Revenge is a blade best served cold in Blue Eye Samurai. While samurai stories are nothing new to television, it’s not every day that a female samurai gets the spotlight — especially a mixed-race warrior set in Japan’s Edo period (1603-1868). Following Mizu’s (Maya Erskine) violent path of revenge, Blue Eye Samurai sits somewhere between Quentin Tarantino‘s graphic intensity and the classic Japanese “chanbara” sword-fighting films of Akira Kurosawa.
Fittingly so, Blue Eye Samurai is an East meets West ordeal. The series is about identity as much as it is about revenge. Along the way, Mizu doesn’t just fend off bounty hunters or enemies of the state — she also has to face who she is. Born into a heritage she didn’t choose, she struggles to reconcile with a world that rejects her. As she gets closer to the man responsible for her pain, Mizu begins to realize that getting even isn’t just about holding onto anger, but learning when to let it go.
What Is ‘Blue Eye Samurai’ About?
Blue Eye Samurai introduces Mizu (Erskine), a mixed-race swordswoman — disguised as man — with a thirst for revenge. Although she is not a samurai by formal rank, Mizu is self-taught, often outbattling any enemy that comes her way. Before Mizu’s birth, her mother was forcibly taken by one of the four white men in Japan, which led her to grow up as a “creature of shame,” as mixed-race individuals were considered an atrocity at the time. Born with piercing blue eyes, her dual race is not acceptable by society’s standards, forcing her to conceal them behind a pair of glasses.
Collider Exclusive · Action Hero Quiz Which Action Hero Would Be Your Perfect Partner? Rambo · James Bond · Indiana Jones · John McClane · Ethan Hunt
Five legends. Five completely different ways of getting out alive — with style, with muscle, with charm, with luck, or with a plan so intricate it probably shouldn’t work. Ten questions will reveal which action hero was built to have your back.
🎖️Rambo
🍸James Bond
🏺Indiana Jones
🔧John McClane
🎭Ethan Hunt
01
You’re dropped into a dangerous situation with no warning. What do you need most from a partner? The first few seconds tell you everything about who belongs beside you.
02
You have to get somewhere dangerous, fast. How do you travel? How you get there is half the mission.
03
You’re pinned down and outnumbered. What does your ideal partner do? This is when you find out what someone is really made of.
04
The mission is paused. You have one evening to decompress. What does your partner suggest? Who someone is when the pressure drops is who they actually are.
05
How do you prefer your partner to communicate mid-mission? Good communication is the difference between partners and a liability.
06
Your enemy is powerful, well-resourced, and has the upper hand. How should your partner approach them? The approach to the enemy defines the partnership.
07
Things go badly wrong and you’re captured. What do you trust your partner to do? Who someone is when you need them most is the only thing that matters.
08
What does your ideal partner bring to the table that you couldn’t replace? A great partner fills the gap you didn’t know you had.
09
Every partnership has a cost. Which of these can you live with? No one comes without baggage. The question is whether you can carry it together.
10
It’s the final moment. Everything is on the line. What do you need from your partner right now? The last question is the most honest one.
Your Partner Has Been Assigned Your Perfect Partner Is…
Your answers have pointed to one action hero above all others. This is the person built to have your back — for better or considerably, spectacularly worse.
Rambo
Your partner doesn’t talk much, doesn’t need to, and will have assessed every threat in your immediate environment before you’ve finished your first sentence. John Rambo is not a man of plans or politics — he is a force of nature shaped by survival, loyalty, and a capacity for endurance that goes beyond anything training can produce. He will not leave you behind. He has never left anyone behind who deserved to come home. What you get with Rambo is the most capable, most quietly ferocious partner imaginable — one who has been through things that would have broken anyone else, and who chose to keep going anyway. You’ll never need to ask if he has your back. You’ll just know.
James Bond
Your partner will arrive perfectly dressed, perfectly briefed, and with a cover story so convincing it’ll take you a moment to remember what’s actually true. James Bond is the most professionally dangerous person in any room he enters — and the most disarmingly charming, which is the point. He operates in a world of layers, where nothing is what it appears and every advantage is used without apology. You’ll never be bored. You’ll occasionally be furious. But when it matters — when the mission is genuinely on the line and the margin for error has collapsed to nothing — Bond is exactly the partner you want. He has survived things that have no business being survivable. He does it with style. That is not nothing.
Indiana Jones
Your partner will know the history, the language, the cultural context, and exactly why the thing everyone else is ignoring is actually the most important thing in the room. Indiana Jones is brilliant, reckless, and occasionally impossible — but he is also one of the most resourceful, most genuinely knowledgeable partners you could find yourself beside. He approaches every situation with a scholar’s eye and a brawler’s instinct, which is an unusual combination and a remarkably effective one. He hates snakes and gets personally attached to objects of historical significance, both of which will slow you down at least once. It doesn’t matter. What Indy brings is irreplaceable — and the adventures you’ll have together will be the kind people write books about. Assuming you survive them.
John McClane
Your partner was not supposed to be here. He does not have the right equipment, the right information, or anything approaching the right odds. He has a sarcastic remark and an absolute refusal to accept that the situation is as bad as it looks. John McClane is the greatest accidental hero in the history of action cinema — a man whose superpower is stubbornness, whose contingency plan is improvisation, and whose capacity to absorb punishment and keep moving would be alarming if it weren’t so useful. He will complain the entire time. He will make it significantly more chaotic than it needed to be. And he will absolutely, unconditionally, without question come through when it counts. Yippee-ki-yay.
Ethan Hunt
Your partner has already run seventeen scenarios by the time you’ve finished reading the briefing, and the plan he’s settled on involves at least two things that should be physically impossible. Ethan Hunt operates at the absolute edge of human capability — technically, physically, and intellectually — and he brings the same relentless precision to protecting his partners that he brings to dismantling organisations that shouldn’t exist. He is not easy to know and he will never fully tell you everything. But he will carry the weight of the mission so completely, so absolutely, that your job is simply to trust him — and the remarkable thing is that trusting him always turns out to be the right call. The mission will be impossible. He will complete it anyway.
Over the course of Mizu’s journey, the self-proclaimed lone wolf encounters different characters along the way, including both new faces and familiar faces from her past. Ringo (Masi Oka), an optimistic, handless soba cook, joins her quest despite his physical limitations. Mizu also reunites with a childhood bully, Taigen (Darren Barnet), an arrogant samurai who hunts her to restore his honor after she defeats him. What starts off as Mizu’s hunt for revenge eventually becomes a series of lessons for her. Even the bloodiest pursuit of justice ultimately reveals a simple truth: overcoming evil begins with making peace with oneself.
‘Blue Eye Samurai’ Is Based on Japan’s “Sakoku” Policy
Blue Eye Samurai is set in 17th-century Japan, a period when the country was mostly closed off from the outside world under the Tokugawa shogunate’s isolation policy, known as “sakoku.” Even so, foreign influences still slipped in through illegal trade, and that’s where the show builds much of its tension. Blue Eye Samurai explores how even a limited Western presence can leave an impact on a tightly controlled society. One of the clearest examples is Abijah Fowler (Kenneth Branagh), an Irish weapons smuggler whose guns begin to challenge the power of the samurai sword, symbolizing how Eastern traditional weapons are disrupted by Western modern technology.
In real history, “sakoku” was introduced partly to control foreign influence and restrict the spread of Christianity, and it lasted for over 200 years. During this period, Japan severely limited contact with other countries, allowing trade mainly with the Dutch and Chinese under certain conditions. The “sakoku” policy eventually met its end in the 1850s, when growing foreign pressure forced Japan to open up. A major turning point came in 1853, when Commodore Matthew Perry arrived with US warships, revealing how vulnerable Japan was to Western military power. As a result, the Convention of Kagawa was held in 1854, which officially reopened Japan’s ports to foreign trade.
It Takes More Than a Good Sword To Become a Samurai
Maya Erskine voices Mizu in Blue Eye Samurai on Netflix.Image via Netflix
Blue Eye Samurai wouldn’t be complete without samurai action, and this is where it contrasts sharply with Western firearms. There is an art to being a samurai, beginning with the connection between the warrior and the blade itself. Mizue’s swordfighting journey begins after a childhood encounter with Master Eiji (Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa), a blind swordsmaker who adopts and trains her. Although Mizu is a fast learner and begins her life as a sword apprentice doing grunt work before becoming a fighter, Master Eiji can sense where her intentions truly lie — she wants to become a swordswoman not for the craft, but for cold-blooded retribution, much to his disappointment.
This is where Mizu struggles in Blue Eye Samurai. She can effortlessly defeat hundreds of henchmen, but a conscience filled with rage and revenge-driven obsession is easily manipulated. To become a true warrior, she must not only have skill, but a pure soul where the blade feels like it “responds” to her. Guns are heavy weapons, but they are merely mass-made contraptions. A sword, on the other hand, is treated as an extension of one’s spirit. It is not something purchased from illegal dealers. It must be personally forged. Mizu proves through her action that flashy moves or complex swordsmanship do not make a samurai — the heart does.
