The Apothecary Diaries

Episode 24

Let's get the important news out of the way first: we're getting a season two! That's excellent news for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that in volumes three and four of the light novels the plot heats up considerably, in ways set up by the second half of this season. Plus there's a great frog scene.

While there are many important elements to this final episode, by far one of the best is Lakan's selection of the courtesan he'll buy out. Maomao spoke with Meimei before sending him to Verdigris House, because her big sister is ready to help guide Lakan to the one person he never expected to see again, Fengxian. The madam was not in on the whole conspiracy, and it's easy to see that she believes that in hiding Fengxian from Lakan, she's been protecting the other woman, and she's not happy to have Meimei reveal the syphilis-ravaged woman to the man she blames for Fengxian's fall. But if nothing else, the scene where Maomao's biological parents are reunited shows that Lakan always loved Fengxian. It doesn't matter if her face has been eaten away by the disease; to him, she's still beautiful. When he looks at her and doesn't see her present appearance, but the way she's lived in his memory, that says more than the mere fact of him being able to recognize her face. It is possible that he simply can't see any other form due to his disorder, I'd prefer to think that it's more than that. Lakan knows that she's not well but it doesn't matter to him now that he's finally reunited with her.

Maomao's feelings for her biological father also come across clearly this time, and they largely appear to boil down to him having made her very uncomfortable as a little girl. It makes sense – she'd never seen him before, and then this weird old guy suddenly comes running up to her telling her to call him “papa;” it's the kind of thing that would scare a little kid. As far as she knew, Luomen was her papa, so that made Lakan someone not to be trusted. He essentially came on too strong for Maomao, and when backed up by the madam's dislike of him and her desire to protect (or “protect”) Fengxian from the man responsible for her fall, it makes perfect sense that she'd reject him. His repeated desperate attempts to connect with her would only have made him more unsettling in her eyes.

But despite all of that, Maomao does want Lakan and Fengxian to have their time together. (And, not coincidentally, this gets Lakan out of her hair.) Her dance atop the wall is both a celebration of this and a bittersweet farewell to what might have been. If Lakan's father hadn't intervened, she would have had a very different life with her parents, and while I think she's been perfectly happy with the one she's got, even Maomao has enough of an emotional side to feel a little wistful, or at least curious, which is probably more likely. She's dancing for a past that never was and for a future that doesn't have long to exist.

Maomao's future continues to be tied to Jinshi. The final scene, which sets up the action of the next season/third novel, shows that he's not going to let her go any time soon, in no small part because he needs her expertise. He also can't stop hoping that maybe someday she'll stop doing things like “attempt to stitch up her leg wound on a roof” or try to get close to him for reasons that don't involve rare ingredients, but the main point of the final scene is that he's not giving up. Maomao's not really the romantic type, so he probably has a long wait ahead of him, but if it means we get more seasons of this series, I'm happy to sit back and hope right along with him.

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