‘Pachinko’ Executive Producers Michael Ellenberg & Theresa Kang Unpack Season 2 Ending, Season 3 Hopes
SPOILER ALERT: This post contains spoilers for the Pachinko Season 2 finale.
With all eight episodes of Pachinko Season 2 now streaming, the ambitious Apple TV+ production has put another sweeping season of the family saga under its belt.
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Stakes were raised as the story focused on the coming of age of the second generation of Sunja’s (Minha Kim and Youn Yuh-jung) family and the impact of World War II. Noa (Tae Ju Kang) takes his life into his own hands after learning a secret that has threatened his identity since his birth. Creator Soo Hugh and executive producers Blue Marble Pictures CEO Theresa Kang and Media Res CEO Michael Ellenberg are eagerly looking ahead to a third and final season to wrap up the story.
“What we always said was that we’d love to get to a point in the show where the past and present met, collided,” Hugh told Deadline in a previous interview ahead of Season 2’s premiere. “And that’s where you understand why we told the story in the way we did. That’s always been the plan.”
Ellenberg and Kang spoke with Deadline ahead of the Season 2 finale’s launch. In the below interview, they discuss expanding the series between Season 1 and Season 2, where the show could be headed should it get renewed for a Season 3 and how the cast has entered the cultural conversation through other projects after this one.
DEADLINE: Going back to when season one was rolling out, how far ahead did you plan for season two, and what was the process like getting that renewal and establishing this show?
MICHAEL ELLENBERG: From the beginning, Soo presented this multi-season vision for the show from the outset. And we pitched that when we first went to Apple. At the time, which was exciting, we had many suitors five or six networks having bid on it, so it was a crazy bidding war, and we all felt the greatest connection and understanding at Apple, and they’ve been incredible partners in allowing us to make the show both at the scale and at the quality that we set off to do. You have your best-laid plans, Soo would tell you that, but then you want to respond organically to the material you have — to the actors, Naomi, for example, Anna Sawai, who we always thought could be something more, but we didn’t know how much we would invest in her, and this is before Shōgun obviously. She was cast in the show before Shōgun, and the chemistry she had with Jin Ha, who plays Solomon, was undeniable to us. So that became a story. Soo wanted to lean into more. This brief romance between the two of them [that] emerged. The overall structure of World War Two landing in this season was always there exactly how it would, the breakout episode.
And what Soo promised in Season 2 was taking you past, will they or won’t they survive, and to this different question, will they thrive? And everyone gets moments of joy and moments of elation and moments of freedom this year. It’s Pachinko, so the bitter and the sweet are always circling one another, and the pickup conversation for season two is grounded in, “Okay, this is incredible. Let’s go deeper on character. Let’s go further with these people,” and when Apple saw what Soo was thinking about for season two, and the tremendous critical and audience response to season one, fortunately, they brought us back for another season.
RELATED: ‘Pachinko’ Season 2 Trailer Continues Sunja’s Saga As The End Of World War II Hits Japan
THERESA KANG: It was also amping up the scale from Season 1 to Season 2. Season 1 is a family story and it’s about immigration. Season 2 is a sweeping love story against a massive world war. Season Three, even bigger things to come. There’s already Season 3 preparation in terms of a document, Soo’s vision, and so we’re excited about that.
Soo knows what the show is every season, even more and more. What was exciting about Season 2 that’s even different from Season 1, is, we have an Oscar winner in Youn Yuh-jung and Anna is so good in everything she does. And she won an Emmy. We were the first TV series that she’s been in domestically, we have Minho, who’s this global actor superstar. And for fun, we had Rosé, from Blackpink, one of the biggest bands in the world, do a Coldplay cover song. We’re excited already thinking about, how do we amp that up, even for Season 3? How do we electrify even further? We’re always thinking of different ways to do that in this unique canvas that we have.
DEADLINE: And Jin Ha is in Season 4 of Only Murders in the Building! Anna did win her Emmy for Shōgun. Shōgun’s taken off. How does that factor into the conversation around Pachinko? Is there a way Pachinko can still hit like Shōgun has?
ELLENBERG: Pachinko goes in dialogue with the culture now. We have relatively unknown actors who’ve now popped into Emmy-winning sensations on this spectacular show like Shōgun. This is not “There should only be one.” The ambition was always to do something innovative and novel, but also demonstrate there’s a different kind of audience out there, and encourage other people to make similarly ambitious shows. So Shōgun hopefully begets more projects, as well as Pachinko has.
Theresa spearheaded bringing Rosé in. So you also have global superstars entering our show who are just feeling it. Korean pop star moving into a single career pulls Coldplay song. Soo wanted to pull a Coldplay song in. Coldplay was so excited to have the song in the show, and that entered our world. It’s both, we’re reaching out to the culture, but the chink of also, the culture is talking back to us now as well. When you’re introducing new voices, new creators, and new stories. A rising tide lifts all boats.
KANG: One of the exciting things to Michael’s point about rising tides is when we actually did share some [production] notes with the Shōgun team. Parts of the Shogun team. Not only did they work with Anna, but we asked them questions about — because we were looking at shooting in Japan for season two — We’re like, what were your learnings? Why did you shoot Vancouver?
We looked at some of their directors, they looked at some of our key creatives too. The bottom line is, we congratulate the success of of Shōgun, as well as Beef, Squid Game and these global sensations. It’s exciting for us as producers, but we feel we’re also part of that global creative grouping. We’re excited for all of them.
DEADLINE: Theresa, could you tell me more about the Coldplay song?
KANG: A year ago when Michael and I and Soo were all in Korea for production, we were talking about, would it be so great if we had, like, a Korean K-pop band or member be a part of our show, and we talked about BLACKPINK then and it was a pipe dream. And then as we got closer to finishing editing the show, and Soo said, “Hey, Coldplay, this song. Let’s figure it out,” then it kind of came back around that idea. So we reached out to Rosé and her managers at the Black Label, and they were really supportive. Rosé’s such an artist, and when you’re negotiating these things, we thought she was going to go into the studio, once or twice. She went in multiple times of her own choice because she wanted it to be perfect. She’s such a perfectionist and an artist herself, really similar to Soo and our team, and it felt even more like stars aligning. And when we first heard her version of the cover song, we were floored. It was so emotionally powerful, vulnerable and strong and memorable. We’re excited for everyone to hear the full version of her song in the finale.
ELLENBERG: We love the title sequence. There’s a slight way in which the song is in dialog with it, which is mostly about, these are characters who feel so much, but circumstances, for the most part, don’t allow them to fully express what they’re feeling. So the title sequence is this bit of relief where you get to see, “Oh my God, that’s the inner life.” Like, that’s what they wish they were doing all the time. The title sequence isn’t fiction. It’s like their inner desires. It’s not an alternative, it’s a part of them they can’t express.
So the kind of sweep of a great pop song like this, it’s a real, obviously Coldplay, their genius, it’s an anthem. And to interlace Korean pop music sensibility and Rosé committed to it. She didn’t turn into a pop song. She actually brought it more down to earth and more soulful. She did this incredibly soulful interpretation of it, and so it both breaks your heart, but also, that song makes you connect to what’s possible as well. This show should always do both, like, yes, you see people go through all kinds of wild historical events, but for the most part, they make their way through it. It’s a fairly fearless group of people. They go through tough stuff, God knows, they endure. Sometimes they thrive, but we don’t like to be as tough and strong as they are.
DEADLINE: Another project too, that comes to my mind is Expats which came out earlier this year, but the reason those are similar to me is we have Noa at the end of season two disappearing and wanting to reinvent himself. I’m curious how that stages season three, and leaves that cliffhanger where viewers will want to know how it all evolves from there?
ELLENBERG: There are spoilers involved so Theresa and I’ll be cautious around it. Noa’s journey is incredibly powerful. It echoes his mother’s, echoes Solomon’s, but it’s its own distinct thing. He’s an intellect, he’s passionate. It turns out his biological father, is a much less noble figure than he thought. He also realizes he’s been lied to and so he’s in a fundamental and profound identity crisis. Next season, we’ll see him try to see if he can define himself without his past. That’s the journey he’s on, and every character in the show is trying to make peace with what their past is, what their present is, who the world wants them to be and who they want to be, and can they reconcile those things? And so Noa’s gonna take the radical path to say, maybe I can escape my past altogether.
KANG: In many ways, Pachinko, even though it’s a story about Zainichi Koreans in Japan, it’s a very American story because most Americans, if you look back at a family history, there was a Sunja in their story. We talked about that in the pitch, that there’s a Sunja in every family, definitely in America, this melting pot of immigrants. We always felt the show was very relatable because of that idea, Irish, Jewish, Asian, Cuban, there’s a Sunja in your family somewhere, or a male version of that.
DEADLINE: Generational struggle is another recurring theme this season. Is there more to Mozasu’s story with the plotline of his feud with Yoshi this season?
KANG: To your point about generations and how Solomon’s father Mozasu teaches the learnings of his generation to a son yet, in some ways, his son is mirroring Hansu. And are you going to choose your own path? Are you going to go down one that one of your ancestors did? There’s a lot of this. The Pachinko allegory or metaphor, the idea that, can you make your own fate, or are you always destined to be part of something that was predetermined for you? And that’s the big conversation within Pachinko that Solomon experiences, which is, what path is he going to choose?
ELLENBERG: The rich ensemble to the question really about Noah and Mozasu, Solomon, YJ, we, all of our characters, Hansu included, they all respond to this question differently. So where we think the show is so universal, which is we all sometimes want to completely escape our past, and here’s what that might look like. Hansu’s in response to his past. You kind of see that fantasy play out both ways, it’s power, but it’s pain as well. Sunja as our lead, is the most constant. She breaks from character dramatically early in her life, and it changes her destiny forever, but she’s probably the steadiest, and having a clear sense of self and trying to hold all these disparate impulses together with her family. And it’s really hard. Solomon’s a man of reinvention. He’s Zainichi. He now has some American in him. He’s ingested a big dose of American can-doism. So what does that look like in the late 80s Japan? All these impulses are in all of us. At various times, most of us get to live a piece of everyone in the show. Depending on your mood or the story, you should either be completely relating in desire, this is what you’ve always wanted, or this is the thing you tried and you and you knew you shouldn’t have. It should be an intensely personal experience, whether this is your background or not because the core questions it’s asking apply all around the world.
DEADLINE: A theme that I remember talking about with Soo is, “How far will all these characters go, not only to survive, but also thrive, and be successful?” Why do you need that third season to wrap this up? What do you want to hit home in that third season?
ELLENBERG: I think Soo should define what the final season is. I feel comfortable saying there’s so much story we’re excited to still explore, but it’s hard to tease those elements and be ahead of Soo. There are so many cliffhangers. Where’s Noah going? Solomon has become a real mother-effer. Hansu is heartbroken and thought he had just made it all work, and now he hasn’t. How’s he gonna respond? We’re full of cliffhangers. There’s plenty left to explore with all these people and also that it gets closer to now. You’re in the Japanese Miracle, by the next season, meaning the post-war comeback, explosion of industry, art. It was a heady time in Japan even though the bubble’s about to burst in the late 80s, Solomon, he’s a man on the rise.
KANG: if we’re lucky enough to do a season three. The intention is that it would conclude the series, and so it would be pretty big and dramatic and fun.
RELATED: ‘Pachinko’ Creator Soo Hugh Talks ‘Exponentially Increased’ Stakes Of Season 2
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