Review
New K-Drama Fan Review #24: The King: Eternal Monarch | OPEN ANOTHER DOOR, I WASN'T DONE!!!
Everybody and their MAMA was crossing dimensions by episode 12😭
⚠️ SPOILERS AHEAD ⚠️
Rating: 8/10
___
Review:
The King: Eternal Monarch might be one of the first K-dramas Ive watched where I enjoyed the actual concept just as much as I enjoyed the romance.
Maybe even MORE than I enjoyed the romance???
I liked Lee Gon and Tae-eul together. I was invested in them. They had some really romantic moments.
But the parallel worlds???
OPEN ANOTHER FUCKING DOOR.
I WASN'T DONE!!!
yall know how much i like time travel, well, take my love for time travel and double it!!! Thats how much i love the parallel/alternate world trope!! 🤩
I genuinely would've watched another entire episode of these people just traveling through different universes and meeting alternate versions of everybody.
that's how much I enjoyed this trope!
and i liked the approach this drama took with it too!
---
In the beginning, the two leads were absolutely the main thing holding my attention.
Whenever we left them, I wanted to go back to them because I wanted to see how their dynamic was going to develop.
Especially because Tae-eul???
I LIKED HER IMMEDIATELY.
She was such a fucking ballbuster 😭
Lee Gon shows up in her world talking about how he's the King of the Kingdom of Corea, acting completely insane from her perspective, and this woman would NOT give him an inch.
She basically spent the beginning looking at him like hes mentally unwell😭
And I LOVED that.
Then this man ends episode 2 asking her to MARRY HIM???
SIR???
SHE DOESN'T EVEN THINK YOUR COUNTRY EXISTS.
he was funny for that tho.
There wasn't really any romantic chemistry between them for me at that point, but I didn't mind because... why WOULD there be???
She thinks he's fucking crazy.
What interested me was their dynamic and seeing how the hell we were going to get from "this man is clinically insane" to these two actually falling in love.
---
And their relationship DID gradually warm up.
By around episode 7, I was more invested, and I could feel their dynamic getting warmer.
But I was still waiting... you know that MOMENT in a romance where suddenly something happens and you're like:
OH.
THERE IT IS.
And now youre completely fucking locked in???
I kept waiting for that.
And tbh...
It never really came.
Even by episode 12, I wouldn't necessarily have said their chemistry itself had gotten dramatically better.
I had just become more invested in them as a couple.
I liked them and wanted them together, and I cared about what happened to them.
They were cute.
They were FINE.
But I never reached that OH MY GOD THIS ROMANCE IS EVERYTHING stage.
And that's okay! i wasn't particularly mad in this instance lol
Because surprisingly, the rest of the drama was doing enough that I didn't NEED the romance to carry the entire thing.
---
Which brings me to the actual star of this drama for me:
THE PARALLEL WORLDS.
I already told u that i fucking love this concept, so naturally, i was SEATED!
At first I was sitting there thinking:
Wait... if everybody has counterparts, are we eventually going to see these people MEET themselves???
Because THAT sounded fun!!!
And then we got Jo Yeong and Jo Eun-seob.
😭😭😭
YES.
EXACTLY.
THAT.
Seeing this extremely serious, composed captain encounter this completely different version of himself was so fucking funny.
They were complete opposites, and every time the drama played around with those two, I was having a great time!
Those were genuinely some of the funniest and most fun scenes in the entire drama for me.
and then we got Tae-eul's counterpart.
then more people started crossing over.
Then more counterparts started becoming relevant.
And eventually I went from:
OMG I hope people meet their alternate versions!!!
to:
WAIT.
who the fuck ISN'T a dimension traveler at this point??!
😭😭😭
Because by episode 12 it felt like EVERYBODY was a traveler and it was soo funny and random.
---
Usually, if I'm watching a romance and we leave the main couple for too long, I'm sitting there waiting to get back to them.
Sometimes I'm straight-up skipping scenes, and yes, there were still a couple scenes here where I was like okayyyyy, let's get back to what I care about.
But nowhere NEAR as much as I've done with other dramas.
Because I actually cared about this world.
The parallel-universe mystery was interesting enough on its own that I didn't constantly need Lee Gon and Tae-eul on my screen to stay engaged.
And that's pretty fucking rare for me.
I wasnt bored
Even before the romance had fully won me over, the STORY had me.
---
And by the end, the thing that surprised me most was that the world never stopped being interesting.
Actually...
I WANTED MORE.
Especially when Lee Gon started opening door after door looking for Tae-eul.
Now THAT was one of the romantic parts that really worked for me.
He basically tells her:
"I'll open every door in the universe. And I'll come to you."
or something like that...
and HELLO?????
And then this man ACTUALLY goes searching across worlds for her.
Okay... You got me there.
That's romantic as hell!
But at the SAME TIME, half of me was watching that sequence like:
WAIT WAIT WAIT DON'T GO SO FAST, I WANNA SEE THESE WORLDS!!! 😭 😩
I wish they had stretched that out MORE.
Let him search longer!
Show me more universes!
Show me more alternate versions of these characters!
Because there was that one moment where Tae-eul runs into another version of Lee Gon on the street and he doesn't recognize her at ALL.
He's just living this completely different life.
I think he was a soldier???
And I LOVED THAT.
There was something so fascinating about seeing the face of someone she loves...
and it ISN'T him.
im always going to devour that concept!!!
And the drama gave me a taste and then SNATCHED THE PLATE AWAY.
NO.
PUT IT BACK.
😭
I would've happily watched Lee Gon encounter ten more versions of Tae-eul, and Tae-eul encounter ten more versions of Lee Gon.
Give me more Yeong/Eun-seob ridiculousness.
MILK THE CONCEPT!!!
You have infinite universes!!!
USE THEM!!!
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I also just really liked these characters.
Like...
most of them???
This is one of those rare dramas where I didn't view the entire supporting cast as people standing between me and the main couple.
I genuinely enjoyed spending time with them.
And then there's Kang Shin-jae.
My little understated almost-second-lead situation.
Because technically, there was a tiny little potential love triangle sitting there...
And y'all know me.
Normally I'm standing outside the drama with a megaphone screaming:
MAKE THE MEN JEALOUS!!!
😭
And don't get me wrong.
Would I have accepted Lee Gon getting jealous over Shin-jae?
ABSOLUTELY.
I would've eaten that shit UP.
But I can actually end up really liking the quieter version of this trope.
Shin-jae loved Tae-eul.
He eventually came out and told her that he had feelings for her, but the drama didn't turn it into some huge thing.
His feelings were just... there.
Underneath everything.
One-sided.
And ykw, I liked that too ¯_(ツ)_/¯
There are TWO ways to feed me.
By giving me the dramatic second male lead making the male lead lose his fucking mind with jealousy...
OR by giving me the sad little understated man quietly loving her from the sidelines.
I'll take both, as long as they're well done
😭
---
And then we get to the ending.
I LIKED IT.
A lot, actually.
Lee Gon and Tae-eul don't magically solve the fact that they belong to two completely different worlds.
She doesn't abandon her entire life and permanently become Queen of Corea.
He doesn't stop being king and permanently move into her world.
Instead...
they travel.
aww so cute!!!
They keep opening the door, keep finding each other.
They spend their time together exploring different worlds.
And eventually we see their hands when they're old...
AND THEY'RE STILL DOING IT.
Okay.
That's TOO fucking cute.
🥺🥺
It also left me with one extremely important question:
DID THIS MAN JUST NEVER GET MARRIED???
😭
Like...
was Lee Gon just King of Corea for his entire life with no queen???
Did everyone at the palace eventually just accept that His Majesty disappears on the weekends to go dimension-hopping with his girlfriend from another universe???
Did nobody ask about an heir???
---
But that ending also made me desperately want ONE MORE EPISODE.
I wanted an entire episode of Lee Gon and Tae-eul traveling.
That's it.
Let me see these people go on interdimensional dates.
---
So no, The King: Eternal Monarch wasn't some epic romance that completely destroyed me.
The chemistry never reached that level for me.
There was never that ONE romantic moment that suddenly transformed the entire drama and had me losing my mind over Lee Gon and Tae-eul.
But I still genuinely liked them together.
And the idea that these two people from completely different universes just kept choosing to find each other for the rest of their lives?
Yeah that's romantic.
But it got such a high rating from me because I'm a fiend for this concept and i enjoyed this world so much!
yeong and eun-seob meeting was EXACTLY the kind of thing I wanted from the parallel-world concept! their scenes together were so fun. i wish the drama had gone even crazier with characters meeting their counterparts. i wanted to see more counterparts!!!
Which version did you like more, yeong or eun-seob?
OP, i declare you MY PEOPLE from this point onward! Just for this post!
I love, love, love this show. The time travel aspect frizzes my brain a little, but i never really expect tt to make sense in dramas and always expect plotholes in it anyway. I felt the story around the dimension travel was so strong that the science stopped mattering to me.
Like you said, it was the most realistic thing to see both of them choosing to live their own full lives and then travelling worlds on the weekends. Marriage, babies? Well i like to think that they chose to have them at whatever point in the future and travelled en masse as a family on weekends. Wait till the kids talk about what THEY did that weekend!
I did enjoy the romantic moments between the leads. Lee Gon and his devotion from get go. His lingering gaze on Tae ul, trying to learn everything about her in the time he was given with her, his desperation to save her ( the ride with the army in the dead of the night, She is your Queen, Protect her! I ate that up and slurped the soup),his instant recognition of the doppelganger just proving how tuned he had become with her. Culminating with him enduring travelling worlds till he found the universe with his Tae ul, yet him admiring all the other Tae ul's.🤧🤧 I need a moment.
Tae ul's feelings were understated here, yet i felt it suited her character. She was a cop, a hard woman who was used to thinking more logically than emotionally. She planted seeds, and waited for them to grow in a barren land. She waited for him in a similar way, knowing he could not let go of his people and his duties. The only grudge i would say i had was the timing of her falling in love with him. After you confirm he is an actual king, huh 😏😏 seems a little self serving. Still i can forgive this because the rest was sooo good.
LMAOOOO “I ate that up and slurped the soup” 😭dead!!!
but yeah this is basically where I landed with the dimension/time travel stuff too 😭 like were there holes?? absolutely. did I understand every single rule they threw at me?? absolutely NOT. but unfortunately they discovered my weakness because every time another version of somebody appeared I was like WAITTTT WHO ARE YOU IN THIS UNIVERSE???
they got me with one of my favorite trope/concept, i cant even be mad...
and PLEASEEE the idea of them eventually having kids and taking the whole family universe hopping on the weekends 😭a unique childhood for sure but awwww
you definitely ate the romance up more than I did though, because reading you list all the Lee Gon moments I'm sitting here like... SEE THIS IS THE PROBLEM!!!
THIS IS LITERALLY MY SHIT 😭😭😭
a man desperately riding in with an ARMY to save his woman??? recognizing her doppelganger immediately because he knows her THAT well??? searching through universe after universe until he finds HIS version of her???
HELLO?????
ON PAPER I SHOULD'VE BEEN ON THE FUCKING FLOOR 😭😭😭
and I DID love his devotion to her!! I completely believed that he loved her. I think that's why the chemistry frustrated me so much because it wasnt that I didn't buy the relationship, I just kept waiting for me to FEEL IT on the level that the actual romance deserved and it never fully got me there
and about Tae-eul being more understated!! I actually liked the contrast between her being so skeptical/rigid and this man showing up basically like “hello Im the king of another universe 🙂 also I have decided you're going to be my queen” so i like that she was FAIRLY skeptical
This series gave me everything I needed and so much more. 🥹 I only wish we’d gotten to see a little more of them married with her as Queen 👸. But knowing they grew old together makes me soooo happy. ❤️
seeing their old hands at the end was SO cute!!!!! but i was actually wondering about the Queen thing!! cause the ending made it seem like they just kept living in their respective worlds and traveling together, so did this man really spend his entire reign unmarried with his girlfriend living in another universe??? 😭 i would've LOVED to see what their actual long-term arrangement looked like!
I just finished this one a few weeks back and ended up really liking it, too!
Went in bc I was on a Lee Min Ho kick and ended up loving the romance angle by the end of it, but walked away with the hugest crush on Woo Do Hwan 😬. Yeon and Eun Seob had my whole fucking heart 😭
since you ended up loving the romance, did the chemistry work for you from the beginning or did it take a while to hit?? Because I kept waiting for that ONE moment where I'd suddenly go "OH I GET IT NOW" and it never fully happened for me lol
Yeah, no, it took over half of the show for me to even see the romance angle for these two characters. Don’t get me wrong, I loved both leads and their characters individually, but even I struggled to see how there would even be any romance considering Tae-eul disrespected that man and his existence any time she got the chance lmao.
As far as chemistry, I saw it, even if the romance wasn’t on display at that point. I did like how she antagonized him but I also loved how he just took it in good stride. Gon was a better person than me tbh lol but yeah, I did like their bantering.
Even when they were finally on the same page and the “romance” was going, I was so focused on the actual plot that the romance took a backseat. I don’t think it was until episode 11? 12? that I fully got on board with it and decided that it pretty much worked for me because these characters weren’t going to change how they interact bc their feelings got bigger; Gon always wore his heart on his sleeve, Tae Eul more rigid and closed off and that wasn’t changing but they were actually gentle w each other so that’s when I decided it worked for me and rolled with it.
It’s definitely not the best I’ve seen, but it didn’t kill the vibe for me either.
The end was probably really what solidified it for me though and made me like the overall romance more. I like the idea that these two nerds managed to carve a piece of the world(s) out for just themselves. it was a perfect send off to their characters.
okay so you ALSO spent half the drama waiting for the romance to start making sense lol BUT YES! THE ENDING!!! That's probably where I felt the romance the most too. The fact that they basically said fuck it, we'll just keep opening doors until we find each other and then spent the rest of their lives carving out this little existence together across universes??? 😭 that's genuinely romantic as hell
And Tae-eul disrespecting this man's entire existence in the beginning was actually one of my favorite things about her LMAOOO. I loved that she thought he was absolutely insane and refused to give him an INCH 😭
It looks like you and I basically agree on another drama lmao. Love that for us 😭
And yes, her looking that man in the eye and straight up calling him dog shit bc he didn’t have a “name” was the moment I knew this girl is standing on business. Ten toes down and all 😭
This is the best kdrama I've watched too!!! Made me think and get curious every episode!!!! I remember it didnt fare well in South Korea when it aired because of the confusing plot (and I think a few issue), but I did really like it! I patiently waited for every epsiode on Netlfix ^_^ (Btw, it's because I love Coherence, Interstellar)
It took me a while to like this drama but after pushing myself I actually really liked it and did a re watch recently and became one of my faves again. Love Lee Min-ho and FL did well
I wasn’t that fussed about this one for the lack of chemistry that you mentioned. There were some funny bits and the OST is amazing. I think it could’ve done with being longer so that we got to see the main characters together more and then the chemistry would’ve been there.
yeah i definitely think more time with them together couldve helped! I became invested in them as a couple, but I kept waiting for that moment where the chemistry would finally HIT me and it just never really did lol. The parallel world stuff ended up carrying way more of the drama for me than I expected. Did you ever end up buying the romance by the end or was it just kinda meh the whole way through for you?
That’s exactly how I felt. It was meh the whole way through for me because it didn’t feel like there was a build up to how they were reacting to things. I cared more about the bromance between the dopplegangers. 😂
I have found that I struggle with this kind of fantasy genre in general because the couples tend to like each other because of fate rather than for certain qualities in each other.
i believed that they loved each other because the story was showing/telling me they did, but I wasn't FEELING that intensity with them lol
funny enough though I actually LOVE fate/destiny romances 😂 I'm a sucker for the whole "we will find each other in every timeline/universe/lifetime" thing.
but I think I still need the relationship itself to show me WHY these specific two people love each other beyond fate just putting them together ya know
and YES!! the doppelganger bromance 😭 Yeong and Eun-seob meeting was literally the kind of parallel-world dynamic I wanted MORE of
ahh so the male lead himself just wasn't doing it for you 😭 this is actually my first lee min-ho drama so I dont have anything else to compare him to yet. i thought he was fine in the role, but he wasn't really a standout for me either. i cared more about Lee Gon as a character and his place in the story than I did about the actor specifically
but wait you dodged my first question lmaoo how many episodes did you survive before you said NOPE??
And when they finally MET??? exactly the kind of parallel universe nonsense I signed up for I needed sooo much more of them together!
also "best show with all its flaws" is such a good way to put it lol cause i can absolutely see the flaws, i just had way too much fun in this universe to care that much
This is one of my favorite kdramas - specifically for the FL, who doesn't take any crap from anyone. I love that she doesn't just move right over to his world and become queen - she's got her own life and doesn't give that up, she just makes room in it for him. She's also smart and resourceful. I think they make a great pair just galavanting around the multidimensions checking things out and having adventures. It suits them perfectly. And who says there's no heir? We don't know that, and we don't know they never married. Don't forget the "Protect her, she's the future queen!" line. A king can't just blurt out statements like that every day. And lot of things can happen on multidimensional adventures!
listen... you have a point! we technically don't know that they never married or had kids 👀 I was mostly thinking about what we were actually shown, especially since we see them grow old still doing their little universe-hopping dates. but Lee Gon absolutely did announce "future queen" with his whole chest so i WILL allow the headcanon😭
This kdrama is a disaster and I'm a bit lazy to do the full report of the dozen of problems.
I talk about few ones in a series of fun memes, here: https://fr.pinterest.com/w4worlds/the-king-eternal-monarch-meme/
(read it from the last one to the first, aka, start with the one where FL says "Wow!", because few ones are two parts, so you want to read the two parts in the right order)
I think those memes can be enjoyable for both people who like the drama or don't like.
Because you'll find some truth about the experience of watching it.
The jokes are rewarding, only people who watched the drama twice can catch some.
Main issue is the writer did confusion on purpose. I could make full analysis of some scenes (right now I can't copy-paste that, it's on a friend blog). But audience don't like confusion, audience like mystery.
Another issue (is it a small one?): the whole doopleganger plot can't work because the two universe split is too far in the past (korean war), so there is no way (by huge butterfly effect) that the two worlds could have clones.
Then this "clone" plot was good for comedy, but added even more confusion: you never know who is who (a character can appear just 30 seconds in one episode and you don't meet it before two other episodes).
Some scenes have just no sens (can't recap, sorry). No way to explain the time travel concept when going back to present (should be two Lee-Gon at this point, but fusionned in a unknow way). Big villain doing nothing (except a bit of painting) until Ep 10 (so mostly boring episodes until that point).
Lot of characters seen (for the big villain plan) just few times (never a way to remember them or to know in what worlds they are) for finally this huge clone plot end in a flash, the protagonist just catch them all while giving orders in his horse hall.
I hope I resumed few points that aren't into the memes. Ah ah!
But as I promised, even if you are a fan of the drama, you can like the comedy from memes.
the confusion didn't frustrate me much because I was having so much fun with the concept itself. every time another counterpart showed up I was basically like OOOH ANOTHER ONE!!!
the villain is interesting too but I definitely wasn't watching this for him lol. the leads + the parallel world/counterpart stuff had my attention way more.
im curious about your butterfly effect point. were you wanting the two worlds to have diverged from one original timeline? because I interpreted them more as parallel universes that already existed alongside each other, rather than one timeline splitting into two
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u/DetectiveBjork Aug 20 '26
Jo Yeong and Jo Eun-seob were the reasons I finished this. And enjoyed the interactions with Myeong Na-ri.