pomegranate

Was honestly pissed with the way they typecasted him In Big Mouse, used him for jack squat for a role that any half decent young actor could have pulled off

Anything to do with Netflix (or Disney) doesn’t need a season 2 period. They are not dramas that are getting second seasons because the public really liked them, they are dramas that leave unnecessary cliffhangers/baits or use their screentime in a way that forces the drama to have a second season in order to milk dry all the money that Kdramas can offer. Thereby ruining the charm of Kdramas in the first place by converting them to the extremely tedious seasonal format that eventually destroys whatever we ever liked about the first season.

I like the idea of flipping it the other way around. It would probably drive home the message better to creators out there that repeatedly push out the same passive docile female leads which is basically the Disney Princess Fairytale all over.

Oh I understand your point and I agree with it.

It’s just that with this particular female character she IS physically strong and I cannot dismiss the OP only meant to refer to her personality traits when their next describing adjective is “‘military’ woman”.

What would you suggest as an alternative to its use though? Considering people have come to apply it for any female character that doesn’t sport a doormat or damsel in distress personality which has been far too prevalent in media.

Should Lee Do Hyun and Lee Jae Wook even be here? They are both young trending actors who have more than one prime time drama in male lead status and have also gotten excellence awards for acting with more insta followers than some sunbae famous male lead actors.

If we’re going to include them, then I might as well add older actors that are in long time male lead status but have not found luck with scripts or commercial success.

On that note, Nam Da Reum is a Hallyu Star of Child Actors, and after his military service is over he is no doubt going to take on prominent roles like Yeo Jin Goo.

At this point, I’m not inclined to watch a S2 for Vagabond if it ever happens.

The show was going great. Until it pulled a u-turn and dumped a bucket of ice cold water on everything it built for the entire season and the leads went from ‘fighting for truth and justice’ to turning to illegal trade and being best buds with people who tried to murder them endlessly.

why are Stranger 1 and Life on Mars here ? I think some people don’t know what this list is for 😂

T_T why? He may not be a natural fit to variety TV, but he doesn’t have a bad personality and has his funny moments on roommate

I hate it too and pretend it didn’t happen but there are several reasons for his death other than emotional impact. It was simply easier to end his arc as a tragedy than address all the open ends with his character with only one episode left and the royal wedding still pending plus the arc for North-South peace/unification which was the main premise of the show with Club M/crazy villain dude serving as catalysts but not being the actual point. (The fact that putting the cartoon villain in jail doesn’t end the threat of Club M proves that the show was never about winning over all the bad guys that the King/Korea is up against. In this sense it was also realistic).

•Eun Shi Kyung’s absence in the final arc allows Jae Ha to prove his worth as a king without his ‘right hand man’.

•His death serves as an adequate punishment for his father, and concludes his redemption + reconciliation with the royal family/Jae Ha (who still needs the man’s knowledge and experience as no one else is trained yet as a replacement and Shi Kyung himself did not have the skills his father did).

•The public is already against having a North Korean, that too a special forces agent, as a royal bride, and now Queen. And suspect her of having killed the late King and Queen, and think she will also to kill her husband at a good time. It’s a bit much that the current King’s father-in-law is a key member of the North Korean political party. Adding a traitor who is complicit to the beloved late King and his wife’s assassination as a father-in-law to the princess? (In the event ESK lives to get his happy ending that we wanted) The public might as well overthrow the already pretty weak monarchy at this point. (They don’t have enough political pull, they don’t have a sizeable fortune or resources, Jae Ha had the reputation of a useless playboy as a prince that people thought should lose his title and benefits they pay for, for that matter the princess also once lead a double life not reputable for her status and then that one time the villains managed to prove she was mentally unstable after her accident, Jae Shin’s physical disability can also be seen as a clear vulnerability point, even their mother is a commoner who did not find easy acceptance in her time.)
Hang Ah and Jae Ha work for as long as he manages not to get murdered and survive long enough and their marriage serves to bridge the gap between the North and South. Add son of man responsible for loss of the actually liked King as groom to only remaining royal and who is known for being the King’s right hand man, people are going to start suspecting Jae Ha of having helped off his brother (which would be completely unfair since he loved him and they had one of the most special brother bonds). And the mutated surviving Club M, distant family who would like to wear the crown, countries or political parties unhappy with the North-South peace and emerging unity power looking for ways to chop down Jae Ha would make that happen. But as of now, the old secretary is no one of particular importance, he can be sent away again or jailed if someone brings up his past crimes and the sacrifice of his son in catching the murderer of the late King brings him sympathy as well.

•Jae Shin had become overly dependent on him. On the other hand he was still too intimidated and uptight to give their relationship a chance. They needed a lot more time to build as a healthy official couple.

If the show had more episodes or could afford a second season, then I’m sure they would have found a way to solve these or any other questions. But it was just quicker and easier to finish it with his death. (Like how often in saeguk dramas with kids of traitors + royals/forbidden romances with total fictional characters ever worked out? In a historical drama we would have seen it coming a mile away, in this his death takes us by surprise).

He’s not actually officially recognised. The monarchy is demolished.

The drama idea is around an existing constitutional monarchy, where the Korean royal family’s status is basically like the British royal family but with far less name, fame and fortune.

I think it was prove a point about Jae Ha being able to stand on his own as King and that he’s not the useless playboy without ESK that we met in the beginning.

Besides ESK’s romance with the princess was the slowest burn ever and the drama had no more runtime left to properly develop that relationship to a reasonable happy ending, especially with his father being the traitor accomplice to the late King’s murder and the reason why the princess lost her legs. Like the man responsible for the king and his wife’s deaths can’t become an in-law to the royal family without risking the reputation and therefore political power of the royal family. So ESK ended up paying the price for his father’s sins.

(I still pretend he lived and managed to find an answer to a happy ending though. He was so indispensable to that family.)

I am forever going to be in denial of his death. In my head canon he went into coma for a short while, so the finale climax played out the same way, then he magically woke up after the battles were over and they got married. She needs him! Jae Ha still needs him too! We all need him!

The older King (and his wife’s) death is already one of the saddest in Kdrama even if I knew it was coming.

But she IS physically strong ? Literally part of the special forces in her military

It’s an OCN drama, why would you rate how well an OCN drama performed compared to other dramas with different genres on other networks??

If that was the case then Voice, Bad Guys, etc would never get a season 2.

It’s a cable network that primarily produces crime no romance dramas, it’s not going to get as high ratings as a fluffy cliche romcom on a bigger network or even those daily dramas with less known cast on non-cable free TV.

wdym about broadcast ratings ? This drama has received one of the highest ratings in OCN record- the only two surpassing it being Voice 2 and now Uncanny Counter

Well I’ll have to disagree. And I still feel like you are viewing them with different cultural values from their own.

Also for only a drama special with rookie actors and one old veteran, anything more would not fly well and shift the focus to adultery and skin-ship of actors and make viewers far less sympathetic to both, the plight of the characters the plot wishes to touch on and the cast involved.

They literally can’t take just the ML and SFL to film abroad and leave behind the FL and SML who was introduced long before the SFL in Korea to eat dumplings. So pack them along for a nice trip, add some Kdrama cliche serendipity note for the main leads, and because you can’t not take advantage of the foreign scenery, film posters and promotional material for the main leads. Plus who knows if they had something else planned originally.

About YJ’s divorce. It is unfortunately sadly true that some couples don’t survive a child loss. I think that part was handled fine, particularly for her character that tends to end relationships when she feels guilty and pitiful. The doc tried to help her but she was simply beyond his reach. Even if they don’t blame each other, simply seeing each other can hurt if they don’t want to be reminded of their loss.

After everything that happened, particularly all the new problems that came with the third phase, ending it romantically cheesy just would not sit right. They were in no place to be jumping into a new relationship. She was grieving a recently lost child and he just broke off an engagement! And as you mentioned, the family would not be in any mood to accept her and without their support it would make an already tumultuous relationship harder to work.

What is happening is already a bit much.

Why must there be skin-ship to portray love? Or sexual interactions for a relationship to be considered a betrayal and affair?

Also you must remember the time and place this story takes place in. Just because you wanted to see something more thrillingly risqué, doesn’t mean you can ignore the cultural aspects affecting this couple or the state of their relation (he’s married to her daughter!). This isn’t Alabama. This is 1950s Korea wartime. And I rather think unnecessary kisses would have cheapened their bond and made it all about lust and sexual attraction which is totally not what their relationship was about.

His biological father was not mentally ill. He was a social outcast who stayed away from civilisation. (He literally lived in the middle of the nowhere woods and decided to raise his newborn child there. And even then was not very affectionate with his family or wife that had loyally followed him to his solitary life.)

The woman hallucination is also a one time thing- caused by the ML’s high fever, so it’s more of a fever dream than any other bigger psychological or mental health problem. It’s his dead biological mother he sees here and runs after. A mother that abandoned him when he was a child since she was unhappy with his father, a mother who suddenly contacted him again years later just because she was terminally ill and who he did leave to take care of.

The ML’s childhood trauma and the way he was questionably raised by his birth family is the root cause of his issues and the reason for his attachment to the mountain woods and the house he was raised in. (He was once genuinely happy with his life there before he was orphaned).

At least a little part of him believes he is destined to share the same fate as his father. And the little kid in him struggling with abandonment issues, still yearns for the birth parents he lost, so he ends up revisiting his old home in the mountain every now and then. Some of it is habit, some of it is simply liking the mountains and woods -because it was an environment he was raised in, some of it is him retreating into himself, in this little isolated cave he build for himself and some of it is caused by uncaring villagers who keep asking the mountain vagrant’s orphaned brat for favours.

His adopted family, particularly his adopted mother worry about his health and safety the most - because as demonstrated by Hye Won’s first scary encounter with the mountain woods in the dark, the village girl who lost track and almost died in the bigger mountain range in the harsh winter, and even Hye Won’s ex-best friend who intentionally sought out danger at night because she was desperate for Eun Seob’s attention - the mountain woods are a risky place where you can easily get hurt or lost without people ever knowing what happened to you or finding out too late. Like Im Eun Seob’s biological father who left one day and never returned.

Now it’s not that bad if you go in groups or stick to guided paths and return before sunset. But with Im Eun Seob’s history with the mountains, his personality and him still being asked by people to go on special searches where he even takes unmarked unknown routes all alone separately from the police/rescue team when someone is missing. It’s no wonder that his mother is worried half to death that she’ll lose her son at this rate, especially after hearing he went again while still sick and being drawn to the place in a feverish state.