mountains, where competitors are murdered one after another and Johnny and Gyro enter the 'Devil's Palm,' a zone feared by local indigenous communities, Inven Global reports. Gyro also begins teaching Johnny the Spin — a mentorship Indiatimes flags as a key future lesson.

Tech Times argues the 2nd Stage's power systems are built on real science with identifiable fictional seams: the Devil's Palm maps to documented geomagnetic anomalies at impact sites like the Temagami anomaly near Sudbury, which measures over 10,000 nanoteslas above baseline; the Boomboom Family's Tomb of the Boom maps to ferromagnetism and magnetorheological fluids; and the Spin's golden-ratio rotation draws on φ ≈ 1.618's appearance in self-organizing natural systems. Tech Times stresses the departures — a moving anomaly zone and blood iron treated as ferromagnetic — are where Araki's fiction cleanly crosses into its own logic.

GamesRadar+ reports new episodes now arrive weekly rather than as a single drop, with episode 3 slated for October 2 at roughly midnight Pacific, 3 AM Eastern, and 8 AM BST — and cautions viewers must select '2nd-3rd STAGE' in the Netflix menu to find it. A leak cited by GamesRadar+ suggests weekly episodes through November, with further batches in June and October next year; Comic Basics adds an unconfirmed leak pointing to 22 more episodes in 2027 and nine in 2028 to close the series. Both outlets flag the leak as unconfirmed.

Comic Basics reports the series became one of the highest-rated anime on MyAnimeList after just one episode, and that the 2nd Stage spans manga chapters 12 through 27 — meaning several episodes of desert tension before the highly anticipated debut of Funny Valentine, whose arrival the latest trailer teased alongside Mountain Tim and Hot Pants. Inven Global notes the 1st STAGE earned praise for faithfully recreating the manga's art style and the Spin's depiction, plus buzz over a Korean dub, raising expectations for how the acclaimed Stand-battle-and-racing blend animates. Business Upturn lists the Japanese cast as Shogo Sakata (Johnny) and Yohei Azakami (Gyro), with Daman Mills and Kaiji Tang in English.

The 11-episode split-cour run carries through late November, per GamesRadar+, with episode 3 due October 2 and times potentially shifting based on Japanese release, Comic Basics cautions. Netflix will announce subsequent stages through its official YouTube channels, Inven Global reports. For newcomers, Comic Basics notes the 47-minute 1st STAGE and five earlier JoJo seasons are already on Netflix, making the series exclusive worldwide — a shift from earlier seasons that streamed on Crunchyroll. With Johnny's Stand awakening ahead and Funny Valentine looming, every Friday now matters in the compact desert stretch.