The Apothecary Diaries Season 2

Episode 45

It's not a general rule of thumb, but I've always felt that there are lines you only cross in fiction as a deliberate bid to make a capital-p-Point. One of those is the deaths of children. When Shisui, wearing Loulan's face, takes Maomao into the bedroom where all of the children in the fortress are lying dead after she poisoned them, it's a visceral, horrible moment. They're the only true innocents in this entire situation, and as Shisui notes, that won't protect them. She views poisoning them as the kindest thing she can do for them: giving them a painless, peaceful death. Maybe that's why she's quick to answer Maomao's accusation by saying it's “medicine.”

Or maybe it really is. If we think about where they are and what Suirei has been through, there's a chance that the children are, like Juliet, only feigning death. (If that's the case, here's hoping things work out better for them than it did for Shakespeare's heroine.) I don't think that's a false hope – not only has the resurrection potion been mentioned at least once an episode, but Shisui shows Maomao the children after she's just gone out of her way to save all the workers making gunpowder. Would she really save a bunch of adults and then murder children? Yes, she's taken steps not to conceive the emperor's child (whether that was necessary or not), but that's not the same as feeding a child poison – and she clearly cares for Kyou-u.

On the other hand, her life hasn't been good or easy. She learned very early that “Loulan” was a mask she had to wear around her mother, but it's not clear if “Shisui” is any more her authentic self. They're just two different roles she played throughout her life, and the quick reversion to “Shisui”'s character when Maomao calls her by that name shows how she can flip a switch and become who she needs to be in a given situation. Who she might really have been seems to have been lost. She's not like Jinshi, able to be herself and someone else simultaneously; she's always “someone else.”

It's easy to understand why she'd want to be. She's clearly astute (look at her getting Shenmei to put Maomao in the poison pit instead of the water chamber), and she learned early on that her mother was unstable and untrustworthy. Shenmei is one of the vilest figures in anime this season (maybe ever, if I can be dramatic), and part of that comes from a careful balance of mustache-twirling – or claw-wielding, in her case – lunacy and a genuine desire to hurt people. If Shenmei knows she's wrong (and she might), she doesn't care. In her mind, it's all worth it if she gets what she wants, and that leaves her daughter to try to mitigate the damage. Shenmei may think she'll be able to take down the imperial family, which she seems to equate with Suirei and her mother as much as with the late emperor. If anyone should be prevented from attaining immortality and eternal youth, it's this woman.

It's hard to say which of the many disastrous decisions made by the Shi clan truly brought the army to their gates, although it's a safe bet that kidnapping Maomao was up there. Given Loulan/Shisui's actions this week, I have to wonder if she knew that taking Maomao away would hasten her clan's demise and did it on purpose. But whatever the reason, death and destruction are coming. It might almost be a relief for Shenmei's victims that it's almost all over.

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