Gu-cheon is joined in his mission by Saeng-gang (Crash Course in Romance’s Roh Yoon-seo), the daughter of King Ju-sang who was banished from the palace as a young girl for her ability to hear spirits. While Gu-cheon and Saeng-gang are forced to stay in the palace by King Ju-sang’s royal command, Saeng-gang is eager to return to her former home and family in order to get revenge for her mother’s murder years prior. The two make a reluctant team, but soon grow close as they take on evil—both mortal and ghostly—in an attempt to save the kingdom, the royal family, and one another.
The East Palace also incorporates ggeomeoksali, spirits that drain living things of their “Yang” energy. Gu-cheon, who lacks Yang, is fearful of ggeomeoksali, but accidentally befriends one during his time in the palace. A small, bumbling gremlin in the realm of mortals, the ggeomeoksali grows big and fearsome in the spirit world.
The Realm of the Gwi, explained
Much of the action in The East Palace occurs in the Realm of the Gwi, an The Upside Down-like mirror world where spirits dwell. Gu-cheon is able to physically enter the Realm of the Gwi to trap, fight, and vanquish the supernatural entities that are wreaking havoc on the mortal world. In an effort to distinguish the world of the gwi from the world of humans, Choi casts the mirror-world in an orange haze. While he says he was initially “quite intimidated” by the task of creating the realm, he saw it as “a fun challenge.”
When The East Palace begins, the court assumes that the recent death of a crown prince is a result of the 30-year-old royal curse. When it began, a court lady favored by the then-king was executed for allegedly having an affair with and getting pregnant by a royal guard. The person who started that rumor is the present-day, extremely status-conscious Queen Dowager (Our Unwritten Seoul’s Jang Young-nam), who is furious at the idea her husband would make a lowly maid a concubine.
Who really cursed the royal line?
The story of the royal curse was orchestrated by Lady Choi Suk-bin (Hwang Young-hee), the current king’s mother and Saeng-gang’s beloved grandmother. When Lady Choi witnessed the favored court lady’s execution-day vow, she saw her chance to ensure her son’s place on the throne. She poisoned his older brothers, born to the Queen Dowager, and framed the won-gwi of the favored court lady for the deaths.
Saeng-gang’s mother didn’t just know of Lady Choi’s murders—she helped carry them out. As a court maid, she didn’t have much power to refuse Lady Choi’s demand. Eventually, Saeng-gang’s mother becomes King Ju-sang’s concubine and Saeng-gang is born.
Who is killing the princes?
The East Palace begins with a funeral that sets many of the events of the series in motion. The Crown Prince (Kwak Dong-yeon), King Ju-sang’s adult son and the next in line for the throne, has died from yet another mysterious poisoning. This leaves the king with only one living son, Prince Yeongan, who quickly begins to show signs of mortal peril and also passes away mid-way through the series. When Gu-cheon and Saeng-gang slay the pond spirit and the “curse” continues, it becomes clear that someone or something else is behind the recent killings.
When King Ju-sang learns of his own son’s actions, he kills him rather than let him inherit the throne. The Crown Prince becomes an ak-gwi, and sets about killing the rest of the royal line. Ironically, the actions of King Ju-sang and his mother had led to an actual royal curse. “Out of one person’s desire to put her own son on the throne, she set off that chain of incidents … and killed everyone,” Roh told Netflix. “So really, human greed was the origin of [this curse].”
Roh Yoon Seo as Saeng-gang and Nam Joo Hyuk as Gu-cheon —Garage Lab/NetflixGu-cheon takes down the Crown Prince
Desperate to keep Gu-cheon safe, Saeng-gang drugs him and goes into the Realm of the Gwi herself to face her half-brother. She almost succeeds in defeating him, but the Crown Prince gets the upper hand and Saeng-gang’s life hangs in the balance. Meanwhile, Gu-cheon has woken up from his drugged slumber and heads into the Realm of the Gwi. Fearing for Saeng-gang’s life, he makes a deal with the Primordial Gwi-mae: he will chain himself to the Realm of the Gwi in exchange for a weapon that can kill an ak-gwi.
The subsequent fight between Gu-cheon and the Crown Prince is the epic climax of the series, and took about seven days to film. “To show that there's a different kind of atmosphere to that clash, but since this is the very last action scene, I wanted to go the traditional way and make sure that it's a very direct and very intuitive type of action scene,” says Choi. The wuxia-style sword clash makes use of the gravity-defying logic of the Realm of the Gwi, with the Crown Prince and Gu-cheon flying through the air to meet again and again in the deconstructed rubble of the mirror courtyard.
Gu-cheon manages to bring Saeng-gang back to the mortal world, but collapses into a coma soon after. He is unconscious for days, but Saeng-gang doesn’t give up on him. Upon waking, King Ju-sang grants Gu-cheon freedom from the palace. Gu-cheon and Saeng-gang leave together, with their ggeomeoksali friend by their side. Though Saeng-gang cannot see it, Gu-cheon is still chained to the Realm of the Gwi following his deal with the Primorial Gwi-mae. But, for now, he can roam the mortal world.
Choi, who wanted to “leave a little bit of hope at the very end” of the series, would be open to revisiting this world, should the opportunity exist. “I still think nothing much has changed at the palace,” he says. “We've eliminated the risks, but, you know, the king's still there.”
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