When Sunja (Yuh-jung Youn) confronts a new friend (Jun Kunimura) with dark secrets she has dug up from his past, he reacts with the resignation of someone who has long since come to terms with them. He does not react with shock or deny the truth. He offers explanations that are not necessarily apologies. He accepts that she is right, that his past cannot be changed. But he asks, “What are we supposed to do then? Spend the rest of our lives chained to it?”

Sunja has no answer to that, and neither does her series. Right down to its format, which cuts between two timelines, Apple TV+’s Pachinko presents itself as a reflection on the impossibility of finding one. Seeds planted years, decades, or generations ago have a habit of blossoming at unexpected times and in unexpected ways. And as in the series’ stunning first chapter, creator Soo Hugh (adapting Min Jin Lee’s novel) harvests them for emotional truths whose bittersweetness lingers long after the credits roll.

The second season picks up both halves of the story right where they left off. In 1945, 30-year-old Sunja (Minha Kim) and her family are kidnapped to wait out World War II in the relative safety of the Japanese countryside – thanks to the orchestration of Koh Hansu (Lee Minho), Sunja’s shady former lover and the biological father of her eldest son Noa. Meanwhile, in 1989, Sunja’s grandson Solomon (Jin Ha) plans his revenge on Abe (Yoshio Maki), the businessman he blames for his career.

Although the vast fields of Sunja’s war journey are miles away from the glittering skyscrapers that house Solomon’s Palace, Pachinko derives much of its impact from the way its stories repeat, contradict, or layer on top of one another. Often, slow fades leave an image or sound from one scene hanging on the screen until the next one begins, making it impossible to tell exactly where young Sunja’s family dinner ends and Solomon’s ramen dinner alone begins.

Some of the difficulties the Baek family faced are things we can see coming from afar in 2024. You don’t have to remember the Japanese financial crisis of 1990 in detail to see reflections of the 2008 crash in Solomon’s disingenuous real estate pitches. While the Japanese occupation of Korea may have felt like an untold story to most American viewers (unless you also grew up in a Korean-American household and listened to elders bitterly lament Japanese oppression), the months leading up to VJ Day will be more recognizable. The moment Kyunghee (Eunchae Jung), Sunja’s sister-in-law, mentions that her husband Yoseb (Junwoo Han) has been sent away to work at a munitions factory in Nagasaki—well, we know what that means. The ten-minute sequence leading up to this bomb is the highlight of this tape, captured by director Arvin Chen in the grainy black and white and boxy format of an old newsreel, accompanied by the ominous Tick a countdown clock.

As always, however, PachinkoThe film’s greatest gift is its observant eye. Nothing escapes its attention: not the shabbiness of a shirt collar, not the care with which a mother packs her son’s suitcase, not the casual way in which adolescent Noa (Kang Hoon Kim) and his younger brother Mozasu (Eunseong Kwon) slip Japanese words into Korean conversation, nor the unease that darkens the faces of older Korean relatives who hear it. Each detail contributes to the texture of its reality, until taken together they take on the weight of entire life experiences. Even as the family lives through groundbreaking historical events, it is these comparatively mundane memories that firmly anchor us in this world.

But if Pachinko Though the series shines in these small moments, it sometimes struggles to balance the intimacy of its narrative with the ambition of its scope. While the first season followed Sunja on the path to new feelings, new shores, and a new family, season two finds the Baeks turning inward. Koh orbits the family like a jealous moon, steering the tides of their destiny and trying to protect them from outside influences. New characters (like Sungkyu Kim as Koh’s tormented henchman) and improved supporting characters (like Solomon’s lover Naomi, played by Shogun‘s Anna Sawai) seem more like temporary distractions than life-changing relationships. The latest eight-hour season misses out on the wide-open possibilities of earlier chapters — though a shift in focus in the second half to the now college-age Noa (Tae Ju Kang) hints at new horizons for the third season.

There’s also a certain sense of ambiguity missing. As easy as it is to love every version of Sunja, the younger one may come across as too noble—Minha Kim has a gift for conveying a whole rainbow of emotions with a single guileless glance, and I would have loved to see what she would do with a few darker tones in her palette. Her 1940s sweethearts are portrayed in a similarly idealized light. A bittersweet love triangle somehow leaves all three corners on the moral high ground, while a years-long trauma reaction seems to disappear with a single stern address.

In this respect, Solomon comes across as a cold gust of wind breaking through the sentimentality. He is a less straightforward protagonist, more temperamentally akin to the prickly Koh than his kindly grandmother. But he also seems less relatable than her, and his plot is by far the less engaging of the two, relying on a dry and slow financial scheme.

But if neither side seems complete on its own, when combined they become something more complicated, less predictable and altogether richer. They tell the story of a dream, not just a life. In the mid-20th century, Sunja struggles in the hope that her descendants might one day have a better future. By the end of that century, Solomon both benefits from and resents those sacrifices. In a moment of desperate candor, he takes out his anger on a Korean woman (Hye Jin Park) about Sunja’s age. “I’ve lived a pathetically simple life,” he admits. “When I see the way you look at me, the way my grandmother looks at me, how can you not wonder, Did I really go through all this for this?”

This time, the show offers the kindness of an answer. “I don’t regret how I lived. It was a life well lived,” she tells him. The Baeks’ stories may or may not turn out the way they hoped; the Sunja of 1989, for her part, sometimes seems downright confused about what has become of the world around her. Regardless of the outcome, Pachinko believes that it might be worth it to enjoy each step along the way.