Shōgun Season 2 Is Unlikely According to Showrunners

FX’s Shōgun has quickly become the most acclaimed new TV series of 2024, with many fans and critics claiming it surpasses the drama, intrigue, and action of HBO’s Game of Thrones. 

However, while many may be looking at Shōgun as a major franchise starter for FX and Hulu, that’s unlikely to be case. According to the showrunners of Shōgun, getting a Season 2 order is unlikely to happen. 

Why Shōgun Won’t Get Season 2 Renewal

Even as Shōgun continues to build a buzz and attract viewers, it’s become obvious that many of those viewers may not realize the show is based on a book. James Clavell’s Shōgun novel (1975) was a literary cult classic long before Shōgun (2024) aired, and even spawned a cult-classic TV limited series in 1980 that was also a cult-hit success. The makers of Shōgun (2024) were clear from the start of production that the limited series was just that (a limited series) and that they were using the 10 episodes of the series to cover the events in Clavell’s original novel. So, while fans may look at Shōgun success and think it mitigates an obvious continuation into a second season, this was always meant to be a one-and-done event series. 

Now that Shōgun is airing, and generating bigger buzz, showrunners Rachel Kondo and Justin Marks are reminding viewers to set their expectations accordingly when it comes to future seasons:

“We took the story to the end of the book and put a period at the end of that sentence. We love how the book ends; it was one of the reasons why we both knew we wanted to do it — and we ended in exactly that place,” Marks explained to THR, later adding that “It’s not like a normal TV series, where if we were in a situation like this promoting it, we wouldn’t just be in the writers room already, we’d be on set shooting season two by now.” 

While that does seem to settle the question of Shōgun Season 2 for good, Marks did admit that it’s not a reality that he’s entirely happy with, given the extensive work that went into the pre-production and filming of this series: 

“I’ve been party to this in the past with shows like this, where you build a whole factory, and it only pumps out 10 cars and closes up shop. It’s a bummer. You know, one of our producers wrote a nearly 900-page instruction manual for how we do this show — almost as long as the book Shogun itself. All of this infrastructural knowledge went into it. I just hope someone else — maybe a friend — needs a production primer on feudal Japan at some point, so I can be like, “Here you go, use this book. That will save you 11 months.” 

Shōgun releases new episodes Tuesdays on FX on Hulu.