SPOILER ALERT: The following interview contains spoilers from “Chapter 16,” the Season 2 finale of “Pachinko,” now streaming on Apple TV+.
The Apple TV+ drama “Pachinko” has once again delivered emotionally fraught season finale.
The time-jumping family drama about Korean immigrants, based on Min Jin Lee’s 2017 novel, put the focus of the season-ender primarily on a college-aged Noa (Tae Ju Kang) in 1951, as he experiences not only college life and his first serious girlfriend, but also finally arrives at the point we’ve been waiting for all season — his finding out that the wealthy and corrupt businessman Koh Hansu (Lee Min-ho) is his biological father.
Courtesy of Apple TV+
Also, in the 1989 storyline, the older Sunja (Youn Yuh-jung) ends her budding romantic relationship, while her son Mozasu (Soji Arai) must confront someone from his past as he attempts to stop his ambitious son Solomon (Jin Ha) from going down a dark path he knows all too well.
“Pachinko” showrunner Soo Hugh talked to Variety about what all these storylines coming to a head mean for the characters, how she got international pop star Rosé from Blackpink to cover a Coldplay song for the episode — and the future of the drama, since a Season 3 renewal has yet to come.
First of all, by the time we get to the end of Season 2, where are we with how the book unfolds?
I would say for the present-day storyline, it’s all pretty new, because we already caught up to the book in Season 1. For the past storyline, I feel like the foundation and a lot of the outlines are still there. We’re still in the book’s timeline for this past.
Courtesy of Apple TV+
This is a really big episode for Noa. How much do you think he actually has known about his father even if he didn’t admit it to himself?
There’s a line Hansu says to Sunja [Minha Kim] that he’s a smart kid and he’s going to find out. I think he has this inkling that something feels off, but I don’t think in his mind he can even understand that it’s possible for his mother to have had a baby out of wedlock. Those definitions don’t exist for him. He knows something, but he has no idea what that is.
In the scene where Hansu is confronted by Noa, Hansu has a choice not to tell him — but instead he tells him everything. Did you ever think about him not telling him, or did it have to happen?
I definitely wanted that moment. The camera lingers on Hansu’s face for a minute, and if you look closely, he even tears up slightly in that shot. Part of him knows that he’s cursing his son in that moment by telling the truth, but he’s been waiting for so long to do it. He’s waited 20 years to tell him, “I’m your father.” It’s really like “Star Wars!”
How much alike do you think Noa is compared to Hansu? We see some flashes of Noa’s anger in this episode that’s similar to Hansu’s.
Well, it’s interesting the way he reacts when Akiko [Kilala Inori] says, “Noa, Hansu is your father,” and his first instinct is this huge, violent push. Then, afterwards, you see this fear in his eyes. I think he realizes “This blood that runs through this man, this blood that does have that propensity to violence, perhaps it’s in me as well.”
When Noa goes back home to see his mother one last time, he doesn’t tell her he knows. Later, she says that that was his mercy. Is that how you see it?
It’s funny. When you shoot scenes, you always want to give yourself as much room as possible to reinterpret those scenes in the edit room, right? But you have to make decisions and in the edit room we had to. The editor and I had to pick the moment when Noa decides he’s going to leave. “When is he going to abandon his name? When is it?”
There’s one cut where he decides earlier with Hansu. If you look closely, when Hansu says, “I’ll make them grovel upon your feet,” there’s this look where Noa is breathing really hard — and all of a sudden, you see him calmly breathe, he catches his breath and he gets really still. In the editing room, we said, “That’s the moment.” So, when he goes to Sanja, he’s already made up his mind, and there doesn’t need to be an argument because his decision won’t be swayed. He’s really come to say goodbye.
I’m just glad he’s still alive in the end, since this show does have its tragedies. I was worried he might kill himself, or truly disappear but then we see him in Nagano.
There was discussion whether or not we needed the Nagano scenes at the end. Some people felt “Why do we need this?” And it’s for exactly your reason. It felt like schmuck-baiting not to have it.
We see that Sunja is destroyed by Noa leaving, but how is this going to affect Hansu?
Equally. He’s so affected, because he’s wanted to be the father for so long, but there are ways of dealing with it that are going to be very different. We’ve always said that are two very different worldviews of how they look upon the rules of the world. In the episode’s last shot of Hansu, he looks straight into the camera and it’s almost like he is looking at us and saying, “OK, this is who you want me to be. I’ll be your monster.” If there is a Season 3, we get to see that spiral continue.
A monster of his own making, right? He’s orchestrated a lot of this.
That’s really interesting. I don’t know if Hansu would say it was of his own making, in some ways. I don’t know if he would, but that’s interesting.
Once we see Noa in that Nagano scene, he doesn’t just change his name, but also says he’s not Korean. How significant is that to the story you’re telling, given the show is so much about the identity of Koreans in this Japanese world?
What’s interesting is if you did a shot of people walking on a street in Japan, you would not be able to pick out who the Koreans were, because it’s a homogenous country. Koreans look similarly within the band of Asian-ness. It isn’t until, perhaps, someone opens their mouth or you hear about their families that you understand, “Oh, you’re not Japanese.” But Noa was born in Japan. He speaks Japanese like any other Japanese child, so in his mind, he’s just becoming who he’s meant to be. Which could have tragic consequences for him.
The narration over the final scenes with the dialogue about shadows is really beautiful, and fitting for all of these characters. Is that from the book?
It’s not from the book. It was actually in Season 1 originally, but we cut it. When Sunja goes into the water after Hoonie’s [Lee Dae-ho] death, we hear Hoonie’s voiceover say, “Dear Sunja…”This was dialogue that was supposed to go there and it didn’t work. It was too abstract at that time. We wrote it so that Hoonie did a more direct address to Sunja, but I’ve always loved this dialogue. I always loved this metaphor of the horses. And I was like, “Try it again here. Let’s see if it works.” And for some reason, it did work better here.
In the 1980s timeline, the older Sunja has been getting close to Kato (Jun Kunimura) but is ending their relationship since Mozasu thinks he just wants the family’s money. But you give Kato a chance to tell his own tragic story. Why was that important?
Maybe this was just totally naive of me, but it wasn’t until we were conceiving his character that we realized every Japanese man in that age range would have been in World War II, so every man of that age has a story of some sort. It’s almost like the ordinariness that becomes extraordinary, which really is so much of the heartbeat of this show. He tells this really harrowing story, but I love his performance because he’s very matter of fact. It’s been 50 years that he’s dealt with it, and he’s processed it. It just felt really honest.
Let’s talk about Solomon and his father, Mozasu, who doesn’t directly tell his son not to go down this dark path in his business but instead goes to Mamoru Yoshii (Louis Ozawa), Solomon’s boss, who he has history with, to stop this. What does that say about this father-son relationship?
So many families I knew that were from the Asian immigrant community, and I feel like I’ve also heard this from a lot of immigrants, not just Korean or Japanese, but it’s amazing how so many things could be solved if you just talk about it. Like this whole Thanksgiving dinner does not have to be this dramatic: If someone had just said what’s bothering them, and communicate!
I think it’s so much more of this time period, especially of this generation. Mozasu feels like he’s a failed father if he voices it out loud. One of the things we said about the show was, as the seasons go on, the past and present are going to collide, so we get more of that backstory and why Mozasu is so haunted as we go on.
The last we see of Solomon is when he gets the news of the death and possible suicide of Katsu Abe (Yoshio Maki), which he’s responsible for indirectly by calling in his loan. What does that mean for Solomon moving forward?
I always find it funny that you aim for something, and then when you get it, why does it not taste as sweet? And we as humans know it never works out that way, ever. And then we just put another rung on the ladder to reach for hoping that’s going to be the sweet bite of the apple. Solomon, he’s 28 years old. I had nothing figured out at 28, so at the end of the season we shouldn’t expect him to have it all figured out. But he’s starting to get an inkling that it wasn’t right.
It’s also a big deal that Rosé from Blackpink sings the Coldplay song “Viva La Vida” at the end of the episode. How did that come about?
I knew there was going to be a needle drop there. And very early on, I thought it was going to be the Coldplay song, but I really resisted that. I loved that if you listen to the lyrics of that song, they really speak to our show — and specifically Noa. But I was worried that it was just too well known and that if we put that in, it was going to pull people out.
We tried, I think, 200 songs, but then I went back to the Coldplay song and I realized it’s just that Chris Martin’s voice is so well known so what happens if we don’t use Chris Martin’s version? We were looking at different covers, and then Rose’s name came up being like, “Hey, do you think she would ever cover it?” I thought it was a pipedream, but it turns out she really had a connection to that song. The whole song is beautiful. We recorded and mixed the whole song as a single, so we’re hoping to be allowed to drop it soon.
With this show that talks a lot about the past and the present, what’s the future for “Pachinko?” Should we be hopeful for a third season?
You call and ask them. We have so many more stories to tell. One of the things that we’re battling is there’s just so many shows out there, right? Our fans are the best fans, and we’ve been blown away by how generous the critics are. But I think it’s just really hard to make noise in this time and space.
This interview has been edited and condensed.