Game Of Thrones Minus The Blue Balls - Kingdom, Seasons 1 & 2
A politically heavy Korean narrative that just happens to have zombies in it isn’t quite what I was expecting when I sat down to watch Kingdom on Netflix, but it’s what I got.
And boy, was I happy to get it. Visually stunning, I found it very hard to write about Kingdom and not draw comparisons with Game Of Thrones. So let’s just put my money where my mouth is and say that, yes, it’s fucking better, being nowhere as afraid to embrace its horror/fantasy roots.
That was one of my big issues with Game Of Thrones, with its opening seconds of the very first episodes teasing its White-Walkers, only to then deliver a TV show that played far more with political intrigue and horrible humanity than anything else. I may never write up my thoughts on that series, but it was a show that I found problematic at the best of times, trying hard to bring multiple worlds and characters together, but never fully embracing either, and doing so with a sense of shame and regret.
Such senses aren’t there in Kingdom, a show that seems to go out of its way to challenge and address such disappointments that we were left by Game Of Thrones, addressing those intrigue and horror beats within an appropriate time-frame and in a fashion that is narratively and visually impressive. As a matter of fact, after binge-watching two seasons/twelve episodes of Kingdom, I felt that I was given a complete narrative and one that I will happily revisit if and when future seasons might drop. But without them, I would be able to live satisfied.
Set in early 17th century Korea, some years after attempted invasion by Japan, we’re introduced to Crown Prince Lee Chang (Ju Ji-Hoon), the would-be heir to the throne of Joseon…were it not for the fact that Queen Consort Cho (Kim Hye-jun) is pregnant and her child, an expected boy and full-fledged prince, will get first dibs on the throne. There are political games playing around the throne, with the Haeson Chu clan (and Cho’s family) vying for full control over the kingdom, while the king deals with an unknown, secret illness and various groups argue whether Lee Chang or Chu’s expected son will be the true heir to the throne. Meanwhile, Seo-bi (Bae Doona, is a doctor working amongst the poor and starving people following that war with Japan; Seo-bi’s patients are also a group that, when presented with the body of a recently deceased child, use the body as meat to feed the group, infecting them with the zombie-like disease that forms the heart of the series.
Kingdom wastes no time in embracing those zombie-like beats, with our first feedings happening by the end of the first episode. (And yes, I am aware of the cultural origins of zombies and, based on this particular narrative, our poor and infected people within this story are not zombies, but I’m going to use the word regardless.) The show doesn’t waste its time in creating some tension or mystery in such creatures, with the bodies appearing as corpses during the day, only to rise in the darkness to eat people.
While the show doesn’t shy away from that classic zombie narrative with the non-believer being as bad as the monsters themselves, the show doesn’t waste its time with such characters and their eventual fall in a very audience-satisfying way. We are instead treated to a narrative of people who are fully aware of the infection, where it comes from, how it can be used and the show brings that into a world of politics, with the zombies being used as signals of power and tools that can and will bring certain families closer to the throne. With Kingdom (and Seo-bi) willing to investigate the many different levels of the zombie narrative, (origins, source and the use/misuse of associated powers), the show goes surprisingly deep into this with its beats and reveals, never losing its footing by laying one story in a bit too thick or ignoring another.
Save, perhaps, to the end of the first season, then the show promises some sort of epic zombie invasion that it avoids until the opening scenes of the next season with a dramatic reveal that…the zombies don’t only come out at night.
While I’m not fully aware of the original content, this is the first of two season finales in which the show tries to reinvent itself fully: our first is this seasonal change that means that our monsters are all the more threatening; our second is a nearly complete reboot and redefinition of the world at the end of the second season.
The show doesn’t throw either of these “reboots” from nowhere: there is enough mystery between this world and its monsters that they don’t come entirely from left field.
But there is a sufficient sense of closure in the final episode of season two, an air that feels like “this story can end here and I will be happy with it, but here’s some subtle promises that they can revisit if they really want".”
Only for the show to then to force this attempted re-branding down its viewer’s throat.
With both seasons consisting of only six episodes, it has made me wonder if this side of the story was originally intended for a single, twelve-episode season rather than two seasons of six: there is a significant air of finality and closure to the twelfth episode, including a fully-fledged time-hop to seven years into the future, a time when the infection has mostly passed, but our heroes are still trying to figure out exactly where the infection came from, and how and why it had been used in such a fashion. Such a time-hop feels like it will work well for the world of Kingdom as a whole, but there are some touches to this story that I feel haven’t been addressed properly.
One of these is the gorgeous evil movements of our Queen Consort. Cho gets a lot of screen-time within the second season, painting her as a powerful villain to our heroes; she is a woman capable of faking a pregnancy in order to maintain the throne (and arranging that it is managed accordingly) and while she herself turns into a zombie at the end of our show and is seen to be defeated, some part of me was hoping that she would or could be cured in order to rise again and continue her games. While I’m sure the show can and will easily bring her back if and when it wants, our time-hop will inevitably undermine such a grand shocking moment.
Equally under-appreciated is Mu-yeong (Kim Sang-ho) Lee Chang’s devoted body-guard, a man that is clearly meant to be the most relatable character within the series: he gets a beautiful hero’s exit, but this occurs a few episodes before the season closes, and while the show beautifully embraces his closure, it never really gives us the sign-off that we would like for him.
Yeong-shin (Kim Sung-Kyu) is our mysterious physical hero, capable of visually beautiful fight-scenes, but a somewhat contradictory hero, with the show initially giving him some responsibility for this cannibalism that has started the zombie outbreak, and never embracing such responsibility. Similarly, Cho Beom-pal (Jeon Seok-ho) is a member of the court who gets some beats of slow salvation throughout the show but has not (as of yet, anyway) been given an opportunity to truly become a hero.
The more I write and think about this, the more irritated I am at either this time-jump, or the fact that the show split this single narrative into two seasons when both seasons are so connected. That said, I adored the show’s visuals and politics: and, as such, with everything working very very well together, this is but a small nitpick, albeit one that broke me out of this story. In doing so, I can’t help but wonder if such a narrative split, and the timing thereof, came from the production itself, the demands or needs of Netflix as the broadcaster, or if they exist in the original The Kingdom Of The Gods, the comic on which the series has been based.
Similarly jarring is Bae Doona’s character, a lovable audience-insert who thinks and reacts to things in much the same ways as the story wants its viewers to. She is a brilliant character to watch, but entirely from my viewership, it’s somewhat difficult not to see her as Sun Bak in Sense8, another Netflix show that I’ve made the point of watching over the last few months, and never got the chance or headspace to write about.
For such an enjoyable and challenging watch, I truly hope that Kingdom gets itself future seasons, ones that continue to redefine themselves with each beat, bringing something new and challenging into the mix. There is even a part of me that wants to re-watch these episodes again, knowing where this story and these characters will go, to read the comic and see what changes have been made and embraced, or maybe even what has been omitted.
That, ladies and gentlemen, is the sign of good storytelling.