lord_varvara

There's no logical explanation because that scene, where his eyes and the sword lit up, replaced the original ending which was that Yeon and Jia lived a normal human life with their daughter (5 years old in the ending scene) with Grandpa visiting them cause humans couldn't visit the Afterlife Bureau. There were photos of actors and the child actress in the park. So he was meant to remain human and drama set him up for it...until they made a change because they wanted Season 2. But then the finale was aired and people were horrified that Rang died and were saying they wouldn't watch Season 2 without him and now those new seasons will be set in the past so that Rang could be in them.

Check this out, the last 3 photos:

https://mindmeltonabun-blog.tumblr.com/post/637006258829950976/tale-of-the-nine-tailed-a-collection-of-deleted

My takeaway from new seasons being prequels is that they are ghosting FL cause she and romance were by far the weakest link while everyone loved Kim Bum and bromance. The finale ended with a built-in-sequel for Yeon to continue as the fox, but there was such a crazy backlash against Rang's death, that they likely figured nobody would watch without Kim Bum. So setting new seasons in deeper past kills 2 flies - Kim Bum returns while Jo Boa is Jo MIA. Boom.

Screenwriters shoehorn romance everywhere cause they think romance sells.

Squid Game with no romance becomes a global phenomenon, BTFO's all romance dramas.

What to do now? :)

very true!

it took awhile but finally rational people who didn't like FL have shown up. I was starting to think that Jo Boa's PR was astroturfing all those pro-Jo Boa comments cause she and the romance were the worst. If TOTNT was just about 2 brothers + mythical beings it would have been great.

he's like Justin Timberlake, way more famous than other band members. I couldn't name a single member of Timberlake's former boyband (N'Sink? N'Stink?) but I know him.

though considering the overall lack of glamor in historical drama, everyone looks like simple people ha ha. But yes, I know what you mean. Historical dramas have a set of tropes that they hold onto for dear life: corrupt ministers, scheming Doweger, evil shaman, dual identities (girl poses as a guy, prince or princess moonlights as a masked assassin), revenge for having family member(s) killed, nefarious relative who wants to steal the throne, concubine's son moping about being concubine's son. It's the same freakin story over and over.

lol, the older the actors get the more they are inclined to act younger than their age. That's a universal vanity thing from Hollywood to Bollywood to Kimchiwood, etc. Why do you think there are so many 30something still playing teenagers?

err, he was insta reincarnated in the body of a 10 years old boy played by an actor who played young Lee Rang. Have you forgotten? TOTNT broke its rules of reincarnation to force a happy ending for everyone including ridiculous insta reincarnation for Lee Yeon.

historical dramas are no fun because everyone is always dressed the same. absolutely no historical variety in fashion, architecture, technology, etc. It's as if every drama takes place on the same set with the same borrowed costumes. Whether they are set 1000 years ago or 500 years ago or 100 years ago, everything looks exactly the same, no development whatsoever. No way that history was that static so I chalk it up to cheap production.

Joseon part would happen years/decades/centuries after Ah Eum died because the actress isn't in it and Lee Rang will be played by Kim Bum. He was just a little boy when she died. Remember, she died 600 years before the events in TOTNT.

yep. it's as if they pump all their budget in the first 2 episodes so we get supernatural elements, bigger sets, interesting story only to drop all that for the sake of no SFX, no action, confining the drama within 3 rooms so to speak (where has the brothel gone?) and story going from interesting to same old love triangle yawnathon with obvious endgame so why bother with the third wheel at all?

not surprised that it started as one thing but is now becoming something else and worse. K drama writing is driven by audience response after ep 4 or 5 (which were pre-recorded instead of filmed on weekly basis) and that usually means ramping up romance to the exclusion of everything else. Nothing ruins dramas anywhere in the world like listening to shippers.

Ah, OK. I thought that once they are established as actors they lose the prefix but I guess as long as they are doing both it remains.

true though I see a lot of comments everywhere (reddit, Soompi) that call multi-season format "Western" "Westernization" "American" "Americanization". I guess most famous for it, started the trend etc.

that's what I thought. Band promo cause he's a bigger name than his band.

is it mandatory to always put ASTRO's before CEW? Everyone knows who CEW is with or without ASTRO so why do they insist on ASTRO prefix in publicity announcements?

they specifically said they were using the hiatus to improve the last 4 episodes and they didn't. they were terrible, with finale (ep 16) being the worst I've ever seen and I've seen a lot of bad finales including GOT's, Lost's, BSG's.

I think I figured out why they made this decision. Knowing how the industry works, my theory is more likely than unlikely.

Back in 2020, the drama had an unscheduled hiatus after the episode 12 citing "more time to improve the last 4 episodes". But they didn't improve anything, in fact, those 4 were among the worst. So I think this is where they were mulling over Season 2. Moreover, there's a photo proof from some Korean magazine that the ending of Ep 16 was originally very different from what the finale ended up with. The photos showed a time jump of about 5-6 years since Yeon, Jia and Grandpa were with Yeon and Jia's daughter at the park. The girl dressed in pink looked about 5-6. So the context seems to be that Yeon remained human so Grandpa visited the family since humans couldn't visit the Afterlife Agency. However, this scene was nowhere to be seen in the finale and its very last scene showed that Yeon remained a gumiho after all, despite everyone believing that he was human and his claiming that he wanted to be one. So that had a very strong built-in sequel feel, and I believe that was the intention.

However, what I think happened is that they saw reactions to the finale and how disappointed fans were that Rang died (well, he was immediately resurrected in the body of a 10 years old boy but that's semantics) and that, as far as fans go, Rang was the MVP of the drama. In short, no Rang, no viewership. So they figured that setting the Season 2 in post-Season 1 timeline would be a disaster cause the most popular character wouldn't be in it. And they also saw that fans loved bromance but were split on romance and even fans of romance liked the bromance better. All that, I think, convinced them that to milk TOTNT is to bring back Yeon and Rang dynamic and that was only possible by going to the past not the future (though I recon that setting up a season in far future could bring back Rang organically, either as a grown up kid from the finale, who was the same actor who played young Rang anyway, or very far future where he would be reincarnated like an apocalyptic Korea where gumiho bros fight whatever mythical menaces destroyed the world or some s***).

So yeah, I think my theory is very plausible.

yep it's a massive hit here.