One of 2024’s highly successful TV series, Shōgun, will be back with a second and third season, as announced earlier in May, and of course, fans can’t keep still to see Hiroyuki Sanada and Cosmo Jarvis return for more historical politics. While news of the upcoming installments has been scarce, Sanada, who stars as the powerful Lord Yoshii Toranaga, has given a few hints to Variety about the show’s second season, pointing at the scribes and potentially returning cast.
Speaking about James Clavell’s 1975 novel, which inspired Shõgun, Sanada said: “We don’t have the novel. Freedom is there. I hope our writers will enjoy the freedom and respect the novel, of course.” He then gave a vague remark about Jarvis’ character John Blackthorne, who may or may not return. According to the John Wick actor, half the existing cast will be back, and “the other half will be new characters coming in.”
Besides starring in the lead role of the Emmy-nominated series, Sanada gave a hand in production, which, to him, “made a huge difference this time around.” He explained, “This story is fictional entertainment, based on a true story and inspired by history. To make the story and character believable, we needed to make authentic details.” With this, the Japanese actor went the extra mile to ensure every element of the production was true to that era as portrayed in Shōgun and not modern Japanese.
‘Shogun’ Creator Teases a “Darker” Season 2
While Shogun was initially created as a limited series, its incredible success naturally prompted FX to expand the storyline to include two more seasons. Showrunners Justin Marks and Rachel Kondo already know the end of Season 3, as revealed back in June at an FX FYC event, with Marks also teasing that Season 2 will be darker and provide a deeper insight into the show’s history and characters.
Elaborating on Shogun Season 2, Marks said:
“There’s a lot of great conspiracy theory in history, a lot of different theories about, ‘Oh, it was said that this went on, but this really went on,’ and those little darker corners are what we’ve really enjoyed exploring. The third season is really an ending. We know where it starts, and we know where it ends, and we know who is there on that journey. We’re just focusing on part two right now to really make sure we can get to that point. But part two is, as the second chapters go, kind of a darker chapter.”
Shogun Season 1 is available to stream on Hulu.
via Collider