Shogun Episode 4 is right around the corner. While fans await its premiere on FX, Hulu and Disney+ on Tuesday, March 12, the show creators, Justin Marks and Rachel Kondo, have already addressed the show’s fate beyond the finale. Outranking the previously held spot of the best streaming debut for an FX entry on Hulu, Shogun has surpassed The Bear Season 2 opener. Starring Hiroyuki Sanada, Anna Sawai, Cosmo Jarvis, Tadanobu Asano and others, Shogun breathes back life into the epic vision of feudal Japan.

It’s based on James Clavell’s novel (1975), which was previously adapted into a miniseries in 1980. However, Marks and Kondo declared the 2024 outing as its own thing, devoid of any derivations from the former adaptation. The 10-episode limited series is underway and hasn’t yet crossed its midway mark. However, the creative couple has seemingly put their foot down on Shogun Season 2 speculations, which were inevitably going to hound them, given how well their production is doing for itself.

Scooping out the larger-than-life epicness of Clavell’s 1000-page novel wasn’t easy on either of them. Marks and Kondo knew what they were signing up for. Despite the “painstaking process” that came along with reimaging this olden interpretation of Japanese culture, the pair fell in love with everything associated with Clavell’s world. Even though the series is set in the historic environs of the samurai era, its broadening, “modern, intersectional” look immersed in realism offers worthy insights that resonate in present-day reality as well. In a new interview with The Hollywood Reporter, the couple came clean about their plans for the show’s future.

Creators discuss Shogun Season 2 prospects:

Correlating it all to being a parent, especially since Marks and Kondo had two babies during the show’s production, they feel like they’ve given their characters everything they could with the first season itself. Marks remarked, “We took the story to the end of the book and put a period at the end of that sentence.” And they both love the story’s finale. It signals that they’ve told the story they hoped to tell, seeing no point in stretching its elasticity, resulting in a super-saturated mixture in the future, which could ruin the golden memory of what they’ve built with the first season.

Despite being reminded of the show’s early success, Marks again hit us with a reality check through his words, prompting that if Shogun Season 2 were to be a reality, they would’ve been on set for it right now. However, since that’s not happening, the creatives have drawn the conclusive line from their end.

Once the disappointing news was laid, the THR interviewer recommended another period novel built along the same lines of feudal Japan, though set in a later timeline than Shogun’s – David Mitchell’s The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet. Marks appeared fairly consenting to treating its adaptation as a “pseudo-season two.” Will this elseworld spinoff ever twist into a lived reality? Only another interview with Marks and Kondo in time will tell.