It took me a while to get back to this series after watching the first episode. It failed to grab my attention so I moved on to other shows. I finally came back to it once I ran out of things to watch.

I did enjoy the show for the most part and the parallel universe concept, albeit clumsily done, was kinda cute. I thought most of the characters were done/acted fairly well except the king and the traitor. Both of them were wooden and emotionless throughout the show. I chalked it up as a character trait from being a part of the loyal family. I really loved the side characters, especially, the head court lady and the unbreakable sword/his other self. I loved their acting and roles they were given. Fantastic. I didn’t like the prime minister character. The acting didn’t seem genuine and she went from being ambitious to being evil big time fast. It’s one thing to play political games but conspiring with a traitor and letting her friends get killed…. Hmmm…. As for Tae Eul, her character development went from a strong female cop to a cry baby girlfriend. Hmmm….

I read a lot of complaints about the king being a super human, kingdom of corea being a super power and the lack of solid foundation for time travel/parallel universe concept. I do agree with most of what I read but it didn’t bother me much since this is a K-drama and they tend to dial things way up to the unrealistic realm. But once they introduce the time travel element, things started to get real messy fast. The show was already confusing because of the chaotic nature of the way they edited scenes from different universe. It was hard to follow along with how the king was able to travel in time and impart different memories to people without changing anything? If I learned anything from all those Marvel movies is that you can’t change the past because it’ll birth another timeline. ??? And the Kingdom of Corea smacking Japanese navy around. ??? It’s a wet dream for Koreans. I’m Korean and I found it stupid.

And the ending!!! The way everything and everyone was changed except the king, unbreakable sword and Tae Eul… pretty unbelievable but I guess I saw it coming. But how the writer chose to make sure everything turned out well except for the traitor and the prime minister… I feel like it was a cop-out which led to the absolute worst case scenario for the main characters. A long distance parallel universe relationship? What? This just doesn’t make sense in so many ways but that’s what happens when the writer doesn’t have a clear vision. I think she should’ve been more bold and given herself permission to not give every single person the “best ending”. Sigh…

I think the writer got drunk on her own past successes and figured that she could write anything and people will watch it. The word “Indulgence” comes to mind. After all, this series seemed to have a huge production budget and a stellar cast. I do remember Mr. Sunshine, one of her other works, getting real messy toward the end so I’m thinking the writer knows how to start good story threads but doesn’t know how to wrap them up. I see this in a lot of other K-dramas, too.

I’m hoping Netflix will start carrying Goblin. We shall see.