Pachinko Season 3...? The Latest Updates Are Not Encouraging

Now more than nine months after Pachinko released its Season 2 finale, Apple TV+ still has not made a decision about renewing the ambitious adaptation for a third/final season.

Worse, the updates we did get in the wake of the series' latest Emmy nominations are borderline discouraging.

Pachinko Season 2 netted two Emmy nominations on Tuesday — for Production Design For A Narrative Period Or Fantasy Program, and Cinematography For A Series (One Hour) — which is actually double what Season 1 earned.

Apple TV+ development chief Matt Cherniss told sister site Deadline that it's "great to see Pachinko be honored" alongside Presumed Innocent and Dope Thief, as well as the streamer's heavy hitters such as Severance (which amassed 27 nominations), The Studio (23) and Shrinking (7).

After reiterating that Apple TV+ is "extremely proud" of what Pachinko accomplished with its first two seasons and hailing the series as having "so much hope and aspiration built in," Cherniss said. "I don't think we have anything to announce about future seasons at this time."

Deadline, meanwhile, mentioned in passing that "there was an overture to another streamer" to potentially pick up Pachinko Season 3, but it fell through. (TVLine has reached out to Apple for comment on that claim.)

Quietly but unsuccessfully shopping Season 3, plus no news from Apple, would seem to add up to bad news for Pachinko fans — even more so when you remember that Season 2 was ordered on the day that the Season 1 finale dropped, in April 2022.

Make no mistake, Soo Hugh, who created and pens the Pachinko TV series, has a plan to wrap up the sprawling story of Sunja, Solomon et al.

"When I pitched to Apple and the buyers five, six years ago, I pitched the entire [three-season] storyline," Hugh told TVLine back in October, "but we're waiting for news on Season 3. It's out of our hands."

TVLine readers gave both Season 1 and Season 2 a rare average grade of "A+." Alas, Pachinko, a multigenerational saga told in three languages, has never landed on Nielsen's weekly U.S. ranking of streaming originals.

"It's tough, because there are so many shows out there," Hugh noted when we spoke, "so it feels like, 'How do we get our show out there, how do we get more eyeballs? How do we get more people to fall in love with it like you did?'

Based on the New York Times bestselling novel by Min Jin Lee, TV's Pachinko has chronicled the hopes and dreams of a Korean immigrant family across four generations as they left their homeland in a quest to survive and thrive. Starting in Season 1 in circa 1900s South Korea, the story has been told through the eyes of a remarkable matriarch, Sunja, who triumphs against all odds. Season 2 picked up the past storyline in 1945, after a seven-year time jump, while the modern story continued in 1989.

Season 2 brought back Minha Kim as Teenage Sunja, Eunchae Jung (Anna) as Young Kyunghee, Lee Minho (When the Stars Gossip) as Hansu, Yuh-Jung Youn (Minari) as Older Sunja, Jin Ha (Devs) as Solomon, Anna Sawai (Shōgun, Monarch: Legacy of Monsters) as Naomi, Soji Arai (Tokyo Vice) as Mozasu and Junwoo Han (The Empire) as Yoseb. New for Season 2, Sungkyu Kim (Kingdom, One Ordinary Day) plays Kim Changho.