Top 5 scenes in The King: Eternal Monarch

This post contains spoilers from The King: Eternal Monarch.

I made the sacrifice of waiting until all episodes of The King: Eternal Monarch were out so that I could just binge watch the entire kdrama in one go (one episode a day) instead of having to wait a whole week for the next episode, so here I am, about a month later than everyone else, reviewing the beauty of this show.

Never too late though, right?

If anything, if you watched it fresh when it came out, here’s a #nostalgic factor for you to step through all the scenes that I had only experienced, just now.

Here are my top five most emotional scenes that I want to relive and celebrate with you all.

#5: False Sin-Jae revealing the truth

When Sin-Jae finds out that his original world was actually the Kingdom of Corea, and he stumbles on the real Sin-Jae in the current world, he reveals the truth to his mom. The mom that brought him up, the mom he recognized but felt weird about because he swore, he wasn’t Sin-Jae. He has dreams about being an entirely different person before waking up at the hospital, and he must have chalked it up to being in a coma for a whole year.

But he wasn’t. He wasn’t the one who was in the coma.

And he comes clean about it. He tells his mom, he shows her the real Sin-Jae, who is still hospitalized, after all these years, in a decade-long coma, without any real visitors because false Sin-Jae had stolen his life. First, it was so on brand for false Sin-Jae to have done the right thing and revealed the truth, and I really appreciate that. It’s so sad that all of this happened to him as a child without him having any control over it.

The scene that really got me was that the AU mother had a whole fit, blaming him for the entire ordeal when she first sees the real Sin-Jae. As false Sin-Jae was leaving, she runs after him and apologizes, crying.

“I should have given you a hug first”, she weeps.

I’m weeping. You’re weeping.

“You’re also my son, too”

We’re all weeping.

This is only the first scene I’m recounting, don’t use all your tissues yet.

#4: Fun math flirtation by King Lee Gon

This was early in the drama where he’s flirting with Tae-Eul and he’s like:

“To me, you’re a 0”

And then he follows up with saying that 0 doesn’t mean nothing, that it’s the power behind a number. After all, it’s not the 1 itself that creates value, but the number of 0s behind it.

I’m stealing this, it’s my new pick-up line now.

#3: Discovering budaejiggae

This was when Lee Gon first discovers budaejiggae as a food option and calls Tae-Eul to go eat with him, and she hangs up on him because she’s busy working.

It made me really reflect. The story behind budaejiggae is that it’s an army base stew, and in a world without the Korean War, there wouldn’t be an American culture influenced soup that’s composed of American foods like processed meats like spam, sausages and cheese.

It reminded me of how many foods we eat at Korean restaurants that are actually not originally Korean — like jajangmyeon and tangsuyuk, which have Chinese origins.

Yet, in North American culture, we eat these foods at Korean restaurants as if they are Korean foods. Similar with going to Chinese restaurants and ordering Chinese takeout, assuming that it’s Chinese food. In fact, a lot of the food available in “Chinese” restaurants in North America are foods invented in North America by Chinese people trying to survive.

I know the whole budaejigae mention was such a side-plot against an even more prominent plot point of finding people from the alternate universes in the wrong world, but this really grabbed my attention.

Food.

Food really grabbed my attention. Shocker.

#2: Jo Eun Sup and Jo Yeong brotherhood

When they hugged before Yeong went back to his world, I held back tears. In a plot full of doppelgangers offing each other for gain, the fact that these two got along so well broke expectations. This is especially so because despite being the same person in two different worlds, their circumstances really changed who they were.

Jo Yeong was this stoic guy, ready to devote his life as Unbreakable Sword to King Lee Gon. He was fast-acting, ready to fight, cool-headed.

Jo Eun Sup was warm, loving, and animated. He extended kindness to everyone and brought joy to everyone’s faces, even to strangers, even to strangers who looked like himself and was himself but rejected himself. He protected Lee Gon as Yeong would have, with his life, when he pretended to be the real Yeong in the alternate world, because he trusted that Yeong would uphold his end of his word and protect his twin siblings.

These were two such loyal characters, but let’s take a step even further back here. The actor, Woo Do Hwan played both characters so well that even in still screencaps of the characters when they were wearing the same thing with the same hairdo, you could tell that they were different people.

Imagine that! Imagine Do Hwan playing Eun Sup who was pretending to be Yeong and having enough Yeong features to pass by but also keeping the essence of Eun Sup. It reminded me of that scene in Harry Potter where Helena Bonham Carter was pretending to be Hermione pretending to be her, and you could see it shine through.

These are the hardest roles to play, and he did so well in this role. There were other doppelgangers in the show as well, but for all of them it kind of just blended into one role, where the only reason you could tell them apart was because they were wearing something entirely different, but not because of demeanour.

That’s why I really appreciated this scene, and this brotherhood.

And I’m really sad that Eun Sup has no memories of Jo Yeong anymore.

Are you crying? I’m crying.

#1: Alternate timeline and world dating

I super love the ending because contrary to belief, they didn’t lose their memories. Even though, logically, I feel like they should have, I like how they let the human form of manpasikjeok decide whether to keep those memories and add a magical element to it.

I love that instead of one partner having to give up their world and live in the other, they kept true to the “live in the moment” vibe throughout the whole kdrama and carried it on by having weekend dates in other worlds.

Imagine !!! Going on weekend trips and just exploring alternate worlds and times! This is just like Doctor Who, but kdrama style. Also like Dark, but less dark (#punintended).

Currently watching: Mystic Pop-Up Bar. Stay tuned for that review!

Chirp @ me on twitter if you have other kdrama/ tv show suggestions!