Ending ruined it for me

This could have been one of my favourite dramas but unfortunately it became one of the ones I’m most bitter and upset about. I actually didn’t watch a Korean drama for months after this. I think whether or not the ending is unsatisfying for you depends on your interpretation throughout the drama but I don’t think that I interpreted it wrong. I watched this while it was ongoing and I was nervous about the ending because I had heard what happened in the Chinese version, however I think I would have preferred that.

I was quite surprised at the plot as it entailed a man in a woman’s body falling in love with another man. South Korea is quite conservative so I was skeptical about whether they would go through with it in the drama, but after the two characters slept together I didn’t think there was any backtracking that. The queen seemed to have completely disappeared, and it wasn’t even hinted at that she was still alive. Well they did manage to backtrack it and I think it completely lowered the quality and completely undermined the entire drama. I think this because of the following reasons:

-The king fell in love with Bong-hwan’s personality and quirks, he hated the queen before Bong-hwan arrived and literally tried to kill her. I didn’t watch the special episodes but I know they showed scenes of the king meeting the queen and hinted at prior romance which makes no sense due to the reason above.
-We never really got to know the queen because she was barely in it so I had no attachment to the character yet she was the one who ended up with the king.
-I felt the writers used the idea of two men falling in love to make the drama interesting/different but then didn’t have the guts to see it through, which honestly was a very crappy thing to do. They shouldn’t have bothered with this storyline if they weren’t brave enough to do it properly or they at least could have changed it a bit so that most of the drama wouldn’t be romance between Bong-hwan and the king only for the ending to happen.
-The king said he felt like he was missing something at the end which made me so sad and I was also so upset that the queen never told the king the truth. It felt as if she was just riding Bong-hwan’s coattails and deceiving the king.
-I’m guessing that what the writers meant to portray with the ending was that the king and Bong-hwan were friends and the queen was still in the body, which caused the romantic feelings but that wasn’t shown properly at all (this is literally me guessing the explanation), and I think it was purposefully misleading and ambiguous to make it “interesting” which again is a really crappy and cowardly thing to do.

In conclusion, the ending is why I gave it a low rating. I’m still shocked at how they managed to do a complete 180 in probably the last 15-30 minutes. I normally wouldn’t change a rating so drastically simply because of the ending, but unfortunately, even though the rest of the drama was really good, the ending unravelled all of it so it was a dealbreaker for me. The acting was very good and it was also very funny. If you’re aware of the ending and okay with it you will probably enjoy it.

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