Apple TV+’s Pachinko Showrunner Teases World War II-Centric Season 2

It’s been over two years since audiences last saw Pachinko, the Apple TV+ original series adapting Min Jin Lee’s best-selling novel of the same name. Chronicling the life of Korean woman Kim Sunja, from her relocating to Osaka during the oppressive Japanese occupation of the Korean peninsula in the first half of the 20th century to the hardships that she and her family face in the 1980s, Pachinko season 1 concluded with a younger Sunja (Kim Min-ha) losing her husband to the Japanese authorities in the 1930s while the ‘80s storyline followed Sunja’s grandson Solomon Baek (Jin Ha) at a professional crossroads after losing his banking executive position. After this two-year hiatus, Pachinko returns for its second season on Apple TV+ on August 23, upping the ante across both of its storylines.

Pachinko season 2 takes the younger Sunja’s storyline to the 1940s at the height of World War II, with the threat of the American military bombing Japanese cities as Sunja continues to contend with the abusive Japanese authorities. In the wake of her husband’s funeral and forced to relocate deeper into Japan to care for her children as Osaka endures fiery death from above, the crises Sunja faces feel even more insurmountable than the ones she faced in the first season. In an exclusive interview with Den of Geek, Pachinko showrunner and executive Soo Hugh details the main storylines in Season 2, including Sunja.

“What I love about Sunja is that she also represents the everyday person,” Hugh explains. “Our grandmothers did this, our mothers do this, and we’d do this if we were in that situation. You would do it because you want your kids to survive. That’s what we always said – Sunja is all of us. She shouldn’t feel like some superhero. We have to make sure that she feels like someone that you know.”

As with the first season, Sunja has a complicated benefactor who does his best to protect her and her children from the Japanese during her grueling ordeal through the ‘40s in Koh Hansu (Lee Min-ho). The father of Sunja’s first son Baek Noa, Hansu is an ethnic Korean who emigrated to Japan prior to the start of the story and rose through the ranks of a Japanese crime syndicate to become a powerful and feared figure in Osaka. Though Hansu has kept a close eye on Sunja and Noa, even after Sunja distanced herself from him and married someone else, his protection of them comes with its own sense of manipulation and danger.

This complex characterization and conflicting nature of Hansu is something that Hugh is quick to praise Lee Min-ho for.

“What he imbibes into that character is just so fun to watch,” Hugh observes. “He’s a villain in some ways and he’s a hero in some ways, especially in season two. You do see some of his more heroic outlines come out, and yet, there is something about him that always keeps him at bay because you never know what he’s thinking. That’s what I love that Min-ho brings. Whenever the camera is on Min-ho, his interpretation of Hansu is to never show what he’s thinking.”

Though the ‘80s storyline primarily focused on Solomon isn’t as life-threateningly perilous as the World War II narrative, Solomon and his family are not without their own harrowing challenges. This season brings the ‘80s storyline beyond the events of Min Jin Lee’s novel, with Solomon contemplating the consequences of his career change and life choices as he assists his father with expanding his pachinko business in Japan. For Hugh, this continuation of the original narrative presents her and her fellow screenwriters with the most difficult creative challenge, but also the one that she personally identifies with the most.

“Solomon’s storyline is the hardest story to break in the writers’ room. I’m not going to lie, we leave it for last because it’s always the biggest challenge because there is so much reinvention in that storyline, but also because we want to be so honest with who Solomon would be in our show as a character,” Hugh admits. “He’s so much more of a blank slate, but even though he’s the hardest one to break, he’s the one that I feel emotionally the closest to because he mirrors so much of what I think of my life. So much of what he’s fighting and struggling through, I can understand more, in a way. I can understand Solomon’s plight more than I can understand Sunja’s plight, in a way. Season two, we go beyond the book, the storyline gets bigger, and I hope it feels organic.”

Pachinko season 2 premieres August 23 on Apple TV+, with new episodes released Fridays.