Welcome to the Open Thread, everyone! Can you believe we are already at the end? 🥲 Thank you so much, for joining me on the journey of watching this very special, very amazing show. ❤️

Some announcements, before we begin:

1. There is no Spoiler Zone this week, since this is the final Open Thread. You can discuss everything about the show now, without spoiler tags!

2. If you’d like to check out my review of Someday Or One Day, you can find it here.

3. I’ve put up a brainstorming post on what we should watch next as a community, you can check it out here, and share your inputs too!

My thoughts

Episode 13

Augh. What a show, you guys. WHAT A SHOW.

I love so many things about this finale, and that love isn’t dampened at all, by the fact that this is my second watch, and my first watch was only a little over a year ago.

First of all, I love that Show sticks to its internal fantasy rules, and yet, doesn’t write itself into a corner. It sticks to those rules, AND solves the conundrum that it’s introduced for our characters, of that eternal time loop, where they’ve been suffering, cycle after cycle, of loving yet leaving each other.

As all of this unfolds, I can’t help but marvel at Show’s attention to detail. There were reasons for so many things, when I think about it.

The reason Mo Junjie was written as a character who’s deaf in one ear, is so that he’d be able to lip-read, and that’s proven to be pivotal, this last hour, when he’d spotted Yunru talking to herself (well, Yuxuan) on the rooftop.

If he hadn’t seen her and been able to lip-read, in order to get the gist of what she’d been saying, he wouldn’t have been able to be there, at the critical moment, to save Yunru/Yuxuan, in the end.

And, the reason Yuxuan was written as keeping Ziwei’s beat-up old car, aside from sentimental reasons, is so that she’d have a way to easily play that cassette tape, after giving up hope on the Walkman. In 2019, it’d be hard to find a car with a cassette player – unless you’re stubbornly holding onto an old car, because it had belonged to your late boyfriend.

Also – what a great twist, that it was never the Walkman that had allowed all the time-travel; it had always been the cassette. It’s just something that we hadn’t thought to question, because the two always worked together. I thought that was clever.

It also occurs to me, that while I’d personally found Ziwei’s encounter with little lost Yuxuan a little too protracted and cheesy, it finally makes sense in our final scene, why Ziwei had been written to meet little Yuxuan, and take her around on his motorbike. It’s so that we could have that final scene, of Ziwei riding with Yuxuan – both little and then not-so-little – into the sunset.

I’m sure there are more details that I haven’t mentioned, but just this handful of things already thoroughly illustrates how well thought-through this story was, from the very beginning.

I mean, sure, we don’t ever find out why Junjie’s hearing aid was at the scene where Yunru was attacked, but that’s a relatively small detail that I’m willing to overlook, in favor of all these other details, that Show has painstakingly mapped out, in order to give us a cohesive, organic story. I love it.

The other thing is, I love how, even as all the mental gymnastics around the details kicks into its full glory, the emotional heft is still so unwavering and strong, in this show.

I felt so much for our characters, watching this finale.

I felt sorry for Yunru, for having suffered all this rejection, resulting in her desire to die (although, isn’t it mind-trippy, that Yunru’s desire to die had so much to do with Yuxuan, when Yuxuan’s trip to the past, had so much to do with trying to stop Yunru’s death?).

I can only imagine how small it makes you feel, to have everyone in your life tell you that they prefer the new you (who isn’t you at all), because the old you (which really is you) is not good company at all. That’s hard for anyone at any age, and it must be even harder for a young teenager who only wants to feel accepted and loved.

I felt sorry for Ziwei, who looks so broken, now that he thinks that he will never see Yuxuan again. And I felt sorry for Yunru, when Ziwei turns away from her, even though I understand why he can’t face her. THE ANGST. It hurts so good. 💔

I also felt sorry for Yuxuan, because it must be horrible to realize that everything you’ve done has only hurt the person you were trying to save. It must have been a huge weight on Yuxuan’s conscience, to realize that her actions in 1998 had only served to strengthen Yunru’s desire to die.

Last but not least, I felt sorry for Class Monitor, who must have been so shocked to come to, to find himself on the verge of killing Yunru.

Because of all these things, as well as all the other things that we’ve seen unfold before, I can understand why Yuxuan feels that the best thing to do, is to destroy the cassette.

After all that’s happened, it’s become clear to Yuxuan that she needs to stop this cycle, so that Yunru won’t be attacked by Creepy Psychiatrist, and Junjie won’t be jailed for Yunru’s murder, and end up killing himself, and Ziwei won’t be killed by Creepy Psychiatrist.

Put into context like that, it’s easy – though still painful – to see why Yuxuan would choose to break the cycle and risk losing Ziwei forever.

While it looks like she’s risking losing her love, in fact, she’s really using her love, to do something greater than any of us could have originally imagined. She’s using her love to save them all – even if it means the possibility of losing this love, in the end. It’s mind-trippy and poignant and altogether moving, at the same time.

I love that moment when Yuxuan-as-Yunru exits the building, and without her having to say a word, Ziwei recognizes her.

Augh. That really gets me in the heart. Their love truly has nothing to do with appearance, and it’s touching and.. foundational, to me, that they would know each other so instinctively, because they recognize each other’s essence, and do not need to be guided by physical appearance.

It makes sense to me that Yuxuan would give the job of destroying the cassette, to Junjie. Among them all, he’d be the most motivated to stop the cycle, in order to protect Yunru. She could count on him not to chicken out, basically.

On the other hand, she and Ziwei have so much to lose in this, that it would be too hard, I think, for either of them to destroy the cassette. After all, this means that Yuxuan won’t be able to come back to the past to meet Ziwei, and he wouldn’t get to know her and fall in love with her, and he wouldn’t seek her out, as Quansheng, and build a life with her.

That goodbye scene on the beach is so heartbreakingly poignant, because we know that this is goodbye – possibly for forever. Although Ziwei promises to never forget Yuxuan, there really are no guarantees. He can’t be sure that he will remember her, when breaking the cycle means that his memory will be wiped of her existence.

While some viewers may take this ending as a tragic one, where Yuxuan and Ziwei give up their love for the sake of something greater and more important than themselves, I personally have a more hopeful view of their future together.

It’s why it’s so important to me, to have Show lay out this idea, that Ziwei and Yuxuan are drawn to each other, and know each other on sight, regardless of the circumstances and their physical trappings.

This allows me to comfort myself with the thought that, in this new future that they will now build for the first time, they will somehow find each other and recognize each other, just like they always have.

All I need, is to know that they exist in the same timeline, and cross paths in that timeline, and Show gives that to us, right at the end. Now that I know that Ziwei does meet little Yuxuan in his timeline, I can have a positive hope that this will eventually become the way they find each other, all over again. ❤️

Bonus Ending:

Show’s makers shot and released this bonus scene after the drama wrapped, and I like to think of this as extra assurance, for those of us who want to believe that Ziwei and Yuxuan eventually find each other. ❤️

Eee! Ziwei and a teenaged Yuxuan, together in the same space? I’ll take it!

They’re not together romantically (thankfully, coz Yuxuan’s still just a teenager and I’d like to think that Ziwei’s not a cradle-snatcher), but this connection and obvious mutual soft spot aligns with the idea that these two are simply drawn to each other, regardless of the timeline or circumstances.

Plus, this set-up definitely opens up the possibility for more to develop between them, in the future. I do like that thought a lot. ❤️

Update!

JJ shared this amazing medley with me, where this duo cover the songs from the opening and closing credits, and it’s SO WELL DONE, y’all. 🤩🤩 The way they weave between the two songs is so clever, yet they make it sound so natural as well. Please enjoy. ❤️