In an episode solely dedicated to one ruthless man's mission to kill the king, it's a given that there'll be lots of blood, bodies, and tears. And there are. It's a dark journey into what it takes to overthrow an empire, but what matters most are the characters we've come to know and love, and how they all cope when it comes time to fight, flee, or face the music.
EPISODE 8 RECAP
Tensions are really amping up for the day's military parade, since it'll be General Yeon's last shot at pulling off a successful coup d'état. His minion worries about Choong accompanying them since he can't be trusted, but his father's got a solution ready—if Choong interferes with their plans, he's to be beheaded on the spot.
We go back a bit to the king's introspective conversation with Mu-young about what makes a king good, and how he feels pathetic for having to kill them. I actually love everything about his short monologue, and it continues as he warns Mu-young against becoming a pathetic ruler like him.
It already sounds as if he's passing on the crown to her when he mentions how Goguryeo has always been a target for war—first it was the Sui Dynasty, now the Tang. Will Mu-young, as ruler of Goguryeo, choose to fight them every time, or will she try to coexist with them?
"You should always find ways to coexist with them," the king advises her. This one line highlights the fundamental difference between his and General Yeon's line of thinking.
General Yeon and a small army march up to the palace gates, where his minion has a my-royal-order-is-better-than-yours contest with the palace guard. He loses, and Yeon's army is forced to stay outside the gates by royal decree.
While that goes on, Choong and a small contingent of his father's men sneak up to the palace walls unnoticed. Lest we think Choong has turned on us, we hear his thoughts: "I will save you, Princess."
General Yeon's supporters have to keep their tempers in check so as not to give away the plan, but some of them find it hard when faced with the newly-elected but traitorous (to their cause, anyway) chief minister.
The general himself is finally allowed entry to the palace with his men, but only after they're checked for weapons. Instead of swords, his men carry sticks. And as always, General Yeon doesn't look anywhere but forward.
On their way to the ceremony, Mu-young stops her father with a gentle hand on his arm just so she can give him a reassuring nod. The look he gives back to her is heartbreaking, like he's just so thankful to have her at his side that words really aren't necessary.
Jang takes half the king's protection unit ahead with him to the , which would be a very normal occurrence if it weren't for the fact that we know Jang's intentions aren't as pure as they used to be.
The king wants the recently-arrested doctor/spy to spill the truth during the ceremony, which is exactly what General Yeon doesn't want—so his head minion fakes a fight with the lesser minions in order to get arrested. Once they're in the prison, the head minion tosses the doctor a knife.
The Geumhwadan members are all disguised as musicians for the ceremony in order to be in a prime position to protect the king. But there are only five of them, and when General Yeon makes his grand entrance with a whole contingent of soldiers.
And, well—he looks much more intimidating. Then Jang enters with all the king's men (which may not be the king's men anymore), as we flash back to the king instructing the Geumhwadan gang to arrest General Yeon after his spy is made to confess.
Only, that very same spy is forced to commit suicide by the general's unflinching head minion before he gets the chance to do much of anything.
The following sequence wins points for inventiveness: The palace guards peppered the ground around the walls with small metal spikes to prevent any soldiers on foot from getting too close, but Choong and his men circumvent the trap by wearing platform shoes and by laying down tracks of bamboo reeds to get across.
Jang made sure that the gates would be opened for them, so it's not long before Choong's men are inside and killing off any palace guards loyal to the king. Choong doesn't participate in the battle and clearly wants no part of any of this.
His father's men knew he'd try to run and attempt to prevent him from doing so when he shows the first signs of bolting, but Choong easily manages to fight his way free. Go Choong!
The king was really hedging his bets on the doctor-spy's confession to give him cause to kill General Yeon, so he's deservedly unhappy to learn that he killed himself. Even so, he's more determined than ever to not back down. He can't let Yeon off for treason a second time.
General Yeon's minions use their hair accessories as weapons to kill the prison guard and set themselves free. At the pre-ceremony, Leader So gets the distinct feeling that the king's plan has gone awry—and judging from the way he looks at both Jang and Yeon, he's guessed that the two are working together.
The chief minister calls General Yeon forward, but the second he mentions that ultimate bone of contention—his exile to the Cheolli Jangseong wall—Yeon picks up and throws the table that stands between them…
…And draws the sword which had been hidden by hollowing out the table and floor on the chief minister. That's a pretty nifty trick.
"Did you want to become chief minister so badly?" General Yeon growls, causing the minister to tremble and stutter that the king blackmailed him into betraying Yeon.
But then he bravely adds that he discovered the king wasn't as weak-minded as they all thought he was—so he'd hoped that Yeon and the king would work together to build a stronger Goguryeo. Those aren't the words Yeon wants to hear, and he says as much before he slashes the chief minister's throat in plain sight.
He earns his badass turn toward his audience after (and on the bizarre side, a chance to sniff menacingly at them) before he calls out for those loyal to him to identify themselves with blue wristbands. That's almost everybody, and it makes those not on his side easier to spot and kill.
It's a massacre with everyone packed into such an enclosed space, and it's the councilmen who end up getting cut down like grass. Jang stays stoic even as the chief minister is stabbed to death in front of him. This is actually kind of horrifying, in that we went from zero to EVERYONE DYING in about a minute.
When Jang finally decides to join in on the killing spree, he does so by throwing a dagger at the one guard who's just standing around innocently, just minding his own business. I'm sure the intention was to not to make Jang come off as a cowardly tool—but he kind of comes off as a cowardly tool.
But, he's now a tool who's got General Yeon at his back and only one man standing between him and the throne. Eek.
The Geumhwadan gang runs to the throne room to tell the king of the revolt. Knowing that the traitors will be coming for him next, the king orders his secret army to be let in… only for Young-hae to come running back with the news that there's no army outside. Yes, you heard correctly—they've lost an army the way you'd lose your keys. You know how those things can get up and walk awa—… waaaitaminute.
No one knows quite how it happened, but Leader So thinks it could be Jang's doing. The king and Mu-young are completely taken aback at the thought of their loyal family member turning on them. But, when urged to flee, the king refuses: "The king of Goguryeo does not retreat!"
Leader So reminds him that he once said it was not the strong who survive—it's those that survive who are strong. He has to plead with the king to think of the country that can't survive without the royal family, and eventually convinces him to take the secret passage out of the palace while the missing army is found. The Geumhwadan gang will remain behind to buy them time.
Every councilman in the meeting hall is dead, save for the three who've hovered around and conspired with General Yeon from the beginning. (And they even did their own share of murdering, too.) Yeon leads them over the pile of bodies and out to hunt down the king.
The king's head bodyguard, Tae-kyung, catches General Yeon's minions escaping the prison and fights them. The head minion isn't part of this group because he's off on a solo mission to find Choong and maybe kill him. It's not too clear.
We find Choong combing through the palace to find Mu-young as word of treason starts to spread through the palace staff. She breaks off from her father's group (seems a leettle irresponsible), rounds a corner, and stops suddenly—she's spotted Choong, right where she thought he'd never be.
She can't believe what she's seeing as Choong faces off in battle against a fairly large group of soldiers, who must either be Team Yeon or very confused. She was so sure that he was safely in another city that she can't take her eyes off him.
Choong manages to hold her stare while fighting, and it… works? Huh, it actually works. Choong and Mu-young are selling this moment like ice cream on a hot summer day. But Young-hae eventually comes to drag Mu-young away, leaving Choong behind to fend for himself.
The crown prince is alone in his room when he starts to hear the sound of screams outside. But try as he might, his wobbly attempts to ride just end up with him sprawled on the floor and no one to help. Well, they did send Shi-woo to help him, but he must not be very fast.
Leader So and what's left of the palace guard prepare for battle as Jang's army—which I'm guessing must be the king's missing army—files into the courtyard. (Jang: "Found it!")
When Leader So asks him how he could betray his uncle the king, Jang makes sure his reply is loud enough for everyone to hear: "At least I did not betray Goguryeo." He's all sincere about becoming a good king once he kills the old one, which seems in keeping with what we know of him… but then there's that whole dead-eyed-murderer aspect of him we just saw.
Props go to Leader So for being absolutely unwavering in his dedication to the king, enough to make Jang's efforts to recruit him seem like a severe waste of time. Then it's time for battle.
Jang's army is much more organized, and they thin the king's army out fast by locking their shields together so that they can kill under protection.
It's not until Boo-chi joins the fray with his sword swinging that the line is broken, giving the king's army a chance to actually get in on the fighting before they're wiped off the map.
When it's time for a one-on-one battle between Jang and Leader So, Jang sets a certain precedent by cutting a path down to the middle of the courtyard. They're both very good martial artists, so the fight stays intense, if quite silent.
Young-hae leads the king and princess to the secret passage, before she and everyone else leaves them to presumably fetch the crown prince.
So then it's just Mu-young and her father, but even she leaves him to go find her brother. Really? There's just ONE thing this coup needs to do in order to be successful, but that's okay—leave your wanted father defenseless and alone in a dark tunnel. What's the worst that could happen?
The king spends a few long moments just listening to the sound of water dripping before Tae-kyung finds him, a little worse for the wear from his earlier battle. So not the best, but better than nothing.
Shi-woo finally shows up to the party, and engages some of Yeon's soldiers outside the crown prince's quarters so Mu-young can make her way inside. And Choong, having won his earlier battle, resumes his mission to find her.
Mu-young finds her brother still lying on the floor, and he's still just the cutest dongsaeng ever when he tells his sister that he was waiting just for her… but he's not going with her.
That's not an answer she's willing to accept when it comes to her baby brother, so Mu-young tries to carry him on her back. He pushes her away in an effort to make her leave him, but makes sure to tell her, "I have, until now, been happy to be your younger brother." Breaking. My. Heart.
I love that Mu-young is just not that kind of person, and their bond actually comes off as being so authentic that it would have been wildly inappropriate for her to let him make The Noble Sacrifice. Basically, she just puts her foot down, all, No, we're going together. So he has no choice but to finally agree.
But as she tries to start carrying him, General Yeon's minion makes his way to the crown prince's quarters (by killing everyone he sees). Sad Violin just gets sadder with every step he takes.
We see the minion stalking through the prince's quarters with murder on the mind as Mu-young tries and tries to carry her much-bigger brother, but the prospects are looking grim. She turns toward the sound of boots at the door…
…While the minion walks into an empty room. In this instance, it actually makes sense for the camera to focus only on his feet, or on his bloody sword. He's supposed to be scary as he plays royal hide-and-seek.
Only then do we see where the crown prince is hiding, which means Mu-young put him there before hiding herself. Ha, this is Shi-woo in the bamboo pot all over again, only Mu-young just gets a conspicuous black sheet.
Mu-young leaps from behind it to attack, but the element of surprise doesn't really pan out for her when all her blows are parried and she loses her balance. I know, the sequence leaves a lot to be desired—not because it's lacking in showmanship, but because it's a bit lacking in finesse.
As the minion prepares to stab and kill Mu-young, the crown prince emerges from his hiding spot: "Don't touch the princess! Kill me instead."
The minion doesn't have to be told twice and lunges toward him. Mu-young makes a (dubiously) valiant attempt to stop him but is once again thrown off-balance by that pesky thing called gravity, leaving her brother defenseless against the man who stabs him straight through the chest. Noooo.
The shock propels Mu-young to knock aside the minion to get to her brother. He's dying and they both know it, yet he still tries to smile as he uses the little bit of breath he has to tell her, "I wanted… to see you wearing your wedding gown…"
Mu-young keeps holding his gaze for as long as she can, even as he ekes out his hope that his beloved sister will survive. A few short, pained gasps later, the crown prince passes away.
His sister screams in grief before she lunges to attack her brother's killer, and the two exchange blows until another sword comes between them. Choong has finally arrived.
But the minion thinks that Choong has come to help him: "As you promised, cut off the princess' head and prove that you're General Yeon's son." Oh. Crap.
Mu-young immediately thinks the worst considering all that's just happened, and calls Choong a traitor's son with tears in her eyes. "You betrayed me! Why did I ever believe in you?" She trembles as she says that she can't ever forgive herself for trusting him, yet she offers herself to his sword just the same.
Choong just looks utterly devastated to be misunderstood by the one he loves most. "No one can choose his father," he says solemnly. "Unfortunately, I am the son of General Yeon, and my father became a traitor with no help from me. However, I am also a sinner for being unable to forsake my family."
When the minion orders him to kill the princess, Choong doesn't even hesitate before turning on him to save her. Shi-woo arrives to forcibly drag Mu-young away from her brother's body during the scuffle.
Choong notices the prince's corpse only belatedly, and the sight only makes him fight more aggressively. Mu-young can't help from turning back even as she leaves, and her and Choong share a charged stare. She doesn't seem to want to leave, but she has no choice.
Choong cuts the minion down with a non-fatal blow (just enough to slow him down), in order to follow her.
The courtyard battle turns into a massacre when General Yeon and his troops arrive to cut down any soldier of the king still standing, before he's off to kill the king. (Leader So and Boo-chi run away before they're killed, since their task was only to buy time for the king's escape, and not to win a war.)
Only the king is back in his throne room, having decided to stand his ground. "Tell them to come with all their might."
Mu-young and Shi-woo all but limp inside, and she manages to gasp out that the prince has died before collapsing. The king reels from the shock as Leader So arrives to hear the same sobering news.
He urges the reticent king to escape the palace, but that option becomes useless when General Yeon, Jang, and their army enter the throne room. Mu-young and her cousin share a long, silent gaze, and he's the first one to break it as his eyes glisten with tears.
She puts her sword to his neck, and an order from General Yeon stops any outside interference. Slowly but surely, Jang raises his own sword against her, and when he does, Mu-young renounces their family ties and vows to see him dead.
Choong gets a glorious slow-motion entrance on horseback, hair flowing in the wind, as he vows to himself that he'll find the princess. I'm all for that plan, but has he thought ahead to how he'll save her once he does?
When the king asks how Jang could betray him, his nephew tearfully replies that the first word he ever learned wasn't 'mother' or 'father' but 'Your Majesty,' and that he was raised only to serve him, believing it was his duty as a member of the royal family.
However, even though he knows how much his uncle loved Goguryeo, and even though he knows that his uncle is wise beyond measure above all other kings, "You never treated me with warmth, because I did not exist to you." So basically, Uncle didn't love him enough.
I love how the king calls him out on that when he asks if that's the reason why Jang chose betrayal. Jang grows more emotional as he replies that he finally realized that there was more than one path for him to take, and that he is going to decide it from now on. Not the king. "You must forsake me now, Your Majesty."
But the king looks on him still as a nephew, and softly says that he'll never forsake him. "It is still not too late," he says. "I will never forsake you." Jang almost looks like he could waver, but for him, it's too late to go back now.
General Yeon confronts the king, and their ideological differences come to the forefront when Yeon wants to rule everything with the sword and thinks peace and coexistence are for the weak.
I love that the king keeps such a cool head about all this, and comes off as the bigger man when, until the end, he speaks to the increasingly-emotional General Yeon with civility. There's the sense that he's talking to a child who's lost his way—not in a patronizing way, but with a genuine desire to instill understanding.
In the end, General Yeon stabs the king straight through the gut as he says, "Ask the late kings who have protected Goguryeo. Just which of us is letting Goguryeo take the right path, and which of us knows what Goguryeo needs."
With that, he wrenches his sword free, his face becoming drenched in blood as the king falls to his knees. The king shares one last look with his daughter, then with Leader So, as an unspoken agreement passes between them for So to protect the princess.
General Yeon actually smiles with his achievement even as Mu-young holds her father's body, sobbing.
And that's the scene Choong finds when he makes it to the throne room—the king of Goguryeo dead, the woman he loves crying as she holds a corpse, and his own father drenched in blood, triumphant.
COMMENTS
Phew, this episode was quite the journey. There was just so much of everything happening at once, and so much of it to Mu-young. To lose the father she cherished so much, the brother she loved so dearly, her faith in the man who stole her heart, and all of it to the cousin she never even suspected? Characters get some pretty raw deals in dramaland, but she takes a decent-sized portion of the Sucky Day Cake, if not the whole thing.
Since the premise of the show spoiled the story up to this point (in that we knew Mu-young's father would be killed by Choong's), I felt a wee bit more emotionally prepared for all of the death and destruction this hour—though I'm not sure if that accounts for the lack of emotional resonance I felt when the crown prince and the king were killed. It could just be the "go go GO!" nature of the episode which didn't let us linger too long on the different aftermaths, since it wasn't like Mu-young had the time to even properly register one death before it was time for the next.
So for an hour wholly dedicated to a bloody and prolonged coup, I think the show did as good a job as it could have with keeping things moving along. We literally saw the entire palace in chaos, but there was still a grounded quality to the way we'd hop from one story to the next, or even from battle to battle, since all the happenings took place underneath the shade of the same umbrella. And yeah, some of it did call for a hefty suspension of disbelief, which I was (mostly) willing to give—until it came to Jang's big moment in the meeting hall, which I just couldn't buy.
Actually, I probably would have bought that sudden murderous shift in his character if he carried it through the episode, but he goes straight from apathetically walking over the corpses of his enemies to crying to his uncle about how he wasn't loved enough, and something about him just rang false. It's not like he's forbidden from having different facets to his personality, only that the tonal shifts felt clumsy and mismanaged for a character I assume we're going to be spending a lot of time with from now on. There's room to grow, at least.
I have literally no idea about the certainty of Mu-young or Choong's future, and even if I weren't already invested in their characters, I'd be curious to know how the show plans to handle their relationship from here on out. For starters, it'd be nice to know how Choong plans to get her out of that room alive.
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- Sword and Flower: Episode 2
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