Black Clover Season 2: What to Remember Before You Watch

Black Clover stopped airing in March 2021 and comes back on 3 October 2026. That is a five and a half year gap, which is long enough that most people returning to it will remember the broad shape of the story and almost none of the detail. This is the refresher: where the anime left you, what the new season covers, and the quickest route back to being caught up.

Where Season 1 ended

The original run was 170 episodes, airing from October 2017 to March 2021. The final episode is titled "The Faraway Future" (Haruka Mirai).

It is an unusual place to stop. The anime did not end on a resolution or a finale; it ended partway through a setup. By episode 170 a six-month time skip has already happened, the cast has spent that time training, and the Spade Kingdom has been established as the next threat. Yami has been taken. The Dark Triad are in play. Asta has just finished resolving things with the devil living in his grimoire.

Then it simply stopped, with the raid on the Spade Kingdom still ahead. Season 2 starts from there.

What Season 2 adapts

Season 2 covers the Spade Kingdom Raid arc, the storyline the anime was visibly building toward when it halted. The Magic Knights take the fight to the Spade Kingdom and the Dark Triad directly.

Confirmed details:

• Premiere: 3 October 2026
• Opening theme: "Kienai Riyū" by WANIMA
• Ending theme: "One or Eight" by Yellow Brick Road
• Streaming (UK): Crunchyroll

The episode count has not been officially announced. Various numbers are circulating but none of them are confirmed, so treat any figure you see as a guess until the studio says otherwise.

What actually matters from Season 1

Five years is a long time. These are the five things worth having straight before episode 1.

Asta and Liebe

Asta is the one character in a world built on magic who has none at all. What he has instead is anti-magic, which cancels magic rather than casting it, delivered through swords from a five-leaf grimoire.

The thing to remember is that the grimoire came with a tenant. Liebe is the devil bound to it, and the relationship between them is the arc the anime spends its final stretch resolving. By the end of episode 170 that relationship has changed from possession into something closer to a partnership, which unlocks Asta's strongest form. If you remember one character beat going into Season 2, make it this one.

Yuno

Asta's rival and the other half of the series' central pairing, raised in the same church. Yuno is everything Asta is not: enormous natural magic power, a four-leaf grimoire, and an effortless rise through the Golden Dawn.

His wind magic is amplified by a bond with the wind spirit Sylph, which lets him operate at a tier well above most Magic Knights. Where Asta's progress is grinding and physical, Yuno's is talent catching up to ambition. Both of them are chasing the same job: Wizard King.

The Dark Triad

The Spade Kingdom's rulers and Season 2's antagonists: three siblings, Dante, Vanica and Zenon Zogratis, each hosting a devil and each operating at a level the Magic Knights have not previously had to deal with.

They are not a conventional villain faction. The anime establishes them as a step up in kind rather than degree, and the capture of Yami is the moment the threat stops being abstract. Everything the cast spends the time skip training for is aimed at these three.

What the Elf Reincarnation arc left behind

The longest arc of the original run and the one with the most lasting consequences. Elves killed centuries earlier were reincarnated into the bodies of living Magic Knights, which turned a large part of the Clover Kingdom's own forces into enemies and rewrote what the series had told you about who the real antagonists were.

Two things carry forward. The Clover Kingdom came out of it weakened and with its internal politics rearranged, which is why it is on the back foot when the Spade Kingdom moves. And the Wizard King, Julius Novachrono, was lost during the arc and returned in a drastically altered state, which leaves the kingdom's leadership in an awkward position going into the raid.

The Black Bulls after the time skip

Asta's squad: the worst-performing unit in the Magic Knights on paper, run by Yami Sukehiro, and composed almost entirely of people no other captain would take.

The six-month time skip is the important part. The Bulls spent it training rather than fighting, most of them in the Heart Kingdom, and they come out of it meaningfully stronger than they went in. The squad you remember from the early seasons is not the squad that starts Season 2. With Yami taken, they are also operating without their captain, which is the condition they enter the raid in.

The fastest way to catch up

Rewatching all 170 episodes is a real time commitment and it is not necessary. Black Clover is about 10 percent filler, and the filler is clustered rather than spread out, which makes it easy to cut.

The full filler list: 29, 66, 68, 82, 123 to 125, 131, 134 to 135, and 142 to 148.

If you have limited time, this is the route:

1. Elf Reincarnation arc, roughly episodes 104 to 141, skipping 123 to 125, 131, 134 and 135. This is the arc with the most consequences for the current state of the Clover Kingdom.
2. Skip 142 to 148 entirely. This is the single largest filler block in the series and it sits directly between the two things you actually need.
3. Episode 158 onward, straight through to 170. This is the post-time-skip material: the training, the Spade Kingdom's introduction, the Dark Triad, and the Asta and Liebe resolution. It is the most directly relevant stretch to Season 2 and it is only thirteen episodes.

If you only have an evening, do step 3 alone. Episodes 158 to 170 cover almost everything Season 2 assumes you remember.

One note: a few of the filler episodes are genuinely well liked, particularly 68, which is a captain-versus-captain fight with better animation than filler usually gets. Skippable for plot, worth it if you have time.

Where the film fits

Black Clover: Sword of the Wizard King released on 16 June 2023, in Japanese cinemas and on Netflix globally on the same day.

It is an anime-original story rather than an adaptation of a manga arc, written for the screen and supervised by series creator Yūki Tabata. In the timeline it sits inside the six-month gap between the Elf Reincarnation arc and the Heart Kingdom material, so it slots neatly into the training period rather than interrupting anything.

For Season 2 purposes it is optional. Nothing in the film is required to follow the Spade Kingdom Raid, and skipping it costs you no plot. It is a good watch on its own terms if you want more before October, not a prerequisite.

Where to watch in the UK

Crunchyroll carries the original 170 episodes and is the streaming home for Season 2. The film is on Netflix.

Closing

The short version: watch episodes 158 to 170, remember that Asta has made peace with his devil and that the Dark Triad have Yami, and you are ready. Season 2 starts on 3 October on Crunchyroll.

For the rest of the autumn slate and where Black Clover sits in it, the Fall 2026 anime season guide covers every major release. For the power hierarchy across the series, the strongest Black Clover characters ranked works through it properly, and Black Clover magic attributes explained covers how the magic system is actually structured.

If the rewatch has you wanting something on the shelf, listings for Black Clover figures and merch are on AnimeVault.