Pachinko's harrowing season 2 death is even more devastating because you know it's coming

It's 1945 and a storm is coming, one that will tear Japan apart at the seams. But before the sirens blare and the bombs begin to fall, a quieter yet even more devastating storm is coming for the Korean Baek family, who are struggling at the heart of it all.

Upon arriving home, Noa is startled by the arrival of a sick, dirty-looking man who shows up unexpectedly on their doorstep. This stranger is no stranger, however. It's Isak, Noa's father, who was arrested a few years prior after he helped Korean factory workers rally for better working conditions.

Noa never lost hope, though. All this time, the oldest Baek child planned to stay in the slums and wait for Isak, training to become a pastor in his footsteps.

So, his father's return couldn't have come at a better time, right? With the family starving as war encroaches, the one thing they've desperately wanted has finally come true. They've been reunited again as the family they were always supposed to be.

Except, it's obvious just from looking at him that Isak isn't long for this world. With all the beatings he endured in the most wretched conditions possible, Isak's already weak, malnourished body is now on the brink of death. That's why he begs Sunja to stay after they're reunited. But she won't have it.

With the help of a doctor, "You'll be better in no time," she says. Sunja, whose steely resolve is the literal backbone of this show, holds back tears of rage and helplessness as she quickly leaves Isak to find one.

But all the doctors have been sent to the frontlines, says Kyunghee, Isak's sister-in-law. "What if it's too late? Shouldn't you be at his side? You don't know how much longer you have."

Sunja still has hope, though, because Isak has always been sickly, ever since the kind pastor was just a small boy. "He has beaten death before," says Sunja. "He can beat it again. I know it."

We know better, of course.

Fans of Min Jin Lee's original book have known since the beginning that Isak was destined to die. But even if you haven't read Pachinko, it's clear that Isak doesn't have long left to live, and watching Sunja fight for his life anyway is the rare kind of heartbreak you pray no one you know in real life will ever have to endure firsthand.

While Noa fetches the pastor and Mozasu delivers a telegram to Isak's brother, Yoseb, in Nagasaki, Sunja asks her ex-lover, Koh Hansu, to help her find a doctor.

Noa's biological father isn't too concerned with Isak, though. He's the one who helped free the pastor by promising a prison official safe passage, but he only did it because he knew Sunja would never leave Osaka without her husband, and they need to as soon as possible because war is coming.

Hansu makes a deal with Sunja; she and the boys must escape to the countryside with him, regardless of whether Isak can make it there or not. Yet another person who doesn't believe the poor pastor can survive what's to come…

Meanwhile, Isak has a meeting of his own with his replacement pastor who took over his duties following the arrest. In front of Noa, he immediately accuses the man of betraying him all those years ago, and he's right to do so, because this "kind" priest Noa looked up to all this time was actually the one who reported Isak to the authorities, tearing his family apart in the process.

"I despised you," reveals the pastor. Because the love of his mentor, the one who raised him, "dampened" once Isak arrived in their lives. A petty, evil thing indeed, yet Isak forgives him. It's the last gift he can give to Noa and Mozasu, for them to understand that, "Mercy is neither a gift nor a power. Mercy is an admission."

All those years they lost as a family come down to this one hateful man, yet Isak still shows him mercy, and in doing so, he teaches his children more than words ever could. And that's because there's so little time left for them to be together.

"There is so much I want to say to you both," Isak tells them. "But know this one thing. No matter what, you are my sons, and I am your father."

Sunja arrives with a doctor then, reassuring everyone that "it will be OK now", even though it's clear that it won't be. The doctor confirms this privately with Sunja after, explaining that his lungs are filled with mucus and he's battling sepsis.

Sunja fights, saying she will pay whatever it costs to save him, no matter what it might cost her personally. But it's too late. The unimaginable words no one wants to hear come then: "Your husband at most has a few hours left."

Watching a loving father slowly succumb to a cruel, unjust death would be agonising enough as it is, but to know how kind he is — how he adopted Noa knowing he wasn't the father and how he rescued Sunja from her suffering — makes this all unbearable to watch.

As the doctor notes, "What they did to him… it is a terrible thing." But it's not as terrible as what we must endure next.

Alone together in their room, lying side-by-side with their faces held close together, Isak asks Sunja for forgiveness. "I did not know it would cost us this," he says.

"There is nothing to forgive," replies Sunja. "In the years you have been gone, so many come to me to speak of your kindness. What you sacrificed for others. That’s the man I met 14 years ago and it’s the man I see now. The world may have changed but you have not."

Even breathing is difficult for Isak by this point. He barely has the strength to keep his eyes open and speak, but speak he does. Because Isak knows that this is the last chance he'll ever have to see his wife. Every moment counts now. But after being there for everyone else all this time, after everything he's endured, it's finally time that Isak speaks for himself and voice the fears that are now taking hold.

"I want to see the boys grow up. Sunja, my wife, I want to hold you. I... I want to live. So much. I am dying to live."

I am dying to live… Isak spent his whole life dying to live, fighting all kinds of illness and disease to hang on as long as he could, even surviving torture long enough to say goodbye.

"When I am gone, you must find someone," Isak continues.

Sunja doesn't want to hear it (and neither do we, for that matter). "Do not say such things," she replies, unable to cope with what's swiftly becoming a goodbye.

"You have so much love to give," says Isak. "I know that."

"To be loved by my husband, to be honoured by you. It has been everything."

"But how will you go on?" he asks.

Sunja strokes Isak's face, giving him the love he's been deprived of all those years trapped in darkness.

"Do not worry about us," she replies. "I promise you. Our children will live good lives. Noa and Mozasu. They will thrive."

Isak looks happy then, in that moment, despite his pain, despite the fear of what death will bring. Because he knows that the people he loves most are going to be OK.

And with that, Isak closes his eyes one last time. A single tear rolls down Sunja's cheek and then the screen fades to black, intermittently, as she goes out to tell Noa that, "There will never be another man like your father. You are not to forget that. Never."

In a just world, these final scenes would be the Emmys reel for Kim Min-ha and Steve Sang-Hyun Noh alike, especially when Sunja walks outside, visibly shaking, as she holds onto the house she and Isak had once made a home together.

She's trembling as the tears fall, but even now, in the moment when her husband has died, Sunja holds a hand to her mouth so that her children won't hear her crying. Even now she thinks of them.

The camera then takes us through empty streets with the wind blowing again, bringing back that same sense of unease and foreboding that the episode started with. Because the suffering isn't over. Even during Isak's funeral, just as the family push his coffin into the furnace, air raid sirens begin to blare.

"I can't leave my husband," Sunja screams as she's dragged away, outraged at the thought that even now she and Isak are being torn apart in their final moments together. But go she must, because the storm is here, riding on the wings of American bombers. And Isak's death is just the beginning.

It didn't have to be this way, though. With all the changes showrunner Soo Hugh has made to her version of the text, there is a world where Isak could have lived — or could have at least spent a bit more time with his family before succumbing to death. To be reunited so briefly is the cruellest thing imaginable.

But to change Isak's fate would have changed too much - the very essence of Pachinko, in fact. Because the structural oppression responsible for his death at the hands of the Japanese, not to mention the suffering Sunja and the rest have faced, is the same systemic hate that follows Isak's children into adulthood — and even Sunja as an old woman too.

As hard as it is to stomach, Isak had to die. And knowing that his death was coming, that this pain was inevitable, makes it all the more harrowing, but also much more meaningful in the wider tapestry that Pachinko is weaving. If only it had happened to someone more deserving…

Pachinko streams on Apple TV+ – sign up to Apple TV+ now.

Check out more of our Drama coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on. For more from the biggest stars in TV, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.