Has Shōgun's Mariko reinvented the female lead for prestige TV?

The new Disney+ miniseries Shōgun has been compared to Game of Thrones for its epic, violent story of a warlord named Toranaga, who is battling his rivals for control of Japan in the early 1600s.

He does so with the help of a British man named John Blackthorne, who works with (and later falls in love with) a driven and complex translator named Mariko.

As the season finale airs this week, TV critics Inkoo Kang and Kaiya Shunyata join host Elamin Abdelmahmoud for a spoiler-filled discussion about what sets this adaptation of James Clavell's novel apart from others before it, and what makes Mariko stand out from other female lead characters like her in the prestige TV canon.

We've included some highlights below, edited for length and clarity. Please note this discussion contains spoilers for the first season of Shōgun.

For the full discussion, listen and follow the Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud podcast, on your favourite podcast player.

WATCH | Today's episode on YouTube:

Elamin: Kaiya, last week's episode ended on a bit of a shocking note: Mariko sacrificing herself to save Blackthorne from a gang of ninjas. How does that event take us into the finale of this week?

Kaiya: I think immediately in the finale you can feel the loss of her presence, especially considering Mariko, in my opinion, is the best character in the show. There's a shot that mirrors a shot from earlier in the season where it was Mariko, Blackthorne and Fuji, and this time it's just Fuji and Blackthorne. It's an evident loss not only in the show, but for viewers watching as well because I think she is the fan-favourite.

Inkoo: I think you really get a sense at that point of what the human stakes of this war are, because for most of the show you just have all of these rulers who are saying, "I want to be leader. No, I want to be leader. Maybe the two of us should be leaders." Now that someone has actually died that they care about, things are real for them.

Elamin: The shock of last week's episode was quite significant; it was one of the loudest moments I've seen of the show on social media. Kaiya, what do you think of the finale overall? Did it bring a satisfying conclusion to this arc for you? 

Kaiya: I think it did for me, personally. I know some people felt like there wasn't enough fanfare, but I think that makes sense for this show. We can compare it to Game of Thrones all day, but this isn't Game of Thrones. There aren't dragons and White Walkers. This is a show really about humanity and the characters on the screen. So I think making the finale essentially more toned down than the penultimate episode was a really good choice, and I think it made the impact stronger on me at least. 

Elamin: Inkoo, since it debuted, Shōgun has received all these rave reviews. Your review in The New Yorker was a bit more critical than most, I would say. Tell me what you liked about the show, but also what you felt didn't quite work.

Inkoo: I thought it was a really great reiteration of that Game of Thrones format: there is one throne, there are a bunch of people who want to be on that throne. Who is going to be on that throne? What are the pros and cons of each person being on said throne? … But at the same time, I didn't really feel like all of the characters were fully developed. One of the four main characters is Toranaga, and because you had this really big twist at the end that they are preparing you for, we don't really know very much about him until the last 20 minutes of the finale when he sort of does this James Bond-villain confession and sort of reveals everything.

I know that Mariko is a fan-favourite; she was very much written to be the fan-favourite, and I understand why people consider her the beating heart of the show. And yet at the same time, I just could not figure out a way into relating to this character. This is a woman who I think is, by necessity, a product of her time. But if I, as a person in the 21st century, am supposed to relate to a woman who wants to die, but she feels like she needs her father's permission and also her boss's permission? And also she's a mom, but she doesn't actually care about her relationship with her son enough to stay alive? … Like, I'm glad she got to do exactly what she wanted to do on Earth before she dies, and I know it's supposed to be a glorious death, but after that shock wore off I just didn't really feel anything because I didn't care about her. And I certainly did not care about her relationship with Blackthorne.

WATCH | Official trailer for Shōgun:

Elamin: So I want to come back to this, because what you've done just now, Inkoo, is established an away team. Kaiya is the home team and you're the away team. Kaiya, you said Mariko is your favourite character. What makes her so compelling for you?

Kaiya: Maybe it's because I'm still trying to heal from the sting of the final season of Game of Thrones and how the women were treated in that show, but I think it's really interesting to watch, a character like this who is the main female character, and she's not this badass warrior type of character. She uses language to kind of carve out a place for herself in this world, and I don't think TV epics are used to that at the moment.

Thinking about Game of Thrones, we have the Daenerys's and Aria's, whereas I feel like Mariko is kind of the complete opposite of that, in a way. I think you could argue that she could be girlbossified. But to me, I just think she's so much more interesting than most of the men on screen, and the actress is phenomenal. We need to start that Emmy campaign. 

Elamin: Emmy campaign starting now, I'm ready.

You can listen to the full discussion from today's show on CBC Listen or on our podcast, Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud, available wherever you get your podcasts.

Panel produced by Stuart Berman