‘Pachinko’ returns with an emotional wallop

Yeongdo kimchi saleswoman Kim Sunja continues to be the ostensible anchor between the show's shifting timelines. She's played with fearsome resilience by Kim Min-ha as a young adult trying to make ends meet, and with poise and mischievous wisdom by screen legend and Minari actress Youn Yuh-jung, as an older woman attempting to connect and reckon with her past. For those not yet up to the speed, the first season chronicles not only Sunja's move to Osaka with her pastor husband Baek Isak (Steve Sang-Hyun Noh), but years later, the sincere attempts of her American-educated grandson Solomon (Jin Ha) to make a name for himself in the Tokyo business world, as a man split between three cultures. The show ping-pongs back and forth between these tales, and while its first season seems to switch at random, its second finds purpose within this back-and-forth structure, and provides, in the process, a riveting contrast.

Sunja's mid-century timeline skips forward to 1945, at the height of World War II and its ensuing political complications for Japan's Korean population. Isak, who was arrested for his communist activism, is nowhere to be found, leaving Sunja to raise her sons Noa and Mozasu in poverty alongside her diligent sister-in-law Kyunghee (Jung Eun-chae), while her rigid brother-in-law Yoseb (Han Jun-woo) is conscripted for work in Nagasaki. The weight of history looms large over this section. From a present vantage, the knowledge of coming events—from the outcomes of the war, to Noa's eventual ill-fate, hinted at in season one—imbues the story with a devastating dramatic irony.

This ends up further enhanced by the late-'80s drama, which sees Solomon slip further down a rabbit hole of self-loathing and ruthless ambition. Willing to succeed (and enact petty professional vengeance) at any cost, Solomon becomes a chilling embodiment of what it means to be born into a world where capital and money are the only forms of freedom and escape—the "better world" that his parents and grandparents inadvertently laid out for him through their lifelong financial struggles. It raises the question: Was it worth it?

Sunja, in both timelines, reflects upon the hardships that eventually paved this path, and Pachinko has no qualms about letting its audience suffer as she does. Its second season is wonderfully ugly—almost Succesion-esque—in the way it endears the viewer to Solomon's pain and his aspirations, before presenting their logical outcome in a world where the only meaningful response to being put down is stepping on people's backs to get ahead. The show certainly continues to portray the poor treatment of Koreans in Japan both then and now, but rather than foregrounding this as a narrative driving force (the way it was in season one), the new episodes transform it into historical and dramatic context for a much more rigorous story. Where the two chronologies once felt disconnected, they’re now bound by thematic reflections between characters across time. As Solomon’s soul hangs in the balance, so too does that of Koh Hansu (Lee Min-ho), Sunja’s wealthy, controlling former lover, who returns during the war to make amends.

The once-dueling subtitles—yellow for Korean, blue for Japanese—appear on-screen together much more frequently, as though the Baeks were far more at ease as a bilingual, bicultural family in Osaka's Korean enclave. With capable directors like Leanne Welham, Arvin Chen, and Sang-il Ree at the helm, the show's second season zeroes in on the micro-beats of its characters' stories—its most affirming and uncomfortable nuances—by holding longer on dramatic moments, and finding more rhythmic ways to transition between timelines, often following the ripple effects of actions or words.

Each episode also opens with an updated opening credit sequence, which still features the core concept of both sets of cast members dancing joyfully to the Grass Roots in a pachinko parlor, but the specifics are tilt-shifted enough to be noticeable. The '60s rock group's upbeat "Let's Live For Today" is replaced by the more reflective "Wait A Million Years," and while the parlor owned by Solomon's father Mozasu (Soji Arai) still features, so does a much older parlor, from earlier in the century.

Without giving too much away, this older parlor features in the show as well, as we get a look at how a younger Mozasu first found his way into the business, but the mere physical presence of pachinko—the popular mechanical arcade game in Japan—has never felt like the primary explanation of the series' title. While hinted at in season one, these new episodes crystalize what is likely the true meaning behind the name: Pachinko is a gambling game, and the series is entirely about the gambles taken by one family to survive (and thrive) across the decades, from emigration, to education, to living through a debilitating war. Each gamble takes its toll, and as the second season goes on, the cost to its characters becomes much more apparent—physically and emotionally.

While a third season hasn't been announced, there's plenty of material still to be adapted from Lee's book, and plenty of potential closure to round out the story. However, as a self-contained season of television, Pachinko's return ruminates on the weight of the past in gut-wrenching ways, with a potent blend of historical and contemporary drama that feels remarkably timeless, and like spending time with family during their most difficult moments.