[This story contains major spoilers from the season two finale of Pachinko, “Chapter Sixteen.”]
For 2 seasons of Pachinko, Apple TV+’s collection adaptation of Min Jin Lee’s novel about 4 generations of a Korean household dwelling throughout and after Japanese rule, protagonist Sunja (Minha Kim) has wrestled with a devastating secret: The person who fathered her first youngster, Noa (Tae Ju Kang), shouldn’t be Isak (Steve Sanghyun Noh), the sickly, late pastor whom she married shortly after changing into pregnant — however, fairly, Hansu (Lee Minho), her rich past love who has ties to organized crime.
“Sunja, in some methods, can come off as such a fairytale character. It looks like she’s all the time good, like she all the time makes the precise determination,” creator and showrunner Soo Hugh tells The Hollywood Reporter. “And but, if you really drill down into what she does on this present, she doesn’t all the time make the precise selections. For instance, was it proper of her to not inform Noa who his father was? Why did she let Hansu again into their lives? I believe there’s no simple reply.”
In Friday’s season finale of the time-hopping historic drama, a teenage Noa, now a pupil on the prestigious Waseda College, discovers his true paternity. Whereas having dinner one night with Hansu, whom he had merely thought to be a beneficiant household pal, Noa will get an surprising customer: his girlfriend, Akiko (Kilala Inori), who crashes their meal with the intention of studying about Hansu. Akiko is shortly in a position to deduce what the viewers has identified all alongside. However when Akiko makes an attempt to confront her boyfriend with the reality later that night, Noa turns into indignant.
“What’s fascinating is when Akiko tells him what we’ve identified for therefore lengthy, Noa’s response is definitely very violent and visceral, and it’s that very factor that basically unnerved him when he noticed Hansu beating up that man on the rice farm a few years in the past,” Hugh says, referring to a flashback earlier within the season. The truth that Noa’s first response could be to resort to violence “terrifies him” and makes him “determined for Hansu to say, ‘No, I’m not your father’” when he goes again to confront him at house, however Hansu refuses to mislead him any longer.
Hugh reveals that the heated confrontation scene, which has successfully been two seasons within the making, was rewritten a number of instances, with Lee and Kang each providing their very own ideas on the pivotal second. “We needed to cease a couple of instances, as a result of actors are usually not robots and may’t simply flip it again on, and I believe that’s what you see in that scene. A lot of it simply feels so actual and lived-in,” she says.
Early on within the season, Lee says, Hugh gave him the liberty to decide on tips on how to play out the little moments when Hansu is contemplating breaking his promise to Sunja and telling Noa about his paternity. When Hansu and Noa got here face-to-face towards the top of World Warfare II, Lee says Hansu had already considered how he wished to broach that troublesome matter — however Hansu doesn’t deal with the dialog notably properly.
“What I really feel is type of a pity about Hansu is that when he loves somebody, the best way he loves somebody shouldn’t be about understanding and embracing them totally. However fairly he goes [for] the deepest, weakest a part of them and stirs all of them up,” Lee tells THR by means of a Korean interpreter. “From season one, when he was approaching Sunja, he touched on her very weak spot in her thoughts to get her love and earn her as an individual.
“I believe for season two as properly,” Lee continues, “when we now have this revelation second in episode eight, that was an important time limit for Noa. That was a second of reality for him. However as an alternative of supporting him emotionally, Hansu simply wished to drive his thought on Noa, and I believe he’s simply ready for that second to inform Noa that he’s his organic dad. So when Noa confirmed up for him, all drenched in rain, [Hansu] in all probability knew that, ‘At the moment is the day that I’m going to inform Noa that I’m his dad.’ As a substitute of attempting to know Noa’s feelings and emotions extra, he simply stated very clearly what he thinks and what he feels to him.”
After Noa accuses Hansu of preying upon a younger Sunja and calls him a “foul,” “venal” and “egocentric” man, Hansu reminds him that, as his organic father, his blood additionally runs by means of him. A surprised Noa then decides to journey house to Osaka in the course of the evening to briefly see his mom, whom he reassures that nothing is mistaken. However unbeknownst to Sunja, Noa, ashamed of his heritage, is planning to drop out of faculty and run away, and his unannounced (and short-lived) return house is definitely his means of bidding her farewell.
“Within the edit room, we had a choice to make: At what level precisely does Noa notice he’s going to run away? Is it within the scene with Hansu, or is it within the scene with Sunja? And we edited it fairly a couple of other ways as a result of [there’s a different effect] relying on if you push in or what closeup you utilize,” Hugh reveals. “We thought probably the most highly effective model was the one on the finish of the Hansu scene, if you see Noa, impulsively, go very calm. That’s the second the place Noa, in his head, is like, ‘I’m completed. I’m gone. I’ve to be out of right here.’ So we knew when he went into the Sunja scene that basically he’s saying goodbye to her.”
“When Sunja Doesn’t Know What to Do, You’re Apprehensive”
Whereas she will be able to inform one thing is mistaken together with her son, Sunja doesn’t put two-and-two collectively till Noa leaves for good — at which level, it’s too late for her and Hansu’s males to seek out him. For Kim, who delivers a heart-wrenching efficiency within the ultimate act of the episode, Noa discovering his true parentage was all the time going to be Sunja’s worst nightmare — worse than any battle or battle that the household has been compelled to endure to date.
“She did all the pieces for Noa to not know that his father is Hansu. However proper after she realized that Noa is aware of, each hope that she constructed for 15 years has simply collapsed. That’s why she lies down and she or he closes her eyes,” Kim explains of Sunja’s ultimate scene, by which she wordlessly returns house after failing to trace down Noa. “Lastly, in spite of everything this time, she felt exhausted. She by no means felt drained or something, however proper after she misplaced [Noa], she felt so drained and she or he felt all of the lights and hopes simply disappear. She will’t really feel something, she’s gone numb, and she or he blames herself.”
Preventing for survival has remained a significant theme in Pachinko, and Sunja (her older model is performed by Yuh-Jung Youn) has embodied that combat greater than some other character. All through the second season, Sunja selected to sacrifice her personal goals of opening up a restaurant to boost her household, notably following the devastating passing of her husband Isak. However Kim doesn’t essentially see Sunja’s actions as a sacrifice. “Sunja herself didn’t assume that she sacrificed herself as a result of the goals that she had for a number of years absolutely exist. However I believe for her, the actual dream for Sunja was her children and her household,” she says. “I believe it [gave] her pleasure for Noa to go to the college and to save lots of the members of the households.”
However shedding Noa attributable to her well-intentioned however in the end misguided actions is a blow from which Sunja might by no means really recuperate. “Season one ends with Sunja getting up and saying, ‘I do know what to do [to support my family]. I’m going to promote kimchi.’ Season two ends with virtually the precise reverse trajectory,” Hugh notes. “For the primary time, you notice our heroine, Sunja, who’s such an anchor of our present, doesn’t know what to do. I discover that to be the saddest, scariest factor in our present. When Sunja doesn’t know what to do, you’re apprehensive. And if we’re fortunate to get a season three, I believe the query is, how do you choose up the items after that?”
Minha Kim within the Pachinko season two finale.
Apple TV+
Hansu’s Home of Playing cards Have Fallen
In a chat with THR earlier this season, Lee stated he believed Hansu’s love for Sunja “has advanced into some type of love for household, love for his bloodline and his son,” and that his “life’s aim” could be “to embrace Noa and Sunja utterly as his personal.”
As Hugh, who jokes that Hansu would profit from a variety of remedy, factors out, “He says a number of instances within the present: ‘Don’t be sentimental. You’re being emotional about this.’ And but, oddly sufficient, in some methods, he’s probably the most sentimental character on this present.”
But it surely’s exactly Hansu’s obsession with Sunja and Noa that has led to their undoing, Hugh notes. “When Noa tells him, ‘Inform me it’s not true,’ the digicam lingers on Hansu for a beat. He has a option to make. He may have stated, ‘No, I’m not your father. That’s ridiculous.’ I believe he understands if he did, Noa would’ve been happier. However as an alternative, he claimed his fatherhood, like, ‘No, you might be mine.’”
Lee is aware of that, at first look, Hansu’s selections have all the time been, to place it frivolously, morally questionable. However because the actor was tasked with entering into his headspace, Lee says he “was in a position to relate to him utterly” and “see why he’s making these selections and the place he’s coming from” — each personally and professionally.
As an illustration, within the penultimate episode of the season, Hansu informs his father-in-law, who runs their crime syndicate, a few man named Yoshii Isamu, who’s taking up a few of their black market gross sales. His father-in-law shouldn’t be solely detached to Yoshii’s presence, however he additionally informs Hansu that he’s not invited to his personal daughter’s marriage ceremony. After Sunja encourages Hansu to “lower out the rot” in his life, Hansu, believing that he has been discriminated in opposition to attributable to his Korean heritage, orders Yoshii himself to assassinate his father-in-law.
“He thinks that he killed his father-in-law out of survival, and the justification he has in his head is, ‘It’s [either] me or him. It’s survival of the fittest,’” Hugh explains. “However in actuality, we all know that this was the daddy determine that he changed the daddy that he misplaced. I believe there may be such a way of disappointment that Hansu has on this father determine. He didn’t simply say [to the hitman], ‘Do it. Inform me when it’s completed.’ He sat there and watched the entire ordeal. I believe that tells you it was much more private than he’s letting on.”
Lee provides, “If Hansu believes a sure individual — whether or not that’s his personal father-in-law or whoever he has a relationship with — will come into his means as an impediment, then he doesn’t care [about them]. He solely has his eyes on the larger, higher issues. So in case you take a look at it from the humanity side, then how are you going to probably kill your personal? However to Hansu, that’s utterly affordable, and the one proper alternative he could make at that particular second in time.”
However Hansu will, in the end, now need to dwell with the implications of his actions. “On the finish, after we’re with him in that nightclub and we now have him stare immediately on the digicam, he’s by himself; he’s been deserted, forsaken by everybody,” Hugh says of the scene by which Hansu strikes a girl providing companionship. “There was all the time this sense, [this] realization that he can’t cover from us, which is, ‘I did this.’ The home of playing cards begins falling down round him.”
The Subsequent Chapter of Pachinko
Within the ultimate scene of season two, Noa finds himself all the best way in Nagano, the place he sells the gold watch Hansu gave him and, assuming a brand new Japanese identification as Ogawa Minato, will get a job at a pachinko parlor. “I believe the minute he casts off his identify and takes another person’s identify, he’s going to dwell one other life,” Hugh says. “He particularly selected a Japanese identify. I really feel prefer it’s directing the viewers to imagine that Noa’s going to dwell as a Japanese individual and, what’s the price of that form of passing?”
The season two finale has additionally planted some new seeds that may ideally come to fruition sooner or later. For starters, after hitting all-time low professionally in 1989 attributable to a failed enterprise deal, Solomon (Jin Ha), Sunja’s grandson, schemes his means again into the great graces of his friends. However he does so on the expense of his girlfriend, Naomi (Shōgun Emmy winner Anna Sawai), and Abe (Yoshio Maki), certainly one of his former purchasers in opposition to whom he tried to actual revenge.
“Solomon has destroyed Naomi’s profession, and a person that he resented very a lot was so ruined that he dedicated suicide — and that is all immediately by the hands of Solomon. He can’t lie about that, so he’s going to need to reckon with this,” Hugh says. “He can’t run away, as a result of he’s completed an excellent job working it away or speaking his means out of issues. Solomon is a very good salesperson. I all the time really feel like immigrants are excellent salespeople. That compartmentalization, that coding that a variety of immigrants do, in some unspecified time in the future catches as much as you.”
Viewers additionally acquired a glimpse of the antagonistic relationship between Solomon’s father, Mozasu, and Yoshii Isamu’s grandson, Yoshii Mamoru (Louis Ozawa), who met once they had been simply kids. Mozasu even goes so far as to threaten the youthful Yoshii, in an try to get him to avoid working with Solomon.
“Clearly, there’s a much bigger historical past between Mozasu and Yoshii, and that, in fact, circles again to Hansu, as a result of in season two, we realized Hansu additionally is aware of Yoshii,” Hugh says. “Melodrama is these scrumptious, juicy methods characters match and don’t match, and collide and scratch each other. I believe that’s the enjoyable a part of having the ability to sit with these tales for an extended interval — you get to set it up and then you definately see the fallout from these actions. So proper now, clearly, the viewers has no thought what’s occurred, however we all know [that storyline is] coming.”
For now, Hugh remains to be ready for an official determination from Apple TV+ about the way forward for Pachinko. “That is actually, now, a type of issues that’s so out of my arms, and I believe Apple’s additionally ready to see how the present does,” the showrunner says. “I believe we’re actually attempting to combat for a 3rd season — and it actually comes right down to viewership.”
If she had it her personal means, Hugh would nonetheless need to make 4 seasons of Pachinko in whole. “In some methods, it looks like there’s a model the place one or two extra seasons does really feel like the precise strategy to finish this,” she says. “Folks can’t dwell ceaselessly. Sooner or later, life occurs, time passes and folks go. But it surely does really feel like there’s one other season or two to eke out.”
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The total first two seasons of Pachinko are actually streaming on Apple TV+.
