wellwellbelle

Given the cheerleading context, maybe there's a double meaning in terms of position in the cheer formations as well....

Everyone who died over the course of the series un-died (except WQS's original self, who we don't know about but probably still committed suicide, unless you want a head cannon where CYR becomes a person who helps troubled teens and manages to find him and intercede before he carries out his plan :D ).

So, ya, all of our favourite characters and even that annoying hs girl the dr killed all ended up in timelines where they live, which is super happy to be because I loved CYR and MJJ and grandma and did not want *any* of them to die, and of course LZW also didn't die horribly in 2019 in the new timeline.

In order to do that, HYX made a sacrifice, but her sacrifice was rewarded because even though her love story with LZW takes a different path, it still exists.

IMO, it was a happy ending. I'll post why in a spoiler comment

The rock bugged me too. I figured that when he was his older brother, he gave it to his younger self and told him either what it was, or that it was part of what would give him the chance to "get" CYR (which is also how he got the pictures... the picture link is more clear since he finds them in the older brother's drawer and we see the brother encouraging his interest).

Episode 1 was fantastic. No wasted shots, plot-focused, funny and the lead's chemistry is over the top. Great contract relationship set-up; looks like the writer actually understands how to make that trope fun. I'm really looking forward to this one! My only regret is that I can't binge it....

I mean, I don't have special knowledge or anything. Just.... going by the mess they've made of that potential so far. <<<>>>>

It is not. However, your wish will not be granted :(

I don't think it's the first time they're meeting as adults, because she calls him "ge", which suggests they've already met (and I wouldn't think that's from when she was a little girl). Also it doesn't quite make sense to me that she would show up to a first meeting with a birthday cake... but I sort of thought that maybe they re-met the year before when she was finishing high school... and the drawing he's doing isn't a left-over memory, but from the time when they re-met.

There is a stinger type ending (after credit scene)... is that what you were thinking of? It's not on viki, but several people have it linked in the discussions below.

Yay! I loved her review too. I thought she did an amazing job of actually explaining it spoiler free, which is not easy! The quality stays consistent throughout. You won't be disappointed!

I think 1 and 2 can work simultaneously, and they're pretty much how I was interpreting it over the course of the drama. I also interpreted the colours as representing both life/death and happiness/depression. HYX is grieving, but not depressed, whereas CYR is suicidal.

The water is linked to time, but also I think to how LZW is able to go forward (because of the drowning).

I absolutely loved the opening sequence. It's one of the few shows that I watched it through every single time. I found that it helped me keep track of what was happening as I watched the show, and reflect on the themes in a way that enriched the whole show for me.

One interesting thing is that I was confused at the beginning because the Viki synopsis said that HYX was looking at his social media and longing for him to contact her... which made it sound like they had a break up. As soon as I watched the opening for the first time, and we get to the scene in the hallway where the old LZW is looking at her, I was like, no, that's death that separated them, not a breakup! Which I just think is such an amazing testament to both the acting and the direction/editing/writing for that opening sequence, that the emotional reality of the show was so clear even when I'd been misled about what I was seeing :)

I'l love to... I'm newish to the site so I'm not sure what's involved.

I've been thinking about your comment, and it's true. I have my feeling about it that I'll share, but it's not meant as an argument, just how I see it :)

So, first, the show doesn't just use time travel, it uses transmigration, which is a common trope in online Chinese novels. The time travel is started (in my theory) by LZW transmigrating into WQS. Normally in transmigration tropes, the main character and the target character both die; sometimes the main character might be almost dead and comatose like LZW.

LZW never does the sort of time travel that the other two do. He doesn't just fall asleep and wake up... his is much more classic transmigration (also, this is why WQS dies in every timeline including the final one, IMO).

LZW and HYX are fated (as we see by the red ear buds they share, and the fact that they meet as LZW and HYX during the high school timeline). They will always meet and they will always fall in love, no matter what wackiness the timeline is doing.

So, what caused LZW to transmigrate is actually the longing and regret he feels about the lives of his two best friends that were destroyed. He goes to WQS because they look alike, and he goes to the future because that's when WQS dies (looking alike is a super-common trope for transmigration stories and obviously this world has set it up as a requirement for transmigration).

The weirdness in the story isn't so much how LZW ended up in WQS, but how the other two were able to transmigrate without any sort of near-death or death experiences (at first the way the story breaks that trope isn't obvious because of the head injury, but of course, HYX is able to transmigrate into CYR repeatedly even without near death experiences).

That's where the regret and longing and desire to change the past, as well as the song and the tape all come in to make the additional magic happen.

I said in my review that it hit me in the final scenes of the show that they wrote the romance as a hero's journey. The way I see it, the show made us think for most of the episodes that setting the romance right was the point and the goal (certainly because we loved the main couple so much and felt for their pain, that was not just a red herring).

But when we look at it through the hero cycle, HYX was "chosen" to put right the lives of CYR and MJJ. It's her love that lets her go back and forth in time, and setting things right gives her and LZW a better chance at a normal sort of happy love, but the thing she really has to fix is outside of their relationship--it's CYR's ability to see the love that's being given to her even when it isn't all that obvious.

Anyway, like I said, not putting all this out there to disagree. I just love chewing on all these big ideas. I love that the show has so much symbolism and left so much space for imagination... I would totally love to hear other people's different interpretations :)

I had some of the same thoughts... so I worked it out and posted this below. It's easier to just repast it here instead of rewriting it. It's my theory of a) how it started and b) what happened in the iterations:

I outline the original plus two loops, Original has numbers, Loop 1 has letters, Loop 3 has Roman Numerals.

Original timeline:

1. CYR dies by suicide
2. MJJ is accused of murdering her and goes to jail
3. LZW has the car accident and transmigrates to WQS
4. WQS meets HYX and they fall in love
5. WQS dies, LZW wakes up as himself
6. HYX misses WQS and falls asleep listening to their favourite song

Start Loop 1:

a) CYR is hit by a car and HYX wakes up
b) LZW falls in love with HYX as a teen
**1-3 repeat**
4. WQS seeks out HYX and they fall in love
**5 repeats**
c) LZW (2003) decides to change the past
d) LZW finds the uncle and sends the walkman to HYZ
6. HYX misses WQS and falls asleep listening to the walkman.

Start Loop 2:

a) CYR is hit by a car, HYX wakes up
repeat b
repeat 1-5
I) HYX tells dr about past
II) dr. finds a way to use the walkman and goes to the past
III) dr. interacts with little brother and forms obsession about CYR
c and d repeat
6 repeats

Start Loop 3:

***OUR TIMELINE***

So, in my theory, the dr didn't go to the past and immediately try to kill CYR because his obsession is formed when he finds the pictures in his older brother's drawer and then as his older brother encourages his sociopathy. Since we know that the older brother was actually him from the future, he has to have been through the time loop at least once in order to have the obsession.

So, the way I'm imagining it, he goes to the past and is mostly a creepy lurker; he steals the pictures and bonds with his younger self. Then in the third timeloop, it's the younger self who is already obsessed with HYX who goes to the past, and he immediately starts doing things.

There might actually be one more time loop, because in our timeline the dr has the rock that he used to hit CYR in his office *before* he does any time travelling. I think it still fits with the theory to have one more time loop, but because we know less about the dr's iterations, I'd have to speculate and make up a whole story about time loop 3 to get us to time loop 4, so I just went with this.

She has to be longing to see LZW. That's why it didn't work when he was with her, and why she didn't need the recorder on the last time. My theory is she didn't have it the very first time either (my theory is that we saw what amounted to the 3rd or 4th time loop)

I felt like if stuff like the shower scene and some of the other early crossing the line stuff was Type's fears and nightmares instead of reality, it could have been done really, really well. We could have had Type over-reacting, Tharn being a bit of a jerk but mainly because he and Type are actively trying to anger each other, and then Tharn slowly realizing that Type's fears and prejudices are caused by trauma. Then, Tharn could back off and become supportive, and Type could learn to trust him, and it would have been *amazing*. But having Tharn actually doing so much non-con stuff --and even after he knew about Type's past-- was so disappointing and hard to watch.

I *slightly* disagree... I don't think they returned to the original timeline. I think it was CYR's suicide the set everything, including the timeloop, in motion. HYX sacrifices her life as she knows it in an attempt to save CYR (and thus everyone). It's significant that CYR remembers this conversation with her "other self" in her coma dream, and decides to live. I also think what HYX wrote in her diary doesn't change: she and CYR took pieces of each other with them into the final timeline, even if they didn't retain all (CYR) or any (HYX) of their memories.

But ya, I agree overall, especially in that they went where time travel shows often don't.

I laid awake last night loving the ending but wondering: then how did it start?

Here's what I worked out, for anyone else who like me can't quite let it go yet ;P

I outline the original plus two loops, Original has numbers, Loop 1 has letters, Loop 3 has Roman Numerals.

Original timeline:

1. CYR dies by suicide
2. MJJ is accused of murdering her and goes to jail
3. LZW has the car accident and transmigrates to WQS
4. WQS meets HYX and they fall in love
5. WQS dies, LZW wakes up as himself
6. HYX misses WQS and falls asleep listening to their favourite song

Start Loop 1:

a) CYR is hit by a car and HYX wakes up
b) LZW falls in love with HYX as a teen
**1-3 repeat**
4. WQS seeks out HYX and they fall in love
**5 repeats**
c) LZW (2003) decides to change the past
d) LZW finds the uncle and sends the walkman to HYZ
6. HYX misses WQS and falls asleep listening to the walkman.

Start Loop 2:

a) CYR is hit by a car, HYX wakes up
repeat b
repeat 1-5
I) HYX tells dr about past
II) dr. finds a way to use the walkman and goes to the past
III) dr. interacts with little brother and forms obsession about CYR
c and d repeat
6 repeats

Start Loop 3:

***OUR TIMELINE***

So, in my theory, the dr didn't go to the past and immediately try to kill CYR because his obsession is formed when he finds the pictures in his older brother's drawer and then as his older brother encourages his sociopathy. Since we know that the older brother was actually him from the future, he has to have been through the time loop at least once in order to have the obsession.

So, the way I'm imagining it, he goes to the past and is mostly a creepy lurker; he steals the pictures and bonds with his younger self. Then in the third timeloop, it's the younger self who is already obsessed with HYX who goes to the past, and he immediately starts doing things.

There might actually be one more time loop, because in our timeline the dr has the rock that he used to hit CYR in his office *before* he does any time travelling. I think it still fits with the theory to have one more time loop, but because we know less about the dr's iterations, I'd have to speculate and make up a whole story about time loop 3 to get us to time loop 4, so I just went with this.

I completely agree. Brilliantly done. I feel like it's rare to have a story line this complicated with such a satisfying ending.

I agree with Kumaxell. It fit the story perfectly. I personally would classify it as happy overall, but the episode has zero filler, so there's a serious emotional journey.