I almost abandoned this series based on a fight scene in the first episode. The King is rescued by a female warrior with fighting skills so removed from anything possible by a human being, that it was almost farcical. I had been hoping for a drama, not a farce. However, as a month had passed, recommendations to watch it kept popping up, I read that it was one of the most watched KDramas in history and had won the Seoul International Award for Best Series Drama, as well as other acting awards, so I revisited it, and I’m so glad I did. I don’t know if the production had done a course correction or that the stunt people found their footing, but I felt the series became more grounded (pun intended).

From January 31st to February 6th, I think I must have done little else than binge this 62 episode series (with the occasional trot off to the bathroom).

For me, there are three acts in this series:
Act One - establishing the kingdom and the characters, [Action Thriller]
Act 2 - the rivalry between Deokman (Princess/Queen Seondeok) and Lady Mihil [Intrigue]
Act 3 - the final betrayal [Epic Empire Building and Battles]

It was the second act had me mesmerized by the performances. Watching Misil (Go Hyun-jung) face off against Deokman (Lee Yo-won) was a masterclass in acting and writing. It was like watching chess masters with every strategic shift telegraphed on the face of each actress. I was fascinated by the skill of the performers and the trust the director gave to them to hold the drama in close ups of their faces and hands.

I give the series an 8 (don’t miss) out of 10. [Epic Drama, Adventure, Comedy, Romance, Court intrigue, Battles, Empire building]

It would have been such a good show if they packaged it into 30 episodes. They had two subplots about Hwarang side quests that were a total waste of time, they paused the main story for them. While they might have served a small tiny purpose but the drama could've accomplished that without these easily. I read somewhere that the drama was extended from 50 to 62 episodes and I can't help but wonder if there was a direct correlation between extending the drama and introducing the character Kim Chun Chu at episode 36. Because both decisions were worse than one another. What made me more suspicious that this was the case was because it felt like someone has pushed the soft reset button on the story as a whole around episode 36 and everything took a big step backward. At this exact point I was about to mentally check out. Prior to episode 36, they had this Hwarang competition which was already the weakest checkpoint at this point so what came after only made things worse. Fast forward to the last chunk of episodes, all events post Lady Mi Shil involvement were clearly an unplanned afterthought which led to an underwhelming final climax. The is exactly at the extension gap between 50-62. Away from the poor pacing, the characters showed promise until they stopped. Guess what? It happened also after episode 36, the female lead who used to be a character full of characterization became a soulless blank of wood, boring, bland and dumb. There were many other examples of characters who went through the same downgraded transformation around the cursed episode 36.

The story had one major point of disconnect that the writer blatantly swept under the rug, it single-handedly broke the story apart. The female lead came from a hermit living in the woods into her position of power immediately without any regard to any other factors concerning anything. The only justification we were given is that she read books while growing up and was raised in the streets. Her parents had no role in the process despite being the king and queen, not even for emotional support. All I see is just poor storytelling. The background music mixing was trash. Every scene started with low-ish background music, got progressively louder and became unbearably loud and intense until the scene is cut. Repeat this 20 times every episode and endure the nausea. Around midway through I was thinking this is a good 7/10 drama despite the Hwarang nonsense but it turns out that this drama was the perfect example of a drama having a good 1st half and fumbling the 2nd half so hard. I wouldn't give it more than a pitiful 5.5/10.