Pachinko Boss: Season 2 Is Easy to Jump Into, Even Two Years Later — Plus, Her Thoughts on Godzilla Minus One and Shōgun
A new chapter in the Pachinko saga will unfold when Apple TV+’s adaptation of the acclaimed Min Jin Lee novel premieres Friday, Aug. 23 — some 28 months after the Season 1 finale’s release.
Pachinko Season 1 began in South Korea circa 1915, telling its story through the eyes of a young Kim Sunja (played by Minha Kim), while a second timeline was set in 1989 and followed a senior Sunja (Academy Award winner Yuh-Jung Youn) and her grandson Solomon (Devs‘ Jin Ha), an ambitious banker in Tokyo.
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Season 2 also brings back Lee Minho (When the Stars Gossip) as Hansu, Eunchae Jung (Anna) as Young Sunja’s sister-in-law Kyunghee, Soji Arai (Tokyo Vice) as the adult Mozasu, Anna Sawai (Shōgun) as Naomi and Junwoo Han (The Empire) as Yoseb, while new to the cast is Sungkyu Kim (Kingdom, One Ordinary Day) in the role of Kim Changho.
The multigenerational saga is told in three languages — Korean, Japanese and English — brilliantly using color-coded subtitles. TVLine readers gave Season 1 a rare average grade of “A+.”
TVLine spoke with the TV series’ creator, Soo Hugh, about resuming this sprawling story after so long a break between seasons, (accidentally!) capitalizing on Shōgun standout Sawai’s “heat” factor, and what fans can expect from Sunja, Hansu, Solomon et al.
TVLINE | It’s been a minute since Season 1 streamed. What’s your confidence level that people will be able to jump right back in and easily reconnect with these characters, if they didn’t find time for a rewatch?
SOO HUGH | That’s a really good question. I feel like because of the [seven-year] time jump [to 1945] in the past storyline with Sunja, you’re getting a new storyline anyways, if that makes sense. There are so many resets in both the past and present, I feel the audience will be able to jump in. But we do have this three-minute recap that we’re putting on before the first episode that will help.
TVLINE | Was there any learning from Season 1, where you leaned into certain things or stepped back from anything for Season 2?
I mean, huge. We learned so much from Season 1. One of the big challenges in Season 2 is we have so many more characters. In Season 1 you saw that it was starting to grow, they were meeting more and more people, the family was getting bigger… so we knew that we were going to have to deal with that in Season 2 and learn how to balance all these new storylines.
Also, we changed the aspect ratio. Season 1 is 2.35:1, which is extreme wide-screen, and in Season 2 it’s 2:1, not as wide. And the reason why was because Season 1 was beautiful, gorgeous, in Korea with these huge epic shots. Then in Season 2, because so much of the story changes to an internal, more personal storyline — a lot of the mothers and sons, and Sunja and Hansu — we wanted the closeups to feel bigger.
TVLINE | In the new episodes I’ve seen, I feel like the transitions between timelines are more subtle. Like, you’ll hit a dramatic note in 1945, and it will flow right into Solomon sitting at a bar.
I love that you noticed that. We really wanted the time periods to feel more conversational. Season 1 was more “compare and contrast,” and in Season 2 we wanted things to feel more inevitable, that they are leaking into one another.
TVLINE | And as the two timelines get a closer to one another with the time jump, I feel like, more than before, I look at Older Sunja and think, “Wow, I now appreciate that she’s been through this, and this….” I see her differently.
You’re picking up on so much we were intending, it’s really nice to hear that they’re bearing fruit. [In the Season 2 finale] you have a scene where older Sunja says, “How do you escape from the past? The past does matter, right?” And then you have younger Sunja when she comes home after learning [SPOILER REDACTED], she just lays down and like, the two faces, they don’t say a word, and they don’t look alike in real life, and yet somehow your brain is able to meld the two together.
TVLINE | Would you say that Season 2 offers a deeper exploration of Hansu?
We complicate him a lot more, definitely. Hansu is someone you just don’t know if you really like him or you hate him, and I love that push and pull. That’s what makes him such a fascinating character. But you also see vulnerabilities in Hansu this season, which was really important to all of us, that he didn’t feel like a villain the whole time, and you realize his weakness is his family. That’s his Achilles heel, and I really loved seeing that from [Lee] Minho this season.
TVLINE | How would you describe Solomon’s journey in Season 2?
You see him both fall and you see him rise, and what I love about Jin [Ha] is he does vulnerability and also strength really well. There’s moments where Solomon feels like he’s on top of the world, and then there’s moments where he’s on just rock bottom. He has a speech that I love, with Naomi at a bar, where he says, “I’m not always going to be this low, I’m going to make my rise.” And he believes it so sincerely. I love the way Jin played it.
TVLINE | In the time since Season 1, there’s been the movie Godzilla Minus One, and we just had Shōgun on FX…. How does it make you feel to see more subtitle-heavy, Japanese stories being told? And told brilliantly, getting wide acclaim?
First of all, I think both that movie and the show are just phenomenal, and what they did that I like is they didn’t pander to the lowest common denominator. Those shows are so rich and they’re so just deftly made. It used to be that if you wanted to bring difficult storylines to other countries you had to sort of be broader, or you had to be not as smart, but they’re just taking it to a level that’s really impressive.
TVLINE | Speaking of Shōgun: If anyone’s coming to Pachinko Season 2 for an Anna Sawai fix, will they be satisfied with how much Naomi they get?
She’s definitely more in Season 2 than she was in Season 1, and that was not calculated — we shot [Season 2] very similarly in timeline to Shōgun. I mean, it’s her year, right? And I can’t think of anyone who deserves it more. She works so hard and she is so deceptively good. She has a scene with YJ, older Sunja, where they’re cooking, and I feel that’s a master class of two prime actresses.
TVLINE | Will Season 2 answer the question of where Sunjun’s older son Noa is in 1989?
It’ll partly answer that question. [Overall] the Noa and Mozasu characters (played by Eunseong Kwon and Kang Hoo Kim) take the story mantle in our show, because they’re the next generation to tell that story, so they’re in Season 2 a lot more.
TVLINE | By the way, the child actor now playing Mozasu…? Scene stealer.
I know. And to speak a language he doesn’t know! He does not know Japanese — he’s Korean — so it really is humbling to see someone pick it up so quickly. I thought, “Oh my gosh, I’m so bad at languages, and look at you!” It’s really impressive.
Want scoop on Pachinko, or for any other TV show ? Email [email protected], and your question may be answered via Matt’s Inside Line!
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