‘Shōgun’: Anna Sawai on Mariko’s Shocking Twist & What It Means for the Finale
Spoiler Alert
[Warning: The following contains MAJOR spoilers for Shōgun Season 1 Episode 9, “Crimson Sky.”]
Lady Mariko is an undeniable fan-favorite character from FX‘s wondrous Shōgun. Played with unending power by Anna Sawai, the honorable and loyal Mariko is fiercely committed to Lord Toranaga (Hiroyuki Sanada), a loyalty and respect that produces admiration, as well as confusion, in her English paramour, John Blackthorne (Cosmo Jarvis). While Mariko has pledged undying fealty to her lord, she’s been trying to commit seppuku (suicide) since her family was put to death in similar fashion — a request that goes denied every year by her abusive husband, Buntaro (Shinnosuke Abe).
To help Toranaga’s cause, Mariko was seconds away from committing seppuku in Shōgun‘s Episode 9, the penultimate episode of the limited series. Blackthorne stepped up to be her second after begging her to stay alive for him. It was his ultimate show of respect, a sign that he finally understood what this act meant to those committing it in Japan. He didn’t support the act, but he valued Mariko too highly to let what would be her final act go disrespected.
Mariko didn’t die in this moment. Lord Ishido (Takehiro Hira) folded at the last possible moment, granting Mariko a permit to leave the Osaka castle where she and the noble families were being held hostage. But it was a trap. Under the cover of the night, Ishido ordered an assassination of Mariko before she could return to Toranaga in Edo. Mariko, Blackthorne, Lord Yabushige (Tadanobu Asano), and more hostages secured themselves in a shed, but Ishido’s men attacked it with cannon fire. Knowing her role in Toranaga’s plan was to call out Ishido’s villainy, Mariko let herself be killed by the blast. Her last words were a declaration of protest in which she called herself by her maiden name, Akechi Mariko, to symbolize that her debt to her family was complete.
It’s a beautifully gut-wrenching end for this beloved character — an end that was, of course, in the book, but it still hurts all the same. Sawai tells TV Insider about filming these climactic scenes.
“It was just exciting to get to that moment because for eight episodes, she’s trapped, and she’s not able to show her emotions. She’s never really talking honestly on what she’s feeling,” Sawai explains, “but then she gets permission to go into Episode 9 and in front of Ishido and everyone else, say all these things that she couldn’t otherwise.”
Katie Yu / FX
Mariko’s final moments were not just the last scenes Sawai filmed for the series but the last scene filmed for the series altogether. She shares the different versions of getting into that shed that they filmed.
“We did four different approaches,” Sawai says. “One was we were fighting and then we go in, we’re entering the room. One was just Mariko’s closeup, and then the other one was I was standing in front of this thing that was going to blow my hair out, and we were doing it all in slow motion. The final day was with the whole cast, and we were stuck in the room. And at one point, I’m lying down on the ground. It was pretty emotional for me to keep my tears [while] lying in Blackthorne’s hands.”
Despite holding back tears in that final shot, Sawai felt “liberated” filming Episode 9.
“Strangely enough, even though it was my last episode, I felt so good about it. I felt so liberated,” she shares. “I think it’s because the character is finally flying free. The other episodes were a little harder because I felt stuck as well, like Mariko in that I wanted to express because that is our job as an actor, but also she’s not permitted to do so. And so Episode 9, I was thriving.”
Mariko and Blackthorne “pillowed” together again after he seconded her would-be seppuku, and all of Mariko’s love for the Anjin came pouring out in her last words to him, spoken as the canon was prepared and Blackthorne frantically tried to protect them all. “Anjin-sama, let it come,” she beautifully and painfully told her lover, whom Sawai says Mariko never would have ended up with (their potential relationship wasn’t “realistic”).
Her bravery and sacrifice will reverberate throughout the entire finale next Tuesday, and Sawai explains how.
“Oh my gosh. Because of her actions, people start to change very, very drastically,” she says. “We get to see certain connections with characters that didn’t have connection at all. Ochiba [Fumi Nikaido], we see a side of her that we didn’t get to see in the previous episodes. And so everyone is kind of mourning the loss and starting to see things differently. And in one of the final [scenes], there’s a very big revelation. I’m very excited to see how people react to that.”
Shōgun, Season Finale, Tuesday, April 23, 10/9c, FX
