Posted in: FX, TV | Tagged: Anna Sawai, Cosmo Jarvis, fx, Hiroyuki Sanada, Japan Action Club, shogun, sonny chiba, the ring, westworld

Shōgun Shift: Is Hiroyuki Sanada's New Deal a Season 2 Sign?

Shōgun may be getting a second season after all, with star Hiroyuki Sanada's new deal seen as the first major step toward an announcement.

Shōgun, one of the best series of 2024, is over, right? (Pause) Right? It was supposed to be one and done in a season, but it was so successful that FX is, unsurprisingly, seriously pushing for a second season. Star and producer Hiroyuki Sanada has apparently signed a deal to return as Lord Yoshii Toranaga. Huh? But they already ran out of James Clavell's book to adapt, and we all saw what happened with Game of Thrones when that happened.

Don't get me wrong. Having more Hiroyuki Sanada is always a good thing. The man is practically an institution in Japan. He's the closest to this generation's Toshiro Mifune as we're going to get, an actor so monumental he practically represents Japanese Cinema now, even if he often shows up in American TV shows now. Sanada has been acting in movies since he was six years old. He was a protégé of Sonny Chiba in the latter's Japan Action Club, a school for training future actors to be well-versed in acting, martial arts techniques, and historical traditions. That's why Sanada could be an advisor for historical accuracy in Shōgun. He was the male lead in the original (lower budget and superior) Japanese version of The Ring. He has been on Westworld and a whole bunch of Hollywood movies since the early 2000s, too often showing up in one scene to lend his presence and gravitas only to get killed off.

Shōgun, Shōgun and More Shōgun!

FX would certainly love to get Shōgun nominated for Best Dramatic Series instead of Best Limited Series in the next Emmy submissions. This means announcing it is no longer a limited series with a set ending but a regular series with future seasons to come for as long as viewership and international sales are successful. According to Deadline, signing Sanada to another season is a step in turning Shōgun into an ongoing – and very expensive – series.

Sanada's Lord Torunaga is the heart of Shōgun, a strategist and master of the long game, who was plotting all along to overthrow the oppressive fellow Regents in feudal Japan and unite the country from a seemingly weak political position. Torunaga is inspired by the real-life Ieyasu Tokugawa, who waited and plotted to unite Japan after a long period of war. Blackthorne is based on real-life Englishman William Adams, who never returned to England and eventually became one of Tokugawa's samurai. Adams settled down with a Japanese wife and family of his own and sent money back to his family in England. If FX, with the right showrunners, preferably the original writers Rachel Kondo and Justin Marks, along with their team of Japanese-descended writers, there could be plenty of historical facts to draw on for future seasons. After all, the series as it stands ended with Torunaga predicting his future victory and hasn't become Shōgun yet.

So, if we get more of Cosmo Jarvis' hilariously bumbling Blackthrone and Sanada's Torunaga as a mismatched buddy duo in more Shōgun, why not? Who knows? We could get Anna Sawai back not as a ghost but as Lady Mariko's long-lost twin sister, Lady Marika.

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