‘Shōgun’ Star Anna Sawai Details How Mariko’s Seppuku Attempt in Episode 9 Binds Her and Blackthorne Forever: “It’s a Very Romantic Thing for Her”

Shōgun Episode 9 “Crimson Sky” — the penultimate installment in FX‘s epic hit series — could have very well been called the “Mariko” Episode. Shōgun star Anna Sawai pulls off a tour de force over the course of three wildly tense set pieces that put her character in danger as well as a series of equally dramatically fraught showdowns between Mariko and her former friends, on and off lover Blackthorne (Cosmo Jarvis), and sole remaining family member. However there’s one heart-racing Mariko moment that came with a huge swerve from James Clavell’s book and a unique challenge for co-star Cosmo Jarvis…

**Spoilers for Shōgun Episode 9 “Crimson Sky,” now streaming on Hulu**

In Shōgun Episode 9 “Crimson Sky,” Mariko attempts to leave Osaka at her liege lord Toranaga’s (Hiroyuki Sanada) command, only to be violently held back by Ishido’s (Takehiro Hira) soldiers. Her attempt to leave the city with Toranaga’s consorts and infant child is a demonstration to all held in Osaka as proof that they are indeed hostages, jailed by Ishido’s command. It not only creates a political crisis for Ishido, his fiancée Lady Ochiba (Fumi Nikaido), and their supporters, but also sets Mariko up for the ultimate sacrifice.

Because Ishido’s men have prevented her from fulfilling Toranaga’s orders, Mariko is shamed. Her only recourse is to take her own life at sunset by seppuku. However, because she is Christian, she calls upon Kiyama (Hiromoto Ida) — the wealthiest regent and most powerful Christian lord — to second her. The idea being, she will strike her own heart, but he will deliver the killing blow, thus absolving her from the damnation that awaits Catholics who die by suicide.

When the time for Mariko’s seppuku arrives, however, Kiyama is not there. Ishido and Ochiba have banned him from attending in part to make Mariko’s act all the more difficult to pull off. It’s a game of chicken played out over one woman’s honor.

A devastated Mariko begins to continue with the ceremony, although it will damn her, but her lover Blackthorne steps forward to stand in as second.

“Well, this was not in the book,” Shōgun star Cosmo Jarvis explained to Decider during an interview at Winter 2024 TCA. “ln the book, I believe it’s Yabushige.”

Indeed, in Clavell’s version of events, the slippery lord Yabushige (Tadanobu Asano) volunteers himself. However, Jarvis said Blackthorne’s new role was “an addition” that showrunner Justin Marks and the episode’s writers, series co-creator Rachel Kondo and Caillin Puente, felt demonstrated Blackthorne’s “respect for her wishes.”

When Decider followed up on this later that day with Justin Marks and Rachel Kondo, Kondo revealed that the idea to have Blackthorne step up as Mariko’s second was initially “a shock” to her.

“It was one of those things that felt both surprising to us, but also inevitable. Like, naturally, this is the woman he loves. He doesn’t want her to writhe in eternal hell that he knows she believes in, right? I don’t even know if he believes in it, but he, this was his moment to look at her and to see her and to do something,” Kondo said.

“The one thing he does not want to do — he most doesn’t want to do — and he does it because of her, for her.”

Shōgun showrunner Justin Marks pointed out that Blackthorne’s decision to aid Mariko in this way existed in stark opposition to Mariko’s husband Buntaro (Shinnosuke Abe). In Shōgun Episode 8 “Abyss of Life,” Buntaro prepares an elaborate tea ceremony for Mariko before offering to give her what he believes she’s always wanted, death. Only he gets the context of such a sacrifice totally wrong and Mariko rebuffs his offer for them to commit seppuku together.

The worst she can say is no… #SHOGUN #ShogunFX pic.twitter.com/nj34pRLSrK

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“Even now you fail to understand,” Mariko tells Buntaro. “What you’ve denied me wasn’t death. It was a life beyond your reach. And I would sooner live a thousand years that die with you like this.”

“The essence of it was, ‘I wanna die on my own.’” Kondo explained. “‘You have to rope yourself into my story because I can’t even have one without you in your mind.’”

“And so to bring Blackthorne in this supportive fashion showed that, unlike Buntaro, he did see her in that moment,” Marks said, revealing that they actually went so far as to cut an exchange before Mariko’s attempted seppuku to hammer home how badly Blackthorne didn’t want to die.

“There was a line that we cut from Episode 9 before that seppuku scene where Mariko, [Blackthorne] was saying, ‘Please live…You know, don’t die for Toranaga,'” Marks paraphrased. “[And Mariko] said, ‘So you’d rather that I not die for his purposes so that I may live for yours.'”

“Damn, that was good!” Kondo said.

“I know we really like that line, butit just felt better shorter in the end,” Marks said.

“But we had a lot of zingers that we had to take out,” Kondo said.

One great line that they didn’t take out, but rather was added in, was Blackthorne’s poetic “last words” to Mariko during the seppuku scene. Cosmo Jarvis suggested the line, “Hell’s no place I haven’t seen before. Let it from your mind,” to help him grapple with Blackthorne’s out of character decision to volunteer to kill the woman he loves.

“It was quite a challenge to find the motivation for a man to do that,” Jarvis said. “A man who hates unnecessary violence. Blackthorne hates unnecessary violence. And this would be the pinnacle of unnecessary violence and it’s somebody that he cares deeply for.”

“But, you know, that’s the joy of the work. You have to find motivations for these things and you have to do them and commit to them,” he said, explaining the genesis of “Hell’s no place I haven’t seen before. Let it from your mind,” before applauding Marks’s collaborative nature for keeping it in.

According to Anna Sawai, Blackthorne’s decision to step up and second Mariko’s seppuku was “the biggest gesture of love that she feels from him.”

“It’s when she realizes how much she means to him. Because he is a Protestant and he’s going against his religion and he’s taking her over himself. He’s allowing her to die a loyal Catholic and a samurai,” Sawai told Decider during an interview earlier this week. “It’s a very romantic thing for her and she’s in a way kind of seeing him in different eyes because of what this means.

Thankfully, Ishido arrives just in the nick of time to spare Mariko’s life…for at least a night. A night that Mariko and Blackthorne get to share together. Although Yabushige’s treachery would result in Mariko’s death later that night, the two lovers get to spend one last evening in each other’s arms.

“It was just a moment of like, ‘I deserve this. We deserve this. We accept each other, we see each other and we can share this moment together,'” Sawai said, giving Mariko’s story a bittersweet, tragically romantic ending.