In the middle of the fourth episode of this season of The Apothecary Diaries (my favorite show of 2024), I was super excited because I thought I figured out one of season 2’s big mysteries.

“They’re totally doing a Padmé and handmaiden switcheroo,” I confidently said to my husband.

[Ed. note: This post contains spoilers for the first four episodes of season 2 of The Apothecary Diaries.]

My evidence? The opening sequence depicted four of the emperor’s concubines in separate frames, each with a mirror image of herself. But there was a fifth pair, showcasing a blond woman we haven’t seen yet. However, instead of being juxtaposed with a copy of herself like the other characters, there were two very similar-looking blond women on screen. One has a longer fringe and wears a red necklace, smirking at the camera. The other has shorter face-framing bangs and a blue necklace and looks serious.

Clearly, these women were important — I figured that they were the much-hinted-at mysterious foreign envoy visiting the emperor. And because the title sequence portrayed them in the same pose as the concubines, I figured they’d be posing as one person, while........

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