As this drama comes to an end, I realize what a wonderful journey it has been. This drama had heart.

It managed to carefully tread many topics – women’s rights, women in workplace, new thinking in a world, privilege and power, a women’s choice of life/marriage etc, without ever sounding preachy or in your face. The show did have the fluff yet with meaning and depth. There was not a single character that felt unnecessary. As the drama progressed we understood every single character and all of them were memorable. Be in Yang or Min or our Rookies. They all stood strong by themselves. They were not created to serve someone’s purpose.

I am happy with the way the show wrapped up. The dethroned king gets to clear his name, and Jin does what he is best at -rule and Rim is a travel blogger!
And our historians are writing history while quietly creating their own history.

I was pleasantly surprised by this show. And glad that no one was beheaded by the end! I watched the last 4 episodes together because I feared the worst and l, again, was pleasantly surprised. The ending was done so well, and seems like if the writer were to rewrite history, that this would have paved the way for a more just Joseon and maybe even a stronger kingdom that may not have seen as much upheaval as it did. And the OTP was adorable, I cant deny that!

I really liked the historian part, it was a great office sageuk. I liked to see our female trainees becoming good historians :) They were the best!

I didn't like all the secret birth part, it didn't bring anything to the character GHR and Prince Rim was useless during almost all the show.

In general, it was a nice drama but not the kind I will rewatch.

I loved every moment of Rookie Historian and it will definitely go in the furture reruns folder.

I was feeling a bit off when I got to the end of the last episode and I couldn't figure out why. Then I realised there was no scene with the baddies in the leg splitting torture chair with their hair all messy and clothes all bloody. The way it endes is in line with the show but I guess I am a little bloodthirsty or rather I find it comforting when the baddies get their commupance in historical dramas(and I get to see it.)

Thank you Laica and Mary for recapping this show,I loved reading everyone's insights 😊
I was so moved by hae ryung's speech to the king and how all the historians protested together to protect the truth.
I think the secret of Soraewan could have been revealed much earlier so that the ending didn't feel so rushed.
A few scenes of hae ryung trying to find information about soraewan would have helped to sell the idea she was aware of her true identity the whole time.

Thank you for this wonderful recap, @laica ! I really liked the peaceful revolution, unrealistic though it may have been. Hae-ryung's speech about the power of the truth may not have kept a real king from executing her, but it has the quality of a speech that itself would be remembered from generation to generation. I also liked the ending that allowed Rim and HR to stay together while pursuing their separate dreams, unrealistic though that may also have been. I appreciated the thoughtful way the show raised issues, yet kept giving us comedy through its quirky characters. Well done, show!

One of my favorite dramas of the year hands down!!!It had so much heart and bits of everything that even the politics didn't bother me at all and was eager to see what would happen...It was such a delightful ride and Go Hae Ryung was such an amazing female lead while Our Puppy Prince was such a cute swoony lead...Maybe not many liked that he was "weak" and not the badass type but i actually welcomed the change and found him sooo very endering and romantic that by the end it won my heart as well and knew why Hae Ryung fell in love with him...Now,the comedy was just my style,i laughed sooo much and i'm already missing our group of historians sooo much!!!
There were also many wonderful scenes as well as one that remained with me even now,The Wailing protest from episode 11 that i for one didn't see till now in other sageuk drama i've watched...This show had a lot of heart and it delivered !!!

i feel like my thoughts on this show are overposted all over the site now, so i won't be a broken record here. it had its shortcomings (the pacing mostly, as others have said--the ending felt a little rushed and if it was unsatisfying at all it was just because i wanted to know more more more about everyone) but overall it was a sweet, fun, just-the-right-amount-of-serious watch. i'm gonna miss this lot!

Thank you @mary and @laica for recapping this show! Brilliant job!!👏👏👏
Also, once again, thanks mary for that WONDERFUL DJG-SKK scandal introduction, which probably caused more and more beanies direct their attention this way, including me.😄

This drama seriously ended EXACTLY the way I was hoping it would: with Rim passing on being king in favor of the much more suited Jin.
Also, super happy both Woo-won and Jin survived to the end because they felt like the sort of characters a writer would sacrifice to inject angst just before the climax.
The one thing I would have liked that we didn't get is a mini story arc for Woo-won's sister the (former) crown princess - I felt there was interesting potential in her character that wasn't explored.
But that's just a tiny tiny nitpick - I absolutely LOVED this drama for so many reasons!

This is such a delightful drama with a lot of heart. It may not be a realistic sageuk, but it's really fun and refreshing with the role-reversal and the relevant issues that they've managed to handle very well. I was satisfied with the ending, although I feel it should spend 1-2 more episodes to resolve the conflicts and I wish we get to see a scene between Jin & Rim to show that they still love each other as they've been.

I have newfound love for the cast too. I haven't watched any Shin Se-Kyung's drama before and I've heard the complaints about her acting, but she's so good in her role here so sageuk seems to be her forte after all and Hae Ryung has become one of my favorite k-drama female leads. Cha Eun-woo still has a lot of room for improvement, but he's improving and he did really well in the very emotional scenes; his crying scenes always break my heart. It's nice to see the improvement in his acting together with the growth of Rim's character. Rim's words before he kissed Hae Ryung is so beautiful. Park Ki-Woong and Lee Ji-hoon shined in their roles here, and the rest of the supporting characters are brilliant too. Looking forward to their future projects.

I'm wondering though, do we actually know what happened to the king? We know Councillor Min was executed, but we don't seem to get a clear idea of the king's fate.

Thank you @mary and @laica for weecapping this show! I picked it up later than most beanies and binged to catch up in time for the finale. The reason I hesitated in starting was because I knew for a fact that female historians never existed in Joseon. The light and funny opening scene where girls of all ages rush to read Maehwa’s books also made me think this was just a fluffy fusion sageuk.

And it was a fluffy fusion sageuk, but it also managed to be more than that: 1) an “office sageuk” and 2) an alternate reality of Joseon’s transition into modernity. I’ll discuss these in order below.

First, I LOVED the Office of Royal Decrees. Ensemble dramas must be my thing. At first I was annoyed by Officer Yang lounging around and complaining in a whiny voice, that is, until his peers were threatened and he rallied them all to arms. Officer Min was ddabong as the brains of the outfit and stickler for the rules. The more junior officers were also funny. I never learned their names but they had legit concerns like getting promoted, not losing their jobs (and heads) or surviving a blockade of their office.

Moreover, I very much enjoyed learning about court historians. The drama showed us that historians were clearly overworked. My research supported that portrayal: historians were basically chroniclers, compilers, archivists, and human photocopiers. In addition, they wrote in their journals about the events of the day every day after going back home. They never stopped working! Thus, this drama was pretty unique in the way it paid tribute to the silent witnesses of history.

Secondly, it seems paradoxical that a drama about historians is not historical, but it worked. Fiction relies on what a writer does with the question “what if...?” I think the writers took the question and spun their own version of Joseon.

The drama’s awareness of 19th century historical issues (such as women’s perceived lower status and restricted lifestyles, smallpox, Catholicism, and resistance to European literature and science) shows that the writers knew their history but wanted to portray an imaginary Joseon: one that was more open to change than historic Joseon. In reality, women’s lives were restricted to the home; they could not work as palace officers, much less historians. Technically all the women in the palace belonged to the king (as the court ladies observed) so how come the female historians did not? What if a female historian wanted to marry, would she be able to keep her job? (The drama ignored that last question by leaving them all unmarried).

NOKDU FLOWER and MR SUNSHINE showed us that anti-Western feelings ran high in 19th century Joseon. The irony of NOKDU FLOWER is that several “modern” petitions by peasants (such as abolishing slavery) were in fact local initiatives, but history mainly credits the Gabo Reforms for ushering in modernity. The latter reforms were tainted by their association with Japanese attempts to “civilise” Korea...

Don't have much to add that hasn't already been said, so I'll just say this:

Rookie Goo, I salute you.

*crawls back onto the couch to rewatch*

Thank you for this and other squeecaps, laica and mary. Rookie Historian is the first k-drama I ever watched (I've been busy catching up over the last couple of months!) and I'm so happy to have had this community with which to laugh, cry and be nervous over it -- recappers and commenters, you've all been awesome, and you've said so many wonderful things about Shin Se-kyung, the Office of Royal Decrees and the feminism of this show, all of which were just amazing and wonderful.

My minor additions: First of all, THANK YOU GODS FOR LETTING MIN U-WON LIVE. I want to say that the rushed-ness of the climactic scene was somewhat mitigated for me by what I thought was the true emotional watershed of the ending: Officer Min confronting Councillor Min for what he's done, and Councillor Min acknowledging that power is hard to give up. He didn't get a chance to play a truly nuanced villain but major props to the actor and the writers for making this Councillor Min such a spiky, subtle character in the early episodes: this is who he was all along, the high-handed, high-minded intellectual who believed he was acting on principle, and then decided that only power would protect those principles. That's where Officer Min gets his own steel spine from.

I thought the show did Jin a disservice by giving him get cold feet and making him act like a shadow of his morally conflicted father until almost the end, instead of the true-blue warrior we've always known him to be. I guess he and their grandma are each paying for their part in the situation, locked in the same old battle that she played out with Jin's father. But what I LOVED: Jin and Sa-hui's long-distance relationship. Two damaged people find freedom at last, and they get to do exactly what they want to do, and they don't have to be together to do it. Of course he's the one sending the textbooks for her school, right? That's love and I will not accept any alternate explanations!

Three things I am seeing in my personal fantasy future epilogue:

a) The Min siblings, finally free of all their burdens, learn to live with their traumatic romantic pasts and begin an all-out comedy life trying to find dates for each other
b) Jin and Sa-hui's epic epistolary friendship slash romance slash contest of equal wills. They never have to marry; Jin's heir is some unexpected Lee country cousin who has to come to the palace twenty years from now to learn how to become a king, and it's hilarious and touching and its own show
c) Jin and Rim, the single best relationship in the show, getting to heal and love one another again.

Reading the recap and looking back on Rim's words that the king kept him alive all this time because of his guilt for the unjustified dethronement & killing his innocent brother, I guess the king doesn't actually hate Rim as a person or because he's the late king's son, but he hates seeing Rim because it reminds him of that guilt.

When Councillor Min confronted and killed Rim's dad 20 years ago, the king didn't even dare to look at Rim's dad and seemed very shocked & felt guilty when Min killed him. Seeing Rim is triggering his guilty feeling and that's why he always has such a strong negative feeling towards Rim. The king never actually hate Rim's dad or Rim himself, he's really just an insecure and easily manipulated man after all.

I fell hard for this series. The cast, scenery, wardrobe, I cried and laughed and cried. The characters were beautiful as was the script - and I am still reeling. Your re-caps have captured so articulately many of the reasons I fell in love with these characters. Hae-Ryung’s posturing to stand beside Rim and her words to the King at the end made my favorite scene.

Though I admit I wanted more of the story told. Specifically one or two scenes I would have liked:

Why was I so eager for Hae-Ryung’s father to be revealed to the Dowager Queen? (maybe Mwo-ha did get a chance to tell her at a later time - she started to ) ... and ... I also expectantly waited for a nod of respect bestowed upon Hae-Ryung by the DQ for her bravery (maybe aven an acknowledgement over why Rim loved her). Hae-Ryung had the same kind of spirit as the Queen herself as opposed to the qualities sought in the prospective brides.

All in all though- when you want more of the characters and story it pays the entire series a complement. I loved it and will certainly re-watch (again and again).

Perfect ending.

I hate to say it, but I found most of these final two episodes tedious and annoying. Thematically on point? Oh, absolutely! But full of unnecessary fake outs and a bit laboured. I wish they'd explored the idea of censorship, truth-telling, fake news and historical revisionism without the rather tortured birth secret of Rim's. A happy ending where the son of a disgraced King sits on the throne while the son of legitimate King lives on is a little ahistorical, even for a show that revels in it. Wish-fulfilment is one thing but they could have made this show without it.

But enough of that diversion. The important things. Perfect ending! About a third of the way through the final episode I stopped it to gripe that this drama could only end one way for me to be satisfied with it and that's exactly how it ended. Jin on the throne, Rim free to be the bohemian marshmallow soldier he was, and Hae-ryung able to continue to pursue her career AND get her man (which would only be possible without marriage). Tick tick tick so I'm happy overall and declare this a really good drama and hope these more progressive fusion sageuks continue to be a thing.

Good job 2019. Have a talk to 2020 sometime by the water cooler.

I made this bingo card summing up some tropes and innuendos, with a couple of footnotes.
https://www.dramabeans.com/members/CecilieDK/activity/1449000/

If you think bingo cards is a fun idea, you can find link for the unfilled-out bingo card om my wall. Tag me if you try it out!

This show nearly killed me. I ugly-cried through the last 3 episodes ... hubby thinks I need therapy.

I. Loved. This. Show.