'The King: Eternal Monarch' Episode 1 sees Lee Gon go down rabbit hole in Lee Min-ho's electric comeback
Spoilers ahead for 'The King: Eternal Monarch' Episode 1
'The King: Eternal Monarch' Episode 1 sets up a plot that transcends beyond a romance and crime thriller. The show sees Lee Gon (Lee Min-ho), a young child and crown prince of the Kingdom of Corea, watch his uncle kill his father, the King of Kingdom of Corea in 1994. The child tries to punish his uncle, who happens to be an illegitimate child who has harbored hate for the King from the beginning. Then, there is the magical and all-powerful bamboo flute that allows the one who owns the flute, power of an unknown extent. The first episode also hints at its inspiration from the famous story of 'Alice in Wonderland', only this time, a man falls into the rabbit hole in an attempt to find someone very important.
However, greed and corruption almost kill the child, but then, fortunately, he watches a cloaked figure save him from death and all that the figure leaves behind is an identity card of a woman named Jang Tae-eul (Kim Go-eun), a police Lieutenant of Seoul Metropolitan City. The child also sees that his uncle had tried to steal the flute and so, even in his battered condition, Lee Gon hides a part of the broken flute. What Lee Gon and his uncle Lee Rim (Lee Jung-jin) don't know is that the flute is also the key to open the door to a parallel universe. Lee Rim chances upon it by mistake when he is on the run for his crime and young Lee Gon is left to take the Kingdom over.
25 years later, we meet Lee Gon as a capable King, his childhood friend Jo-yeong (Woo Do-hwan) is always by his side to protect him, but all that Lee Gon can think about is his savior. Since the day he was saved, Lee Gon has tried to look for his savior, but all he has managed is to obsess continually over the id card. Then, strangely enough, Lee Gon actually sees a woman in black overalls and rabbit ears running away during one of his public events and Lee Gon is reminded of his favorite fairy tale -- 'Alice in Wonderland'.
It is while following this woman in rabbit overalls that Lee Gon ends up entering the parallel universe riding on the back of his favorite horse Maximus. Without a thought, Lee Gon ends up leaving his best friend and chief security personnel Jo-yeong behind. This is especially heartbreaking because Lee Gon doesn't have too many people he can depend on in his life. Instead, when he does enter the other universe, the first person that he does meet is Tae-eul.
While Lee Gon was busy being groomed into a King, Tae-eul became a cop in Seoul and we see very little about her, except for the fact that she has a sharp sense of gut instinct. She sees this strange man riding on the back of a horse in the middle of a huge traffic jam and when she tries to stop him, Lee Gon is shocked. She had been out of his reach for the most part of his life and now, she is standing right in front of him and that is shocking to him.
Without considering if Tae-eul knows him, or if she is even the same person who saved him, Lee Gon ends up pulling her close against him and what we can now expect to happen is definitely not romance. Remember, Tae-eul is a cop and she is not going to take this lying down. How will Lee Gon adapt to this new universe?
'The King: Eternal Monarch' is originally aired in South Korea on SBS at 10 pm on Fridays and Saturdays. The show can be streamed on Netflix in the US.