It’s another week with another spectacular episode of Shōgun on FX/Hulu/Disney+. I truly hope that everyone else watching this show is loving it as much as I am.

Just to taunt me after I talked last week about how gruesome the bodies being ripped apart by cannon fire was, this episode opened with old men loading the mutilated bodies onto carts. Just gross.

The biggest shocker of this episode, at the beginning, was that Buntaro had survived with the aid of some ronin. He ended up moving in with his wife Mariko, John Blackthorne, and Fuji.

It wasn’t until watching the full episode did I grasp that Toranaga stripping his son of leader of the cannon legion wasn’t only a punishment. Sure, he felt his son disrespected him by executing Jozen and his men (and sending Jozen’s head to Ishido in Okasaka), but he also knew he could drive a wedge through Yabushige and his nephew by gifting the command to Omi. Politics!

I had hopes that we would be getting a bonding moment from Buntaro and Blackthorne as they got drunk together on sake, but it wasn’t to be. Watching Buntaro be abusive (physically, mentally, and emotionally) to Mariko was hard to endure.

I don’t even know how she’s going to contribute to this story going forward, but I was terrified of Lady Ochiba after she told Ishido that the Council of Regents would now listen to her. She holds great gravitas to her words.

It’s another week in the books of Shōgun, and we’re now halfway through the series. I can’t wait to see where this goes.