The Apothecary Diaries Season 2

Episode 47

Loulan always knew it had to end this way. However, she tried her best to ensure that she only took down those who were truly complicit. Two specific actions of hers this week, both tied to her last requests to Jinshi, spell out both the depths of her strategic thinking and the fact that while she may have died as Loulan, she was always Shisui underneath: her securing the promise that those who had “already died” wouldn't be killed again, and the act of cutting Jinshi's face with her mother's decorative nail.

The former is very easy to figure out – she's trying to save her sister. It's possible that it wasn't necessary, given that she's Jinshi's sister or aunt and therefore part of the imperial family. It also hints once again that she didn't murder the children, but instead gave them the resurrection drug that allowed Suirei to “die” the first time; heartbreaking as it is to see Maomao sleeping beside the bodies of the poisoned children, it also ensures that she's right there if they do wake up. But why slice Jinshi's perfect cheek?

I think it's possible to view that as, ultimately, a gift. By scarring him, she ensures that he no longer looks exactly like the former emperor who caused so much pain, a similarity that at least two people remarked upon this season. But it also means that Jinshi has no way to avoid killing her. She's injured the Moon Prince. There's no way he can save her from herself now, something I think Jinshi may have tried to do. Loulan/Shisui was a victim of her family's ambitions and dysfunction, and both the fact that she negotiates for the safety of the previously deceased and kills Shenmei (the real author of most of the problems) show that she's nothing like her mother. She's barely like her father, a man who stumbled when it came time to do the right thing, choosing instead to die without doing anything to help himself or his clan. He saw death as an escape he finally earned, hence the way he dies laughing. As that man's daughter, and more importantly as Shenmei's daughter, there's no way Loulan can be allowed to live. Being a hostage might be even worse. And so Loulan gives Jinshi no way out, ensuring that he can't try to be “kind” by sparing her while also granting her a way to end it all.

Like her father, Loulan goes out with a smile. She dances to her death. This mirrors the other times we've seen dance used in this series, most notably the concubine who danced on the wall as an expression of freedom, or at least a wish for it. Death, or its appearance (I can't imagine she survived the shot and the fall, but there's no mention of a body), is freedom for Loulan. It's a final unmasking, a removal of all of the layers she had to hide her true self with. But dance has also been used as a means of captivation (Maomao) and trickery (Jinshi). Maomao's rooftop dance was also witnessed by Jinshi, and we get the same sense that he can't look away from Loulan, albeit for very different reasons. And Jinshi's dance for the ambassadors was meant to fool them into believing an old legend they needed to, or at least wanted to, believe in. If Loulan isn't truly dead, she at least seems to be. But maybe it was Shisui's final dance we all witnessed – a dream of a woman who never had a chance to be her true self.

Maomao was mostly absent from this episode. She was sleeping with the dead. It may be that she was hoping that they'd wake up, but it also feels like an act of solidarity. Maomao is bidding goodbye to the Shi clan, to Shisui, in a way that makes sense to her. In my own cultural experience, it feels like she's sitting shiva. She's processing her grief. She'll have a lot more to deal with now that she's woken up, which is why Jinshi is hesitant to wake her. But Maomao opens her eyes on her own, which is both very typical of her and symbolic that she's ready to begin processing her loss and experiences.

The dead are never truly gone. We still feel their reach in the reverberations of their actions down through our lives. The late emperor and his mother still have a hold on the country, and the Shi clan will remain as a symbol of the price of bad actions. I hope that Shisui will also remain with those who knew her by that name.

Rating: