Morwen

And what a shame that is. *sighs*
(Both. Both of these things are.)

Yeah, that was my impression of him as well. I felt reminded of old-school Batman with his noble knight attitude and his refusal to kill, except Zhan Zhao is not a vigilante and abides by the law. Well. Mostly.

The varying subtitle quality is a good point, though I'm following this drama with a group of people over on Tumblr, all of whom are from different countries and watch on different platforms and they all understand what Zhan Zhao as a character is about.

I think the issues of those other people are probably: having the wrong expectations for this drama and a lack of experience with the genre and these specific character tropes/archetype.

I'm still a few episodes behind on watching this drama, but I was under the impression that he already had his character development prior to the beginning of the drama.

Same for me.
These comments make me wonder if I'm watching the same drama as these people. Like, what is not to understand here?
It is made very clear, very early on, who he works for and what his task is. Zhan Zhao has a strong sense of duty and a moral compass at least as strong, and his words and actions reflect that again and again and again.
So even as someone who wasn't familiar with this character before, the "why doesn't he kill?" question never occurred to me, because that's very obviously not who he is.

This drama has unexpectedly conquered my heart in the past few days.
Because the writing of the three main characters' dynamic has a quality to it that I rarely see in a drama.

There is a genuine wish to understand each other, to see the world through each other's eyes, to TRUST. And by understanding the other's experiences and needs, the trio can help each other, be there when comfort is needed or take a step back when it's not.
It's this respect for each other's boundaries and the way the three of them care for each other, both with words and with actions, that absolutely gets to me.

When there are misunderstandings or doubts, they talk things out like grown-ups, especially Zhan Zhao and Huo Linglong. Bai Yutang is more closed off at the beginning (and for good reasons), but in time we can see him open up and become more and more comfortable in his own skin and identity.

I love this drama so much for the way it portrays the trio's friendship — and friendship in general.

Awesome, thanks!
I'll wait then.

The song that plays during the end credits is a real banger, does anyone know what it's called and who the artist is?

Season 3 is now online!

The first 6 episodes are now online on WeTV.

I liked both dramas, but Love on the Turquoise Land had a budget that The Seven Relics of Ill Omen clearly lacked, especially when it comes to cinematography and special effects.
Love on the Turquoise Land also has more mature main characters and characters in general, while the main characters of The Seven Relics of Ill Omen are mostly Teenagers and young adults.
Both deal with really dark themes at times.

Personally, I liked Love on the Turquoise Land better (Dilireba and Chen Xingxu had incredible chemistry), but it's just a matter of personal taste, I guess.

Yes, absolutely agreeing with you here!

It's been a while since I've watched such a well-paced, smartly written drama with such excellent acting and chemistry and so, so much more depth to it than I initially thought.
I rarely give 10 stars but there's really nothing about this drama for me to criticize, it's just brilliant until the very last second, so.
Kudos to the whole team!
(And especially to Cheng Lei and Wang Churan, who are absolutely on fire in this one.)

Finished the drama on the weekend and had a lot of fun with it!
I really loved the mix of genres, even though I understand it might not work for everyone. But it's rare to see a truly unique drama, and this drama was certainly unique with its themes and the way the story was told.

The characters were interesting and I loved the group and relationship dynamics. Apart from Fei Qiming and Lu Xiaoyu I didn't know any of the actors, but they were all great. (I especially liked Shao Zhuang who played Feng Buhai, who I thought was a truly fascinating character.)
What I also really liked was that the characters don't immediately become friends but take their time to get to know and trust each other. The slow development of how they turn into team mates that can blindly rely on each other felt very natural.

The heists/schemes got increasingly more complex and I was surprised by how political it later became.
The ending left me very intrigued and I'd love to see a second season! Especially since the gang really grew on me.

I did a bit of research on the group of creatives behind the drama. Apparently they've worked together for a really long time and their first big project ("Moral Peanuts") from 2010 was heavily inspired by shows like "Hustle" or "Leverage", which is probably why the group dynamics and the execution of some of the characters' schemes in "The Mirage" reminded me a bit of those TV shows.

Absolutely loving this drama, but why are the subtitles so abysmal starting from episode 20? I hope it won't stay that way until the end.

Sounds great, please do that! :)

I don't want to post any links here because I think MDL has a rule against that, plus I don't want to contribute to the problem. iQIYI is still the safest (and only actually legal) option.

I see.
I'm currently doing this on Tumblr, actually, because I love the drama so much.
But there's still the problem that a lot of people watch shows illegally instead of paying money for a subscription (and a 1-month-subscription for iQIYI really isn't that expensive). =/

Interesting! Do you know if they did? (Considering that all episode have be released at once.) The Douban rating at least is quite high, that might help.

And as we all know, XWY never hurt a fly in his life.

Not to mention he explicitly said in the bonus episode that he's only interested in the military parts of governing, while XWJ should handle everything else.
So how exactly is XWJ inferior to him as a ruler?

Thanks for this, now at least this part makes more sense to me.

I always thought it was pretty risky to pin the hopes and survival of an entire nation on the wits and longevity of a single person. It makes much more sense to me that there were more factions/options in case he failed.

Posting here what I already wrote on Tumblr.

The ending left me strangely unsatisfied.
I love how there's some long overdue ass-kicking for most of the last episode; that part made me cheer a lot. But I hated that very last confrontation between Huai'an and the Tiemo king. It was simply not necessary and did do nothing for the narrative. Why not have the king die together with YFS and let his last meeting with XHA be the one at the residence before? I would have been totally content with Huai'an dying in that kitchen in the end. It would have been quiet and lonely and tragic—but so was his character. Not everyone has to go out with a bang.

And the bonus episode was not helpful either. It felt out of character, especially for Xiao Wenjing. Like. What the hell was that. That's not what your storyline was for. Your story arc set you up to rule.
And that bit at Yulong Ridge? Just ... why? You're ruining a perfectly good drama ending is what you're doing.

Anyway. This would have gotten a higher rating from me because this was still a really well-produced drama with excellent acting, but man, my suspension of disbelief has its limits.