*Episode premise spoilers, which include spoilers from episode 33.*
Quick side note: major shoutout to La Máquina on Hulu. I’ve been waiting for this new Diego Luna/Gael García Bernal miniseries for a while, and it’s finally here! First of all, it’s excellent—once I finishe The New Heaven Sword and Dragon Sabre, my Diego Luna reviews are going to take this weekly slot on the blog, and I already have write-ups for all six episodes locked and loaded. Second, the show has also given my brain something wonderful to obsess over while I wait for more Bucky-Yelena content for Thunderbolts*. Truly, the hero we need in these times!
Okay, onto The New Heaven Sword and Dragon Sabre.
Big happenings today! In both the martial arts dealings and the interpersonal relationships, we get some major shakeups. I’m looking forward to seeing where we go from here.
In an attempt to prove his devotion to Zhou Zhiruo once and for all, Zhang Wuji suggests they move up their plans to get married. But wouldn’t you know it, Zhao Min crashes the ceremony. Interestingly, she’s not just there to stop the wedding—she has an important message for Wuji while also coming to collect her second command from him. In other news, a spurned Miss Zhou is not someone to mess with, and we discover where Xie Xun has been the past few episodes.
I’ll touch on the Xie Xun stuff quickly. Zhang Wuji’s godfather finds himself on the ropes once again, but as usual, he’s not ready to be counted out. Bonus points to his captors, who have the audacity to tell him, “Please don’t misunderstand. We are not trying to trap you. The three of us are just protecting you from harm.” Oh, you guys are so dead when he escapes/is rescued!
With the way the love polygon plot has been going, I knew we weren’t going to wrap it up with six episodes left in the series, so it’s no surprise that Zhao Min swoops in when she does. But I really like how this whole scene plays out. Rather than doing the whole “I object!” thing, she comes with crucial information that Zhang Wuji is desperate to know—her intel is time-sensitive, and while she’s obviously not going to feel guilty about crashing his wedding, she knows he very genuinely does need to come with her immediately. She also offers him some cover by making this the second of her three commands. Even if Wuji really wants to come with her, due to her intel as well as his conflicted feelings about the wedding, she presents it so he’s not technically choosing this quest over Zhou Zhiruo. Instead, she’s ordering him to come, and he’s just fulfilling his honor-bound duty to do as she says.
Still, it’s not not about the various feelings involved. When she first orders him to leave the ceremony, Zhang Wuji argues that she’d agreed she wouldn’t command him to hurt or betray anyone, which walking out on Zhou Zhiruo would do. In response, Zhao Min replies, “If you marry Miss Zhou today, you’re not only betraying yourself, you’re being unfilial too.” Brr! And between these two women, Miss Zhou has generally been portrayed as the softer, more “innocent” one, but when she realizes what’s happening, she is ready to throw down. There’s an interesting reveal about Miss Zhou knowing moves that someone from a righteous sect shouldn’t know, and I’m curious to see where that leads.
At this point, Zhang Wuji basically knows his heart is fully on board the Zhao Min train, but his head has been preventing the rest of him from following suit. Moving up the wedding when he was having doubts was a supremely bad move, and honestly, he kind of deserves to have it blow up in his face like this. Even if Miss Zhao hadn’t shown up and he’d gotten married, it wouldn’t have fixed the real problem, and then where would he be?
Tony Leung Chiu-wai does a terrific job throughout this whole extended scene. It’s clear that part of Zhang Wuji wishes he could think of Zhao Min as just a villain—a “demoness,” as a lot of other characters call her. But he can’t fully quit her either, and I think there’s also a tiny part of him that’s just a little relieved to hit “pause” on the wedding. Once they run off together, they do have serious martial arts business to address, but there’s some definite flirting too. Wuji tries to demure, claiming that he’s unworthy of a princess like Miss Zhao, and he busts out a bit of patented Tony Leung Yearning with the line, “I wonder which lucky prince consort would get to marry you.” Miss Zhao replies, “You can still be lucky if you want.”
Honestly, I don’t know if I’d be so interested in these two if The Acolyte hadn’t been canceled and I hadn’t been missing my favorite new enemies-to-lovers ship. Maybe it’s just good timing, but either way, I’m really enjoying this dance between Zhang Wuji and Zhao Min!
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