Everyone was surprised when FX said it was ordering not one but two more seasons of Shōgun, its award-winning samurai drama from last year. Sure, the show was a big success, but the first season adapted the whole of James Clavell's novel, Shōgun. That meant that showrunners Rachel Kondo and Justin Marks were going to have to go off-book and come up with a whole new idea for what comes next.
At one point, it sounded like they were having trouble, but they must have broken through, because Marks sounded optimistic when talking to Deadline at the Critics Choice Awards. “We’re coming out of the writers room now. We’re also done with the 10 episodes and we have our finale now," he said. "That’s allowing us to start figuring out how we’re going to shoot this. But we’re very excited about the plan.
"I think the thing to take away, more than anything, is how, I hope people are going to be surprised with some of the big ideas as soon as the first episode of part two. So, we’ll start there and see where it takes us for future stories. But we’re really excited about it, especially for [lead actor Hiroyuki Sanada]."
Hiroyuki Sanada plays Yoshii Toranaga, who ended the first season with a clear path towards becoming the undisputed leader of Japan. “In Season 1, [Toranaga] didn’t become a Shōgun yet. So, I’d like to see him become the leader of Japan. That is my hope," the actor said.
There was probably never a real possibility that Kondo and Marks would be so lost for ideas that a second season of Shōgun wasn't going to happen, even if it was touch-and-go in the writers room for a while. The first season was a success and FX will have more. I hope they're able to equal the slow, steady magesty of the first season without source material. We'll have to wait and see; no release date for Shōgun has been set yet, although Sanada has said it will shoot later this year. That means we're looking at a 2026 release at the earliest.
However, if you're missing dramas about feudal Japan, Netflix has a new option for you:
Last Samurai Standing is a cross between Shōgun and Squid Game
Last Samurai Standing is a new drama coming to Netflix later this year, based on the magna written by Shogo Imanura, who adapted it from his own novel. "In the Meiji period, at Tenryuji Temple in Kyoto, 292 skilled warriors gathered at nightfall, lured by the promise of a huge cash prize," reads the description, per Variety. "The rules are simple: whoever can steal the wooden tags distributed to each of them and reach Tokyo will win the prize money. Among them is Shujiro Saga, who enters the deadly game with one goal: to save his ailing wife and child."
So basically, a bunch of samurai warriors try to kill each other, pick up each other's tokens, and cash them in. Kaata Sakamoto, the head of content for Netflix in Japan, likened it to a combination of Shōgun and Squid Game, another huge Netflix show:
"When most people think about samurai, they think about this very glamorous period in Japanese history. But what a lot of people don't realize is that, towards the end of the Edo period, the samurai lost a lot of their glamour and their power. Last Samurai Standing is about what would happen if these warriors – the toughest and best in Japan – all of a sudden became common people and had to fight for their lives."
The series will star Junichi Okada, who also serves as a producer and action choreographer; that's him in the image above. Last Samurai Standing is due out on Netflix this November.
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h/t Collider