Shōgun ​’s Ambiguous Ending, Explained by Its Creators

Shōgun, FX’s runaway hit of a historical epic set in feudal Japan, aired its final episode Tuesday. By the end of the saga—a fictionalized tale loosely based on the birth of the Tokugawa shogunate, adapted from James Clavell’s 1975 novel—the Englishman John Blackthorne (Cosmo Jarvis) has not found the deliverance he seeks. Instead, our plucky rogue is permanently marooned on the shores of Japan, in peonage to the panoptic dominion of Lord Yoshii Toranaga (Hiroyuki Sanada). Everything goes wrong for him in the final hour: His flagship, pillaged, rests at the bottom of the ocean; his crew has disappeared into the streets of Edo; and Lady Mariko (Anna Sawai)—his lover and confidante—has sacrificed herself to scuttle the plans of the perpetually scheming Yabushige (Tadanobu Asano). Blackthorne is left without much to live for, and yet, Shōgun boldly spins his destitution as a triumph. Maybe now, after the captain has been sufficiently broken, he can finally start living.

At least that was my takeaway from Shōgun’s closing moments, in which Blackthorne and Toranaga share a glance of begrudging admiration at the water’s edge. These final minutes are destined to be among the most scrutinized scenes in a series that has already blessed us with so many riddles to parse. Thankfully, Justin Marks and Rachel Kondo—the husband-and-wife co-creators, co-writers, and executive producers behind Shōgun—were willing to speak to Slate about the finale and the show’s knotty philosophy. We talked about the meaning imbued in that quiet closing sequence, those queasy visions of Blackthorne’s imagined European homecoming interlaced throughout the episode, and the difficulty of expressing the virtues of servility to a culturally individualistic audience. This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Slate: I think the biggest question people are going to have about the finale surrounds those strange scenes focusing on an old man, on his deathbed in a decidedly English environment, who appears to be John Blackthorne. You could understand these shots in a variety of different ways. Is it a flash-forward? A dream sequence? An alternative timeline? How should those sequences be interpreted, from your perspective?

Justin Marks: There’s a little ambiguity that we’d like to stay there. But definitively, after the shock of Mariko’s death, we initially frame the story as if it were the recollection of an old man looking back on his life with regret in some way, only to find that what we were really seeing was the dream of a young man looking forward with regret to the life that he could possibly have. We really wanted Blackthorne’s choice at the end of this show, from the very beginning, to be about a denial of this path. To turn towards a new identity, a new life. There’s a very famous portion of the book where Blackthorne proposes seppuku, and that’s a moment that carries a lot of weight. But it occurs earlier in the book, and we didn’t feel like it was earned, so we kicked it down the line to where it carried more weight. That began to be the Rosetta stone that allowed us to open up Blackthorne throughout the season.

Rachel Kondo: I do think, though, that we were always very hesitant about his proposed seppuku because it was a concept that I think all of us in the writers room were obviously aware of the cultural weight of. I don’t think we were always comfortable with knowing how to express it, how to frame it, and when to present it, if at all. We didn’t know where it would land. We had to learn our characters better, learn their journeys better, and ultimately wait for the moment to present itself.

Marks: We felt there was a little bit of, I don’t know, almost a cosmic humor, almost at Blackthorne’s expense in the long tradition of many, many decades of Hollywood doing the white savior archetype. Under different circumstances, this might be a classic white savior moment: “Please accept my life in protest of what you’re doing to this village,” except for the fact that we reveal that the whole setup with the village is false. It’s a scam. It’s just meant to get him to that point. So we really liked that because it was about bringing Blackthorne to a certain brink, but also an entirely constructed and fictional scheme that Toranaga has created for himself.

In those sequences, we see the man fondle a rosary, which to the viewer appears to be the one that belonged to Mariko. However, later in the finale, we see Blackthorne drop that rosary into the ocean.

Marks: That was the rejection of his future self. It was what confirmed, once and for all, that that future would never be possible: to say goodbye to her now, and not to bring her rosary home as some souvenir from a colonial exploit or something.

I found myself surprisingly wrapped up in the show’s romance subplot, which is not what I was expecting walking into what is, on its face, a swashbuckling adventure with a ton of flashy violence. Were you surprised at all, in the writers room, at just how central Blackthorne and Mariko’s love affair became?

Kondo: I’m a huge fan of any costume dramas, and romance is often at the center of it all. I think we always did know that it would be a part of it. I think we didn’t understand how it would manifest. I think that obviously it had to come through the connection between our actors and how they found their way together. What I think was surprising about their connection was that it went so much deeper than just romance. There was a profound intimacy between the two of them. At any given time in the show, they’re the only two people who can actually speak to each other and can connect on any level, and there’s a real loneliness that each of them addresses within the other. It became a more profound kind of attachment, and one really embedded in experience rather than just physical.

Marks: I don’t want to call it a course correction because I think what James Clavell did in the novel worked for the novel, but—how do I put this? There was a lot of sex in the novel. A lot.

Kondo: Hundreds of pages.

Marks: Is there maybe an Outlander version of Shōgun that could exist? I mean that in a great, sex-positive kind of way. Sure, of course, but I don’t think that that was within the scope and scale of what we were trying to achieve. The reference that was always there in the writers room for this show was In the Mood for Love. It’s one of the greatest films ever made, full stop. The fact that it’s not already sitting at the top of Sight and Sound is just a crime. This isn’t the story of the working woman who turns away from it to finally fall in love or something. She does fulfill her dream and her purpose. Yes, it requires sacrifice at the end for her, and that is a tragedy, but it also was a victory for her because she finally lived for an expression of how she wanted to shape the world. That is a triumph, and it’s a triumph that is denied almost every other character on this show—and a lot of the women on this show—and so, really, we mark that as a victory. And Blackthorne was there to pay witness to it and to understand it in the end, I hope.

I haven’t read Shōgun, but throughout the show, I got the sense that this adaptation was pretty faithful to the novel. So, for all the people like me who haven’t read the book, what deviations did you make?

Marks: There was a large chunk of a section that we really deviated from—it’ll be interesting to see what the reactions are. I think you’ll never know if you didn’t read the book: The theater sequence in Episode 6 is a total invention. And the deaths in Episode 8, both Nagakado and Hiromatsu’s—in the book, both of those characters just quietly exited stage left. We felt that that would be unbecoming of them as characters. We wanted to land them in the right way, and there was this wonderful scene in the book, one of my favorite scenes in the book, where these three generals come in and commit seppuku in front of Toranaga in protest of what he’s doing and Toranaga doesn’t yield, even though what he’s doing is a ploy and he needs them to commit seppuku. We felt that it lacked the emotional resonance that Hiromatsu’s death could carry, especially if Hiromatsu—I don’t know if Rachel disagrees—in the end knew what he was doing.

Kondo: Oh, for the record, I think Hiromatsu knew what he was doing. Throughout the entire season, Hiromatsu is the first to admit, “I’m not as smart as you, my Lord, I don’t get what your calculations are, I don’t know what the plan is.” I think it’s the only instance in the entire season in which he actually one-ups Toranaga, when it came to the plan. I don’t think Toranaga expected him to take it that far.

Let’s talk about Toranaga’s Keyser Söze moment, where he fully reveals his ambition and all of his puppet strings. It’s a scene where you realize that Toranaga is, in fact, subject to the typical human faults of greed and power—that he isn’t levitating above it all. And suddenly, as a viewer, I liked him less. Is that how Toranaga is ultimately left in the book? Or did you feel the need to amp up his villainy at all?

Marks: It’s identical to how he’s portrayed in the book. That’s so amazing to me. It’s a pretty bold ending, after 1,200 pages, to come down to that moment. The only difference is that Toranaga reveals that secret heart to the reader and the reader alone. In our story, we wanted it to be with Yabushige as he beckons his death because we knew we were sending Yabushige into oblivion. So it was the perfect well to whisper into, to use In the Mood for Love terminology.

Tokugawa Ieyasu, the real-life model for Toranaga, is a revered figure in world history and Japanese history. He’s someone who impacted 260 years of peace after a century of civil war, and he constructed Edo, which would later become Tokyo. That’s no small feat. We want to give a great man his due, if you will. Having said that—and maybe it’s a modern thing—I always feel in the back of my mind this concern when it comes to how we tell stories and craft the mythology of great men. It was part of the reason we reminded the audience of Fuji’s baby, who had to die so Tokyo could someday live.

Kondo: I think it was important to Hiroyuki Sanada, who played Lord Toranaga, to never shy away from the realities of this character and even the real historical figure. But what I think was important to him, and what I’ve been hearing him discuss, is what sets him apart from the other almost maniacal characters who did end up constructing and shaping history for us. What separates Toranaga is that he had a plan and a vision that far exceeded his lifetime. Again, I think that a more modern great man, if you will, is more concerned with how he will be propped up in this lifetime, or maybe even the generation just after.

Now I have another question about Blackthorne. We slowly watch as he becomes more comfortable with Japanese over the course of the series. How fluent do you think he is by the end?

Marks: I think he’s gotten to the point where he could scoot through the Tokyo subways without asking for directions. In his prepared speech to Toranaga, the idea was that, together with Fuji, he was able to construct something the night before to make sure he’s understood in the way that he needs to be to get what he’s trying to achieve. In the final episode, we wanted him to finally be able to read emotional truths with the people he’s speaking to, whether that was Fuji or Toranaga. To a certain extent, it’s also what he witnesses in Yabushige when Yabushige does confess to betrayal. I think, to see that and feel that in the look, even though he probably doesn’t understand most of the specifics, was what Cosmo was playing on that day.

One consistent thing I’ve heard over the course of the show’s run is just how legible people find it. Even though you’re distilling all of this history, and different languages and traditions—to say nothing of the multiple layers of deceit—the audience hasn’t had difficulty following the action. I’m curious to know if that was a priority for you.

Kondo: I think, personally, that’s one of the highest compliments that anyone can pay us, simply because so much effort went into discussing, in the writers room, the elements and the components to the story that needed to be there. It’s very, very difficult to curate and to conflate and to make those million decisions. But I think our advantage was that neither of us had come to the property with a deep familiarity of the book.

Marks: In any given episode, I take the opinion that there has to be just one thing going on. I have trouble with the tradition of A, B, and C storytelling, because if Plot A is about the whole kingdom is about to collapse, and then Plot B is about two characters trying to save their marriage, they don’t line up in terms of stakes. I think everything has to be subordinate to that one through line, and in Shōgun we were able to do that because, frankly, that’s what the book does.

Let’s get to the main event, which is the concluding scene. We have Blackthorne and Toranaga exchanging this strange glance, and a half-scoffing chuckle. It’s pretty audacious to end the series on such a quiet moment. What feeling were you trying to convey there?

Marks: It’s so nice sometimes when you’re writing to a visual ending. In the writers room, we had that ending from the very first week: this look between two men that would be somewhat ambiguous, and we’d let it breathe. Cosmo and I talked a lot about this wonderful shot of Jack Nicholson in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest that just lingers on his face for several minutes towards the end of the film, and you see the whole gamut of human emotion running across his face. In this case, I think you’re looking at, in Blackthorne, a man who’s been restored to purpose, so he feels alive again, as many men like Blackthorne need purpose to feel alive, but he’s been successfully broken to Toranaga’s fist, finally. He is no longer the author of his own destiny in the way that he thought he was in the beginning, and he’s finally free because of it, because he finally can let go and subordinate himself to—as the Japanese would call it—the pattern of events, this fact of life that you can’t ever control.

We originally thought the final scene would just be Blackthorne leaving the frame, and ending on the empty frame. We found this other moment where Hiro-san turned towards the water, and we really loved that shot. It went all the way back to the last shot of Blackthorne on the Erasmus in the opening episode, looking towards the empty indefinite horizon that he was obsessed with, like an addict to a drug, this horizon that Blackthorne lived for. In this case, Toranaga was looking towards a horizon that was mountainous, that was the future—it was right there in front of him, and that’s what Toranaga could see. In some ways, it’s like those mountains weren’t really there; only Toranaga and the audience could see them. I really love that feeling.

The idea that you can find liberation by accepting your fate, or submitting yourself to some sort of destiny, is such a hard ideal to convey to a hyperindividualistic Western audience. Did you find that difficult to express at all?

Kondo: There’s a line where Mariko says that all Blackthorne is chasing is his free will but he’ll never be free of himself. I remember feeling my brain trying to work better, and be sharper, to understand that, because you’re right. As Westerners, the impulse is always about drive. It’s about getting there. It’s about me. It’s about how I will be furthered in every way. That’s a mission. That’s why we’re up to stuff and we’re busy. But it’s a kind of enslavement, I think.

Marks: Emily Yoshida, in the writers room, came to that line. I remember all of us being in the room, after weeks of discussing the central core argument between Blackthorne and Mariko; we were at this position, as Westerners, of “How is Blackthorne anything other than completely right about this? How does this make sense from Mariko’s point of view?” We were just scratching at it and scratching at it, and it was really that idea of being bound by your own compulsion to control this path of destiny. It started to open us on a different journey, and even then, I’d say, we resisted it.

For me, personally, over the course of making this show, I learned a whole new discipline about how I want to make shows because of this exact question that I realized this notion. In television, we talk a lot about authorship; just like in film, everyone’s obsessed with authorship in film—that it must be the “director’s film.” I won’t express my opinion on that, but I will say that there’s all this talk in television about how it’s the writers’ medium. After Shōgun, and only after Shōgun—after the process of working with our Japanese producers, our Japanese advisers, our Japanese partners on this project, our actors, and our crew, and just our process of working with weather and locations and COVID—I don’t believe anymore that the writer is ever truly the author of anything. At least anything that’s very good. After Shōgun, and after Toranaga’s message, I think that the writer is the author of a process in television—and the process is what authors a story.

That’s what it was like looking at Toranaga. It’s like, “OK, well, he controls everything. He controls the wind,” but he doesn’t. He, throughout this story, relinquishes control all the time. When nothing is working for him, he just waits for it to work out in the end in some way. That philosophy is an acknowledgment of your powerlessness, and yet just because you’re powerless doesn’t mean that you don’t have dignity and control over who you are and what your happiness is.