Shogun

FX

While Shogun was originally supposed to be a one-off miniseries, it got such good viewership and won so many awards that FX and Hulu decided that it should run not just for one more season, but two, and seasons 2 and 3 are coming…eventually. We got some news about season 2 this week and its likely release date, and boy, are we going to be waiting a long time.

It’s just been announced, via a cast video, that Shogun season 2 is officially in production. Great! Well, sort of, but if you look back in time, woof, this is going to be a wait.

• Shogun season 1 was first announced in 2018 when development of the series started.
• Filming (production) began in September 2021 and lasted nine months, finishing in June 2022.
• Then post-production began, and the release date of Shogun season 1 was ultimately set for February 27, 2024.
• So, you can see the potential issue. If Shogun season 2 is beginning production now, using that season 1 timeline, that is a 2-year 5-month gap between filming and release. So, 2 years and 5 months from now would be September 2028.

So, the gap between seasons 1 and 2 of Shogun would be 4.5 years. This is wildly longer than even some of the longest streaming series breaks we’ve seen, with shows like Wednesday and Stranger Things pushing 3 years each. This is Euphoria territory, where it wasn’t even clear if that show would ever return after four years, or True Detective, which was technically “revived” after five years exactly.

There are some things that could reduce the estimated time here. They have established some things like locations, sets, props, costumes and other things from season 1. Not that everything is reused, of course, but it could slim down time rather than everything being done from scratch. There was also significant time pursuing true historical accuracy during post-production, so if that information is already known, at least a lot of it, that could help. But how much reduction are we talking about here? It seems impossible this would ever be less than three years, given everything with season 1’s production.

All of this said, I’m not sure the Shogun audience is clamoring for an imminent return, and there is some skepticism about this project, given that it wasn't supposed to exist in the first place. It is also losing Emmy-winner Anna Sawai, who was (spoilers) killed in the first season and would likely not appear anywhere outside of perhaps brief flashbacks, if at all.

Given how talented everyone involved in Shogun was and is, this isn’t to say it’s going to be bad, but it can be tough to take something incredibly acclaimed that was supposed to just last one season and extend it. We’re literally seeing this with Beef right now on Netflix, which is being reviewed worse and watched much less than the first season. We’ll see how it goes with Shogun.

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