Plenty has been said elsewhere about how the ending was bittersweet at best and tragic with a bizarre facade of happy ever after (no homo) at worst. I won't say that it ruined the series for me as the preceding 19 episodes and 30 minutes were a goddamned delight. 😁 I'm also accustomed to Kdramas just... throwing an engine rod in the final lap. (I don't know if it's time/budget constraints or cultural expectations or what but it's a thing.) There's also a theory running around that MrQ became so unexpectedly popular that they had to toss something together last minute that would allow for a second season. Time will tell with that one but I'm not holding out hope.
What is most disappointing is that the story made few if any major missteps before taking a sudden left-turn over a cliff. Most folks seem to agree that Cheoljong and especially Bong Hwan were done dirty by a lack of closure. I'm gonna go a step further and say that So Yong also took a major kick in the teeth that wasn't even vaguely acknowledged. Lots of fans wanted to see her return, see her get the justice she deserved; and on the surface she did. But it doesn't hold water.
Bong Hwan isn't the only one with an identity crisis.
"I lived all this time thinking I was myself, but that was not true. There is not a single thing that is not a lie."
So Yong is literally so terrified of losing herself -- of the realization that the dream she lived her entire life for was not hers at all, but the ambition of her family and totally inescapable -- that she is driven to suicide.
Instead of dying though, her soul cowers in the back of her mind while another personality takes over her body. She is a mere observer to what are the most important weeks of her young life. She essentially misses out on her own wedding and wedding night. She is not the one who lays the foundation of her relationship with her husband -- or anyone else in the palace for that matter. This rude, preposterous, disturbing MAN who is 14 years her senior and from 200 years in the future is the one steering her first steps as an adult. Worst of all, even the people who have known her since childhood fail to recognize the extent to which she has changed.
That right there? Is fucked up. And the ending fails to acknowledge the fucked-uppedness. Like, when So Yong finally regains her body and discovers that Bong Hwan's influence lingers, it's played as character growth rather than further distortion of her already tenuous sense of self.
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