Episode Rating: A-
The whole plot of the Shi family may be over but the consequences of it aren’t, a fact which hangs over the story as it progresses into its post-Inner Palace era with the beginning of season 3. Little reminders of it are everywhere in this episode even as it starts to set up for new plotline that, at least initially, does not appear at all related to what’s transpired before.
Or is it? While the last two episodes of last season resolved a lot of things, there’s still at least one significant loose end: the special envoys from the West. One of them was certainly present at the Fox Village and almost certainly involved with the feifa design being present there, and nothing in last season’s denouement mentions anything about them, which raises the question of whether imperial official are even aware they were there. (Maomao is the only one who would recognize them, and it would not at all surprise me if it slipped her mind to mention that.) And now there’s a potential new trouble brewing in the West, trouble which the note Loulan handed to Jinshi back in episode 47 seems to refer to. Even if that trouble is a natural hazard, that seems too much to be coincidence.
That trouble is definitely not trivial, either. While most people raised in the States or Europe probably know about plagues of locusts from a certain Biblical story, such a phenomenon has been a scourge throughout the world for all of recorded history, and it’s one that, combined with the drought we see evidence of at the beginning of this episode, can have a catastrophic effect on an entire region or nation if a country isn’t fully prepared to deal with it. (Look up the locust swarm which struck the central U.S. in 1874, which played a big role in the establishment of federal government financial assistance for natural disasters.)
Fortunately, Jinshi has been tipped off to this by Loulan, and Maomao is getting whiffs of it from encounters with individuals familiar with eating locusts. (For sake of clarity here, locusts are specific types of grasshoppers, so the two are neither synonymous nor entirely unrelated insects.) Both of those have connections to a scene back in episode 43 which seemed innocuous at the time: the scene where Shisui was eating fried locusts on a stick and spat one out because it was just a grasshopper (and thus not as tasty) instead. Even earlier, she also mentioned to Maomao on the walk to the shrine that there seemed to be more grasshoppers about than normal, an observation that now doesn’t look so casual. Shisui was also shown having a clear passion for insects, and now we find out that books from Maomao’s apothecary predecessor at the fortress are starting to pop up on the resale market. Doubtless Shisui read those at some point, so she may have known what signs to watch out for. An evidence-based warning about an impending locust swarm could very well have been worthy of use as a bargaining chip.
The destruction which can be wreaked by a plague of locusts is bad enough even without a drought to compound it, but both Jinshi and Maomao rightly realize that the timing here is especially bad. A plague of locusts being perceived as divine punishment has deep roots in many past cultures, and the Empire did just excise one of its most prominent clans with wholesale executions. It’s not at all hard to understand how a superstitious public which isn’t privy to the details about what the Shi clan was doing could perceive an event like that as punishment for the emperor being too ruthless. In other words, this is quite a worthy crisis to base an expansive plotline on.
The episode also brings up other little details which could prove important later. Doubtless the discontent among some officials about how Gyokuyou’s father is rising in prominence with his daughter becoming the new empress will come into play later on, and the Emperor’s shrewdness here can’t be forgotten; given the comments here about Gyokuyou becoming the empress has strategic impact for forging closer ties to western lands, one has to wonder how genuine his favoritism for Gyokuyou is. Doesn’t feel like the story is done with the convenience that Maomao’s guard from the fortress turns out to be the seller of the book, either (that he would recognize the boy now call Chou-ou is certainly an inconvenience!), and we of course can’t forget the mysterious young woman who briefly pops up in the West scene. The new OP also strongly suggests that Lishu is going to have a meaningful role to play this season, though how isn’t more than barely hinted at here, and that only in a scene which shows Lishu’s father seemingly being dismissive of her.
It’s all the little details like this which can make this story so great even when it’s just primarily doing set-up for the broader seasonal arcs. The artistic quality hasn’t dropped off at all, either. I couldn’t be more pleased that this series is back for another run and look forward to seeing where it all goes.
