‘Shogun’ Episode 9 Recap: an Army of One

Season 1, Episode 9: ‘Crimson Sky’

It’s a deception by which even the ingenious Lord Toranaga would be impressed. Step one: Spend several episodes of your prestige-drama period piece touting “Crimson Sky,” a battle plan for an all-out assault on a medieval castle the brutality of which frightens even Toranaga himself.

Step two: Use “Crimson Sky” as the name for the penultimate episode of your 10-episode mini-series, when both you and the audience know that the penultimate episode is where massive battles tend to happen in prestige-drama period pieces.

Step three: Don’t have a battle.

Put that way, “Crimson Sky” is a bit of a bait and switch. But to deride it as such is to ignore all the episode delivered in exchange for putting off a climactic confrontation of samurais. It is a riveting look at a woman in extremis, channeling a lifetime of pain into one final incandescent act of strength and sacrifice.

After opening with a flashback that shows young Lady Mariko’s desperate to follow her family in death, the episode proper begins with Mariko, Lord Yabushige and John Blackthorne’s arrival in Osaka. The rascally Yabushige continues playing each side against the other, to mixed results, while deepening his unlikely friendship with Blackthorne.

Mariko, it soon becomes clear, is there on a very specific mission. Addressing the shocked Council of Regents, led by Lord Ishido but ruled by his fiancée Lady Ochiba, Mariko declares her intention to leave the city the next morning, with Lord Toranaga’s consorts and infant son in tow. Ishido comes up with procedural reasons to delay their departure, or at least he tries to, largely based on Mariko’s own shockingly indecorous behavior in court.

Proudly declaring herself the daughter of the disgraced Lord Akechi Jinsai and heir to a thousand years of samurai tradition, she declares, “I will never be captive, or hostage, or confined. I am free to go as I please, as is anyone.” She says this from the center of the frame, with her eyes pointed at the camera. The staging is clear: It all comes down to her.