This text accommodates spoilers in regards to the ninth episode of Shōgun, “Crimson Sky.”
When Anna Sawai first learn the script for the ninth episode of Shōgun, “Crimson Sky,” she didn’t really feel particularly emotional. “I already knew the story, so it was extra like, ‘Okay, how are we going to shoot this?’” she remembers. “I used to be simply distancing myself and fascinated by the technical stuff. That’s how I needed to do it, as a result of in any other case I must carry these feelings for means too lengthy.”
Certainly, for the actor behind Shōgun’s tragic hero, Woman Mariko, the whole lot got here to a head solely when cameras began rolling. Much more than a yr after wrapping the collection, the feelings didn’t fall away: “I’d bear in mind how I felt taking part in sure scenes, and I’d simply cry.”
Mariko dies on the finish of “Crimson Sky” in an act of final sacrifice. She places herself on the entrance strains in Osaka, as a part of her Lord Toranaga’s grand plan to grab energy and expose the deception of his rival, Ishido (Takehiro Hira). The earlier episode ended with Mariko stunning Toranaga’s males, together with the captured English sailor (and her love curiosity) John Blackthorne (Cosmo Jarvis) and the wishy-washy Yabushige (Tadanobu Asano), by becoming a member of them on their voyage to Osaka. This week’s installment fastidiously, slowly reveals the true nature of her participation, starting with a flashback to her traumatic household historical past and culminating in a double-cross by Yabushige that leaves Mariko with nowhere to show.
But Mariko is at peace together with her destiny. Shōgun has explored the ripple results of her principled father’s (and, in flip, her household’s) unjust demise, and her need to hitch him within the subsequent life by committing seppuku (an honorable type of taking one’s personal life). Toranaga (Hiroyuki Sanada) is aware of this need, and has supplied her an exit plan that can serve him on the most pivotal second in his combat. Mariko would go to Osaka, ostensibly in mourning for Toranaga’s slain son, and reveal the brutal tyranny of Ishido’s regime to her neighborhood within the course of. This could change the course of the warfare between the 2 males, and thereby the course of Japan itself—precisely what occurred within the case of Hosokawa Gracia, the real-life inspiration for Mariko.
“It was lots of blended emotions for me as a result of, in a means, that’s what she desires,” Sawai says of Mariko’s destiny. “She desires to serve her lord. She desires to satisfy her position. She’s glad to do it. She doesn’t wish to simply have a simple life.”
Mariko’s first massive scene in “Crimson Sky” arrives when she tries to depart Osaka, together with her personal military surrounding her. She is aware of Ishido and his males is not going to let her go, however as a result of, theoretically, she has been ordered to depart at Toranaga’s request, she goes ahead anyway, as Ishido’s guards try to cease her at each flip. Ultimately, the guards combat again, and Mariko’s males start to fall in bloody succession. Her personal samurai coaching—which ladies of the period sometimes have been forbidden from performing upon—ultimately comes into play in an exhilarating, harrowing combat scene.
“Simply experiencing that was so heartbreaking to me. I used to be not myself, I’m simply Mariko at this level,” Sawai says. “We had a brief scene that we shot after this combat, the place Mariko goes and cries within the nook, and that’s precisely how I used to be feeling. I needed to be highly effective within the second, however you see all these folks sacrificing their lives and dying in entrance of you.”
Mariko survives, however broadcasts that she is going to commit seppuku for her transgressions, at the same time as Ishido faces mounting strain to allow Mariko to depart as her lord instructs. In an agonizing sequence, we watch Mariko put together to finish her personal life, with nobody stepping as much as second (or assist, because the ritual dictates) the act. Her son is in attendance. So is Blackthorne, the person who has grow to be her shut pal and lover. Ultimately, he steps up—a logo of his enduring affection for her, and a sign that after a full season of not understanding her attraction to demise, he sees and respects what she values. The digital camera holds on Mariko as she slowly inches the sword towards her abdomen, with Blackthorne behind her, till Ishido stops the proceedings on the final potential second—departure permits in hand. Mariko and Blackthorne gasp in shock. The viewers does too.