'The King: Eternal Monarch' Episode 15 sees Lee Gon and Tae-eul get ready to meet the end, face death together
'The King: Eternal Monarch' Episode 15 sees Lee Gon (Lee Min-ho) and Tae-eul (Kim Go-eun) get ready for a finale, the kind that would keep viewers on the edge. Lee Gon, finally makes it back to 2020 after spending four months in the Nomansland and finds out that Tae-eul has been stabbed by Luna (Kim Go-eun). Interestingly, Luna had never intended to kill Tae-eul in the first place and had in fact ensured that she did not damage any of Tae-eul's organs in the process too.
Luckily, Shin-jae (Kim Kyung-nam) and Eun-seop (Woo Do-hwan) figure out Luna is trying to dupe Tae-eul when she arrives at the academy to Tae-eul's father and they capture her. So Tae-eul faces her one-on-one right after getting primary treatment and tries to ascertain what exactly Luna wants in the first place. Tae-eul also finds it strange that Luna would help her father by letting him know about the thugs lying in wait for him where he usually patrols the neighborhood in the night.
It is during this one on one that Tae-eul realizes that Luna has terminal cancer. She also realizes that Luna is not an ally of Lee Lim (Lee Jung-jin) but poisoned Lee Gon to get the manpasikjeok for herself. So instead of handing her over to Jo Yeong (Woo Do-hwan), she takes responsibility for keeping her imprisoned and in check. It is this move that helps Tae-eul make her own plans when Lee Gon devises his own endgame.
When Lee Gon returns to 2020, he has already got everything mapped out and Tae-eul also understands that he plans on going back to the past to capture Lee Lim instead of doing so in the present. Lee Gon wants to undo everything that Lee Lim wreaked up in his world, the Kingdom of Corea, and in Tae-eul's world the Republic of Korea. However, Tae-eul doesn't understand the consequences of this plan. She doesn't realize that if Lee Lim were to killed in the past, Lee Gon would be killed in the process as a child resulting in all of his present and future becoming obsolete.
Lee Gon reveals this plan only to Shin-jae when he brings the cop over to his world to help him meet his real mother. He wants Shin-jae to understand that killing Lee Gon at this point would be a bad decision. He also promises Shin-jae that his mother will not be harmed in Corea. Lee Gon has to quickly turn the tables on Lee Lim if he hopes to stop Lee Lim from orchestrating whatever he has planned. Now that he is aware that Prime Minister Koo Seo-ryeong is allied with Lee Lim, he has to be very careful in taking his next steps.
Since he isn't sure that he will come out of this alive, Lee Gon's goodbye to Tae-eul is heartbreaking and the fact that Tae-eul isn't aware of his plans completely only makes this more wrenching. However, Tae-eul is a smart woman and a detective at the Seoul Police Department. A very sharp detective.
Lee Gon plans a trap for Lee Lim in the present and captures him to get his hands on the manpasikjeok, and he succeeds. The fact that the woman that Lee Lim had planned to introduce at the gathering in Lee Gon's world -- to celebrate the death anniversary of late Queen mother -- ends up committing suicide by poisoning herself leaves Lee Lim raging. She was a key piece to the success of his plan because she was the alter-ego of the late queen. He had planned on announcing the existence of the parallel world in Corea to ascertain power but without her, he is left with a gaping hole.
At this exact moment, time stops, and Lee Lim becomes aware of Lee Gon entering Korea. He arms himself with a rifle, and with anger raging within he faces the king only to be captured by Lee Gon, Jo Yeong and Shin-jae. With the manpasikjeok in hand, Lee Gon tries to enter the Nomansland to see if he can travel to the past. He gives Lee Lim's piece to Jo Yeong, while he takes his own and tries to activate the obelisk, however, the obelisk on Jo Yeong's side doesn't get activated. Lee Gon is made aware of the fact that only Lee Lim can activate the obelisk that can take him back to the past because of the blood that the broken piece of manpasikjeok was drowned with in the beginning was that of his and Lee Lim.
So only when the two hold a piece of the manpasikjeok each will the sound of the manpasikjeok's cry come out and only then will Lee Gon be able to travel back in time. The obelisk that does activate when both the pieces of the manpasikjeok are in Lee Gon's hands is that of eternity and infinity -- where possibilities and power are manifold. However, Lee Gon is not interested in this. He wants to destroy Lee Lim and if possible get back to Tae-eul. So Lee Gon comes up with a secondary plan.
Since only Shin-jae is aware of Lee Gon's plans entirely, he asks Shin-jae to hold Lee Lim safely in jail for 48 hours. In this time, Lee Gon puts things in motion in Corea, where the palace can function without him. He names his niece, Prince Buyeong's granddaughter the heir and gets ready to go back in time. Alone.
Tae-eul, however, is shocked that Shin-jae was able to capture Lee Lim so easily and something about this entire set up doesn't sit well with her. Sharp as she is, she ends up figuring out Lee Gon's plans and makes her own. She frees Luna and requests her to take Tae-eul's place. She tells Luna that she might not return for a very long time and explains that she wants her father to be kept safe. Luna agrees. However, Shin-jae tries to stop Tae-eul. He even goes to the extent of confessing to her that she is the only one he has ever loved. However, Tae-eul convinces him and gets him to hand Lee Lim's piece of manpasikjeok to her.
It is not Shin-jae who would escort Lee Lim as Lee Gon had planned but Tae-eul. Of course, this is going to surprise Lee Gon. The fact that Jo Yeong won't let Lee Gon travel back in time without him is already not a part of his plan. How will he deal with the fact that Tae-eul is going to accompany him, even if it means that she has to face death? We have to watch out for that in the finale!
'The King: Eternal Monarch' originally airs in South Korea on SBS at 10 pm on Fridays and Saturdays. The show can be streamed on Netflix in the US.