MoMoAbi

Umm.. wdym 'more'? If she was 2 years younger then he was also 2 years younger.. If someone is 11 years younger than someone then this number wouldn't magically increase after 2 years pass...

Ngl, they really butchered the whole Fox Spirit Matchmaker's great original story with these dramas. It would've been such an amazing story if they actually put all these 3 stories in a proper 50 episode series and actually followed the actual Fox Spirit Matchmaker plot, but nope. They got greedy and they decided to split the original story in 3 and added a ton of unnecessary drama that were not in the original story just to make their 'episode count' higher..

I reallly suggest anyone interested in this series to just watch the donghua. It's much better and more compact.

Edit: Oops I didn't realize how much I wrote until I clicked 'post' lmaoo.

Ngl, if most main characters get a tragic ending that sure sound like the source material lol.
I went thorugh some episodes of this drama (as well as Love in Pavilion) and with your comment, I think I got an idea what the 3 dramas are about.
The 3 Fox Spirit Matchmaker TV series (Love in Pavilion, Sword and Beloved, and Red-Moon Pact) basiecally cover 3 different arcs of the source material (the source material has 2 forms: a manga and an anime).

The modern day extra episode that you mentioned is the drama's reference to the main plot of source material actually 😅. You see, the true story of Fox Spirit Matchmaker in the manga/anime happens in modern world and not in ancient times like these 3 dramas.

The manga/anime have multiple arcs, the main storyline is the modern-day storyline, and in each arc we get flashbacks about a different story in ancient times. The arcs that are covered in Sword and Beloved and Red-Moon Pact are the stories of the past of the modern time main characters: Tushan Susu/Tushan Honghong, Dongfang Yuechu, Wangquan Fugui, and Tushan Yaya.
Love in Pavilion covers the story of Dongfang Yuechu's aunt (Wangquan Fugui's mother) and is the most tragic arc of the whole source material imo.

To summarize the plot of manga, the story begins hundreads of years after Dongfang Yuechu is dead, and there is only Tushan Honghong remaining in the form of Tushan Susu.
There is indeed no alternative dimension plot in the source material. What happens at the end of Dongfang Yue Chu and Tushan Hong Hong's story isn't them going to another dimension and getting a happy ending. What happens is that they get fooled by the black fox and fight each other, only to realize their mistake at the very end. But it is late by that time and black fox uses the fact that they're tired after fighting each other to attack them when they're next to Grief Tree. Her plan is successful and she heavely injures and almost kills Dongfang Yuechu. Seeing he's going to die, he and Honghong immediately go to the Grief Tree and make the Pledge of Love (oath of reincarnation-- not sure if the drama covers this, but the reason the fox clan are called as 'matchmakers' and the show is called Fox Spirit Matchmaker is because of the fact that the Grief Tree and fox clan are able to connect the soul of humans and spirits to each other, thus making the soul of a human who is in love with a sprit to reincarnate and reunite with the spirit in his/her next life. Foxes then go and do 'matchmaking' between the reincarnated human and the spirit by returning the memories of the human).

But even though they fail to defeat the black fox, they also ensure the black fox 's plan to get tears of void ends in failure. They do this by sending half of tears of void to the world of death along with Dongfang Yuechu's soul. This way, black fox couldn't get her hands on the void tears while at the same time not being able to hurt Tushan Honghong because Honghong's existance is the only way to make sure Dongfang Yuechu reincarnates and bring the void tears back to their world.

Long story short, the true story of Fox Spirit Matchmaker starts when Dongfang Yuechu reincarnates and meets Tushan Susu (who looks like a young fox but is in fact Honghong who for some reason lost her memeories after his death). Then in each arc, we have flashbacks to one ancient time story and see what actually happened in the past that caused this whole situation to start. To do a simple comparison with the 3 dramas:

Arc 2 of the manga is the story of Sword and Beloved drama
Arc 3 of the manga is the story of Red-Moon Pact drama
Arc 7 of the manga is the story of Love in Pavilion drama

The main characters of the story are Honghong, Dongfang Yuechu, and Wangquan Fugui and each arc we have another pair of 'temporary main characters' that come and we get their ancient time flashbacks. The 3 dramas cover the 3 most important arcs of the anime/manga, but they also expand on those stories A LOT. If you want to watch the anime of these arcs, each arc takes around 2 hours to finish (12-14 episodes per arc, each episode 10-13 minutes). So the dramas had to add a ton of extra content to increase the stories.

ah... I think I wrote a bit too much lol. Anyway, if you're interested, I suggest you also take a look at the anime arcs of these (though skip arc 2 since the drama isn't out yet and you'd get spoiled). If you're interested to take a look:

Anime season 7 (Love in Pavilion): https://hianime.pe/fox-spirit-matchmaker-7th-season-1634 (ngl, I watched the drama's last episode and I was amazed at how amazing they adapted the ending. Even if you don't want to watch the anime, I suggest you take a look at episode 11 of this arc which covers the core scene of Love in Pavilion's ending)
Anime season 3 (Red-Moon Pact): https://hianime.pe/huyao-xiao-hongniang-yue-hong-983
Anime season 2 (Sword and Beloved): https://hianime.pe/huyao-xiao-hongniang-wangquan-fugui-1262
PS: I love the anime's openings. If you decide to watch any of them, make sure to turn off the "Auto Skip Intro" option that shows under each video and reload the page

Asking because I won't probably watch this (I've already read the source material which is probably much better than this, looking at the ratings) but what is the new concept you mention the writers introduced right at the end?

I will mark the name of this writer in my book. I will never EVER watch any other dramas written by this person ever. Distroying such a beautiful story without a SINGLE reason, just to make viewers 'emotional'? Hah, good luck with that bs. I'm out.. from this drama and from all her subsequent dramas (ofc, unless the rest of them don't turn out like this and I read some spoilers about them BEFORE I jump into watching them like an idiot.. sigh)

She was not the host of Inkigayo at 1991. Inkigayo is a very old south korean TV show that began as 1991 and has been going for over 30 years. The 'Year' column of kisskh shows the year Inkigayo began, not the year Kim Yoo-jung was one of its hosts (which was 2014~2016 as I checked now)

yes.

That's like being stuck in a deadly situation and go like "Since there is only a 10% chance that we get saved, lets sit here and do LITERALLY NOTHING for YEARS until we all die"

Running from the root problem and not telling anyone that you're being physically and emotionally abused for YEARS/MONTHS is never gonna lead to a good ending, sorry.

You stole the word from my mouth. I just wanted to write a comment that the issue was with ML's actor, not FL. For the role of Tushan Hong Hong a totally young FL would absolutely not work (not like Yang Mi looks old to begin with lmao), but for the role of ML, it would in fact have been preferable if they selected a older ML (even older-looking than FL). One of the main emotional aspects of this story was supposed to be the part that the 'non-human' FL does not grow old, but the 'human' ML keeps growing older and more mature. That was one of the best parts of the original material. By selecting a young-looking ML they effectively butchered this part of the story... I mean, look at how the original ending was supposed to look like (animated version): https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=A49DAsJoqQI&pp=ygUhRm94IFNwaXJpdCBNYXRjaG1ha2VyIGFuaW1lIEVQIDMz (start watching from 1:06 to avoid some.. dumb anime stuff)

Breaking the fourth dimension lol

Yeah. I also liked the series version more

The character they deleted was the childhood friend/maid of FX (Si Si). She was supposed to be the 2nd wife of FX after he married Wen Er. Li Li Si was also another one of FX's love interests (she also had an ahem.... relationship with Qi emperor. but no way that relationship survives the censorship considering that they're both woman...). She was also kinda a concubine for FX. FX also slept with the Qi emperor (I think she got pregnant with FX's child after that but I might remember wrong). Haitang Duoduo also had feelings for him (I think they decided to just stay friends but I might remember wrong).

Anyway, it's been over 4 years since I last read the novel so I'm probably mixing up some names and information. But as far as I see, it seems to me that the drama's producers have used all their power to avoid any 'suspicious' event that might make the viewers doubt the 'pure monogamous intent' of FX to only have one wife in his life. FX also keeps repeating this in the drama (that he'll love only one woman in his life) as if he's afraid the viewers might doubt him... Especially, I see no reason for producers to remove FX's childhood friend if not because they wanted to close all harem routes...

But ofc, as I mentioned in my previous comment, the writers might decide to change the story back to harem route. We should wait and see in season 3 I guess 😊

Considering that the novel is finished with high quality from the beginning to the end, I think your early rating of season 3 is pretty accurate :) As long as the screenwriter and the director don't crash their heads into a wall, the next season is bound to be as good (if not better) than the first 2 seasons 😊

I mean, it definitely didn't look like to me that she has any romantic interest in FX. They pretty much look like best buddies (like vesca also said).

And writers clearly hate the novel's harem side of story and they're trying to get rid of any possible misunderstanding from its roots. It makes no sense for them to suddenly make other female characters (who are supposed to be 'only friends' with FX) fall in love with him (like a harem novel). This should also be the reason they showed Doudou's conversation with Fan Sizhe. So that Doudou could officially reject any remaining chance of romantic involvement with FX.

Ofc, writers could change their minds anytime. But so far, they've obviously tried to change every single harem relationship of FX in novel to "only friends without even 1% romantic interest". They even went as far as removing one of the main (female) characters of the novel because making her look 'not in love with FX' would have been too hard...

The emperor is his father. And despite being ruthless, the emperor has shown multiple times that he does love FX (more than his other children at least). I don't see why everyone is so surprised about FX trying to defend him once.

And FX has more problems to deal with than CPP now. it was already mentioned in the first 2-3 episodes (I don't remember which) of this season that FX decided to avoid fighting with CPP for now. After all, there are much bigger problems in capital for now. In the middle of all this chaos, it would be stupid for FX to also make an enemy out of his main source of support - the overwatch council.

Did u skip the 1st season? FX already knows emperor is his father. That's why he was shocked when his mother's old servants told him that his mother told them his surname would be "Fan" (and not the surname of the royal family)

Waahtt? I don't think I can ever follow the thought process of BL fans....

Lol that's funny

"light-hearted beginning"?!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I didn't have time to check the other comments but this sounds ridiculous. This season started far darker compared to the previous season. Every 3-4 episodes FX finds some new source of corruption in the government and he's drowning more and more in how helpless he is to deal with any of these issues. And when he tries to fix one of them, things turn out even worse than before. FX's face has been on the verge of collapse out of pressure in the last few episodes.
How tf would anyone call this season light-hearted jeez

Well said! Tbh this season has been as amazing as S1 for me. I was really worried they screw something up after yrs. But not to mention a drop in quality, sometimes I feel the characters are even smarter than S1. It's a wonder to me how so many comments are saying they didn't like this season or that they are 'surprised' the plot is so focused on politics. As you said, it was obvious this season would start with heavy politics...

So far, my only regret is that Xiao Zhan could not participate in this season.