The first series of Apple TV+'s sweeping yet somehow incredibly intimate, multiple generations spanning trilingual family saga Pachinko blew us away with its bold, intellectual, emotional, and incredibly cinematic brand of serialised storytelling. And if the first trailer for the second season of the streamer's Min Jin Lee adaptation is anything to go by, then showrunner Soo Hugh is set to take us on another incredible timey-wimey journey as the Baek family's story continues with S2. Here we see lovers Koh Hansu (Lee Min-ho) and Sunja (Minha Kim) reunite in war-torn Osaka, Japan in 1945 as businessman Solomon (Jin Ha) continues to wrestle with his identity in 1989 Tokyo. Check it out:
How about that 'Viva La Vida' cover from BLACKPINK's Rosé? That's sweeping, epic, bold, and emotional right there! And the trailer ain't half bad, either. The first series of Pachinko introduced us to Baek family matriarch Sunja (played in her younger years by Kim, and as an older woman by Yuh-Jung Youn), whose journey we followed from working with her mother in a Korean boarding house during the country's Japanese occupation, through meeting Minhu's fish broker Koh, and emigrating to Japan with her ministerial husband. And this new look at S2 continues to show us the world through Sunja and her family's eyes across the mid- and late-20th century as matters of love and war, business and belonging, continue to shape (and reshape) the Baek brood's future.
Here's the series' official logline: "In Season 2, the parallel stories pick up in Osaka in 1945, where Sunja is forced to make dangerous decisions for her family’s survival during World War II, and in Tokyo in 1989, which finds Solomon exploring new, humble beginnings."
The second season of Pachinko also stars newly Emmy-nominated Shōgun star Anna Sawai, Eunchae Jung, Soji Arai, Junwoo Han, Jimmi Simpson and Sungkyu Kim, with Leanne Welham (Conversations With Friends), Arvin Chen, and Sang-il Lee among the series' directors. The eight-episode second instalment of Pachinko is set to premiere on Apple TV+ on 23 August, with new episodes dropping weekly thereafter. And you can bet we'll be sat enrapt once more by what is almost certainly one of the best shows in recent memory.