Superior drama!

I was not going to write a review but I started jotting down some notes and here we are. I just finished the drama so my thoughts are not well organized but here is my reflection on this drama. I will try not to rehash the same things most people have already said.

First off, the actors blew my mind away. I came for Zhang Ling He and Yu Shu Xin but by the end, I fell in love with Cheng Lei and Tian Jia Rui just stole my heart with his childish antics. All the actors without exception did a fantastic job. I wasn't a fan of the actress playing Shang Guan Qian and I was not rooting for their romance because, in the end, she broke my dude's heart. However, I can admit that, for a moment, she had me fooled when it looked like she had turned against Wufeng.

Talking about our main couple, I love ZLH and YSX but I didn't feel the chemistry between them at all. I didn't care about this couple's story one bit. I'm not sure if the reason for that was her lack of emotions. Don't get me wrong, her acting was fitting for the role of a spy, but not so much for that of a new bride who is supposed to fool her husband/ lover and endear herself to him. She got lucky that Gong Zi Yu fell first because she made zero effort to entice either Zi Yu or Shang Jue to give her a second glance during the bride selection, unlike Qian. Maybe I'm being too hard on her because this is the character YSX was given but this took away from my enjoyment of their relationship. It was so much of him being infatuated and her "being stoic as long as it fulfilled her agenda" until she fell too in the later parts.

That being said on the subject of love, I feel like everyone was treated equally. By the end of the show (with the info we're left with at least) there is only one happy pair (Jin Fang and Zi Shang). I wish we'd seen more of them.
The drama wasn't about romance which is why I overlooked that and still rated it pretty high. The qualities of this drama lie in everything else that it did. I particularly love how the things that seemed like plotholes or were not making sense in the earlier episodes, were all tied together at the end.

For me though, aside from the intrigue and the story itself, I found the emphasis on the Gong family's relationships so touching. I don't usually care about family ties and lessons in dramas. Here though... man! They made me bawl my eyes out in those last episodes...
The brothers' relationships with each other and as a whole (minus Huan Yu)... all different but similarly loving and supportive.
The parents' love and support for their kids in hidden ways... (minus Zi Shang's asshole father)
The love that the Gong family has for their members and the people they love is so deep.
From an outsider's perspective, all those things may seem cruel, isolating, and harsh but once you're in, it's an unbreakable bond that a lot would envy.

The ending seems to suggest a second season, but it could also mean that the writers are letting us interpret it the way we want. All I can deduce from Zhang Ling He's face is that whatever was behind that door was not good news or not what he was waiting for.

It's not satisfying but I'm not upset by it. In my mind, she died and I hope Zi Yu recovers soon but would it be this drama if it was that simple? Too many things are still left unanswered. They defeated the Wang warriors of Wufeng but not the Wufeng as a whole. What if the Liang warriors exist? What about his brother? Has he truly given up and been defeated? Could the whole martial world unite against Wufeng with the Gong family? Could the Gong family eventually become more open to outsiders if the former point happens? So many questions and that's why I love this drama, regardless of whether we will get an answer to them or not.

As you can tell, My Journey To You has impressed me beyond words with all its twists and turns.

If I can end this long review with a small quibble (aka what I referred to above as plotholes), I wish the story had been told more linearly. There were a lot of flashbacks and retelling of stuff that the audience had no way of knowing. It worked the way in a lot of moments but for example, when I wonder where Shang Guan Qian was amidst all the final Wufeng chaos, it feels like there is a disconnect between scenes. She only reappears during the Huan Yu showdown. It seems like it's not all happening at the same time. This did not deter me from enjoying the show, however, if there was another season, I wish there'd be less of that style of storytelling.

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