How “Tokyo Vice” came full circle with season 2 finale

It all comes back to Ansel Elgort and Ken Watanabe sharing some whiskey and reflecting on the nature of power in Japan.

Tokyo Vice was always envisioned as at least a two-season story — and with this week’s season 2 finale, that story came full circle. The Japanese crime lord Shinzo Tozawa (Ayumi Tanida) was brought down before he could achieve control over the entire country, but it didn’t happen in the way that American journalist Jake Adelstein (Ansel Elgort) would have liked.

Jake, after all, did a lot of reporting to uncover how Tozawa was able to achieve a life-saving liver transplant in America, despite the fact that his criminal activities should have kept him on a no-fly list. But Jake’s article didn’t bring Tozawa down; in fact, it wasn’t published at all.

“In the American version of this story, the article would've been published, because the truth always comes out and the press always helps the cause of freedom,” series director Alan Poul says. “This is a much more realistic ending from the Japanese side, where you find out that the somewhat benevolent editor-in-chief not only isn't going to run the piece, but was also responsible for destroying the videotape. That is very true to the situation in that world, but also it's the inverse of what you would've expected from an American crime show.”

Although the show is a heavily fictionalized version of the real-life Adelstein’s book Tokyo Vice, the scoop about a criminal kingpin’s liver transplant that never got published is real.

When the show began, Jake had to learn firsthand that crime worked differently in Japan than back home in America. In order to minimize violence, the Tokyo police (including Ken Watanabe’s Detective Katagiri) maintained a truce with the yakuza. That arrangement was threatened, especially in season 2, by Tozawa’s relentless rise to power, as well as a police crackdown initiated by Shoko Nagata (Miki Maya). But in the end, the police allowed the yakuza to take care of Tozawa for them, re-establishing their shared interests.

Rogers wanted to mark that full-circle moment by mirroring the first meeting between Jake and Katagiri back in season 1.

“I knew for many, many months that I wanted the last scene of the season to be Jake and Katagiri sitting on the porch having a whiskey, which is how their whole relationship began,” Rogers says. "He explained to him in that scene, ‘this is how power works.’ The journey those two characters have been going on ever since was spelled out that early in a 60-second speech from Ken to Ansel.”

That’s the end of this two-season story, but is it the end of Tokyo Vice? It doesn’t have to be.

“I ended the season so that we could, if we were done, satisfy the audience and ourselves,” Rogers says. “But I very much have a very clear idea for season 3, and we would love to do it, so we will find out.”

For now, the two seasons of Tokyo Vice are streaming on Max.

Sign up for Entertainment Weekly's free daily newsletter to get breaking TV news, exclusive first looks, recaps, reviews, interviews with your favorite stars, and more.

Related content:

• Jake goes home to America in exclusive Tokyo Vice clip

• Tokyo Vice season 2 first look reveals new characters, new dangers

• Tokyo Vice star Ken Watanabe talks Godzilla, Broadway, and highlights from his decades-long career

• What Michael Mann brought to Tokyo Vice
  

Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly.