FICKLE PICKLE!

zero plot consistency, zero writing consistency, zero arc consistency, possibly the all-time worst writing i have seen for a male lead in ages (aura farming! is not good writing!!!!!!!!!), both the leads were just privileged losers who acted like high schoolers at the end, zero comprehension of how politics works. the entire drama was made to show off filtered glamour but it wasn't even entertaining. oh let's abolish the monarchy so i can go back to being a rich ceo and you can cook <3 that's how teenagers think. that's not how adults think. that's not how the world works. you do not just "abolish the monarchy girls" and everything goes back to normal! because now who did that power go to, prince yian? the very same cabinet and politicians like a story arc is not things going to the same place they started but even more childish.....

the villains were an utter calamity. noh sang hyun.......idek what they did to your character. queen mother was the goat of the drama because without her, what would the leads have even done? she fixed everything for them! what is more amusing to me is that goong and my princess that both aired like 1-2 decades ago had a more mature handling of the monarchy and showed better writing.

And My Princess, while I didn’t love it as much as Goong, was a lesson on having a fluffy Royal romcom with low stakes that is still not illogical.

People found The King: Eternal Monarch messy and it wasn’t about royalty anyway despite its protag being an AU King, but even leaving aside my loving it - it actually had things to say and functioned as a narrative.

Treat it as a vacation that the heavens gave you. Don't force yourself to charge forward. Don't feel flustered. Don't work hard. Just go with the flow.

Hey, why don't you try thinking of it this way? What? Treat this as a very long vacation. A very long vacation? I think there's no need to keep charging forward. There will surely be a time when everything doesn't go smoothly, or a time when you feel exhausted. Right? At a time like this... How should I explain it? Although it's a bit strange to say this, treat it as a vacation the heavens gave you. Don't force yourself to charge forward. Don't feel flustered. Don't work hard. Just go with the flow. And then? Things will get better.

You go on the offensive, you fight back.

Also, her threatening to shoot his cat and then bandageing his hand with her hair scarf (?), perfection

First, we have to look at the Queen Dowager’s true objective. In a Joseon-style court, a banquet isn’t a social event, it’s a ritual of hierarchy. Every detail is a calculated move: the dangui¹ signals your rank at a glance, the entry order dictates the pecking order, and the seating chart reinforces the political structure. By sending Hui-ju that specific outfit and forcing her to walk last and sit in the back, the Queen Dowager is publicly branding her as low-status and controllable. It’s a political declaration: "You exist only within my system."

Choosing the white suit over the dangui is Hui-ju’s way of rejecting the system's labels. If she wears the dangui, she’s acknowledging her place in the social order. By refusing it, she denies the court the power to categorize her. It’s a powerful statement of autonomy: "I don't fit into your boxes." This isn't a rebellion for the sake of aesthetics, it's a high-stakes narrative refusal to be a pawn in their political game.

White² isn't just a snub, it’s controlled ambiguity. Per the show’s own internal logic, white is the color of the Queen Dowager and mourning, but also the mark of a commoner. Hui-ju uses this to play all sides. She tells the court she’s above their ranks, tells the Dowager she doesn't own the color, and tells the public she’s one of them. It’s a genius bit of visual storytelling. She isn't just throwing a "gendered jab," she’s making a massive power move by showing that the court’s symbols have no power over her.

When Hui-ju puts on a Western suit, it pits economic power against inherited power (by far the biggest thematic clash in the show). The court is defined by the yangban bloodline system, while Hui-ju is powered by modern wealth. The visual contrast is immediate. A dangui signals allegiance to tradition, but the suit tells the world she plays by a different set of rules. It’s about breaking free from a political cage.

Don't mistake the Prince’s intervention for a "rescue" because there's difference between a "Damsel in Distress" trope and a strategic political alliance.

It’s easy to misread this as simple gender dynamics, but it’s actually pure court politics. When he takes her hand, he isn't "saving" a weak woman, he is publicly validating her defiance. In the rigid logic of Joseon, walking order is synonymous with hierarchy. Since the Prince belongs at the front, pulling her forward serves as a real-time re-ranking. He’s telling the court, "She stands beside me, not beneath you." It’s a political endorsement. Hui-ju made the first move by causing the disruption, the Prince simply followed her lead to legitimize it. The power flow is clear: she acts, and he escalates.

I love her "playing dumb" strategy! When she tells the press she’s "just a commoner" who didn't understand the court's rigid rules, she’s building a shield against punishment. She knows that if the Palace retaliates, they’ll look like bullies picking on an innocent outsider. It’s a calculated manipulation of the public’s expectations. She forces the royals to act with "benevolence" whether they want to or not 😌

Hui-ju wasn’t attacking the Queen Dowager as a woman, nor was she rejecting femininity or making a simple "girlboss" statement. Instead, she chose to reject being ranked by aristocratic rules and introduced a new power system. She forced the court to engage with her on entirely different terms and triggered the Prince to publicly choose a side. Had she obeyed, she would have become controllable. Had she openly defied them, she would have been crushed. Instead, she disrupted the status quo without direct confrontation, shifting the battlefield entirely. That’s why it works.

¹In the world of Korean hanbok, the dangui is the go-to formal jacket for the elite. It’s the standard silhouette for royal women (from the Queen down to the court ladies) and the high-ranking noblewomen of the yangban class. It serves as a narrative signal of status, whether it's being worn for a major ceremony or as part of the daily palace wardrobe.

²The color-coded hierarchy of the Joseon era.

In Joseon, the King’s primary state robe was known as the gonryongpo (곤룡포), and it was traditionally a striking bright red. This color choice was rooted in Confucian hierarchy and influenced by Chinese imperial standards, specifically those of the Ming Dynasty, which Joseon used as a model for its own statecraft and protocol.

Red symbolizes supreme authority and vitality; in East Asian iconography, it represents the central life force and absolute power.

Historically, red and the dragon insignia were reserved exclusively for the King to mark his sovereignty. Joseon had an incredibly rigid dress code that controlled everything from fabric to patterns. If a Grand Prince were to sport that same look, it wouldn't just be "disrespectful," it would be interpreted as a symbolic coup. In a palace full of rival factions, wearing the King's colors is basically announcing your intention to take the crown. The stakes couldn't be higher.

While white is associated with the Queen Dowager, its meaning is actually much more nuanced. Joseon society is famously known as the "Nation of White-Clad People" (Baeguiminjok / 백의민족). For commoners, white was the color of daily life, symbolizing purity, simplicity, and humility.

White serves as a powerful visual marker for mourning and high rank. In this Confucian setting, white is the color of widowhood, and since the Queen Dowager is the eternal widow of the previous King, she essentially "owns" that status. The Queen (the King’s consort) wore vibrant ceremonial colors like reds and greens to symbolize her active power. Concubines and noblewomen were restricted to specific palettes dictated entirely by their rank. The Queen Dowager, meanwhile, transitioned to more restrained, pale, or white-based tones (a symbolic shift rather than a literal requirement). When she wears white or muted tones, she signals her seniority and moral weight to the rest of the court. It is a way of asserting her power without saying a word.

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(And why that one particular news article is wrong for saying that they should have cut out the ending scene).

So, as some people may have seen, an article came out saying that PHM is a great film, but that the ending scene of Grace in the Eridian classroom should have been cut. Unsurprisingly, said article has been dragged through the mud by fans for totally missing the importance of that scene in Grace’s story. While I wholeheartedly agree with the people calling out why it was a bad take, I want to take this as an opportunity to go on a ramble about not just why that scene is important, but also why PHM is a mastery of subverting expectations because the two things can definitely be linked.

When I was thinking about this, my mind also kept going to the First Law Trilogy by Joe Abercrombie, not because it’s similar to PHM, but because they’re both great at subverting the readers/audiences expectations. However, they do it in very different ways.

For those unfamiliar with The First Law, it’s a grim dark fantasy trilogy that subverts typical fantasy tropes by flipping them all on their head. What if the band of unlikely companions all hated each other? What if their journey ended up being a failure? What if the friendly wizard who offers assistance in their quest is actually the worst? It goes against the norm by doing the opposite.

In comparison, PHM subverts expectations, not by flipping tropes on their head, but by recontextualising them. Ryland Grace’s journey is the stereotypical hero’s journey, it just doesn’t play out the way you anticipated, and that’s why it’s brilliant.

Usually, a hero’s narrative plays out as follows:

The hero is reluctant to go on a quest/mission (and often initially refuses)

Something causes the hero to change their mind and they set of on the quest/mission they initially said no to

The hero goes through a journey of self discovery while on their quest/mission

The hero makes a big sacrifice

The hero ends up at home as a changed person

Sound familiar? Yeah, that’s the plot of PHM boiled down to it’s bare bones. So why is so much of the book/film a surprise? We’ve seen that story play out before, right?

Yes, but the reason PHM shocks us so much is because none of those narrative beats play out quite the way you thought they would and a lot of that is down to the way the story drip feeds you information through flashbacks.

For most of the book/film, you think you’ve already seen the first two steps in Ryland’s journey: he initially refuses to work on studying the astrophage before ultimately changing his mind and asking to stay on as a researcher. As a result, you start to build a picture in your head of where Ryland’s story is going to go - not necessarily in specifics, but in a general sense.

Ryland is reluctant to help out with PHM mission

Ryland changes his mind and agrees to carry on studying the astrophage and ultimately offers himself up to go into space (he must have done that because we’ve seen him on the ship)

Ryland goes on a journey of self-discovery while completing the mission

Ryland makes a big sacrifice

Ryland ends up back home as a changed version of himself

Simple, right? Wrong.

The biggest shock comes when you find out that Ryland never chose to go on the Hail Mary. He didn’t offer to go as a way of carrying on down the path he’d stepped onto when he agreed to carry on the research, he flat out refused to do it. And this is how PHM subverts your expectations. It drops a piece of information that makes you rethink the context of the entire story, a story that never plays out the way you thought it would.

Ryland’s refusal wasn’t studying the astrophage, it was getting on the ship

Ryland choosing to do the mission wasn’t done through him becoming a researcher for the project, it was done on the ship when he discovered what he was up there to do

Ryland’s journey of self-discovery happens through the help of an unlikely alien companion

Ryland’s big sacrifice isn’t for Earth, it’s for Rocky

Ryland ends up at home as a changed version of himself, but home isn’t a classroom on Earth, it’s a classroom on Erid

Grace’s journey is the stereotypical hero’s journey, but not in the way anyone anticipated. Andy Weir managed to subvert expectations, not by having everything play out in the opposite way to what you’d expect, but by recontextualising the whole thing. It’s beat for beat a generic hero’s narrative but told in a way that makes the whole thing a surprise.

And that’s why it’s incredible.

It’s also why that final scene is so important. Because Ryland’s story follows the conventional arc of a hero’s, the closing chapter of his journey would always be him ending up at home as a changed version of himself. That was always how his story was going to end. So why not end with that scene on the beach?

Because Ryland’s place is in the classroom.

He says as much early on in the film. The place where Ryland feels most at home isn’t in his house, or on a spaceship, it’s in the classroom. It just so happens that the classroom in question isn’t actually on Earth.

Like, you've just said goodbye to your best friend. Forever. After everything you've been through, all you've learned from each other, coming up with a way to save not one but two suns, you're both going to your respective homes and you're literally never going to see him again.

But then your engines start failing. And you've seen this happen before. This is what happened to Grace's engines. Your fuel is infected. And now you're stuck in a solar system that isn't your own, with no way to get home, no way to call for help. You're truly alone in the universe.

There's no one to watch you sleep. There will probably never again be anyone to watch you sleep.

Your only hope is that someone from your planet sends another ship, but the chances are so unlikely. This was your planet's only hope and you've failed them.

You think of Adrian. How you miss them. You think of how bad the world is about to become and hope that they escape the worst of it. You try to only think of them happy.

You think of Grace, on his way home to save his planet. Or maybe not, if the taumoeba have infected his ship again. You feel helpless. There's no way you could get to him to warn him. He might be as stranded as you are.

But no, you won't let yourself think of this. Grace is smart, and his ship isn't made of xenonite. He'll have figured out a way to contain and fix the problem. He's on his way home to save his sun. To save his people. It's the only hopeful thought you have to cling to so you cling to it with all of your hands.

And then there's a knock on your hull. It's not the random banging of space stuff hitting your ship. Those are deliberate knocks, like the ones you've gotten so used to over the past few months.

It can only be one person.

And then like some kind of miracle, Grace is standing in front of you again. He tells you you're going home. That he's taking you home. That you'll feel your planet's soil beneath your feet again. That you'll watch your Adrian while they sleep again.

He'll never again see his home, he doesn't know if his plan to save his planet will work, he'll probably die (not if you have anything to say about it) but he says it doesn't matter. Because his friend and his friend's world needed saving and he was the only one who could.

You're not alone in the universe after all.