First Impressions: “Knight Flower” Is The Gender-Swapped Robin Hood We’ve Been Waiting For

Honey Lee in a sageuk playing a female Robin Hood? Say no more! MBC’s newest Friday-Saturday offering promises rebellion, romance, and a whole lot of running as Jo Yeo Hwa (Honey Lee) alternates between a model of Confucian widowly virtue by day and a protector of Joseon’s downtrodden by night. Clearly the public thinks the same because the premiere episode achieved the highest ratings of any MBC Fri-Sat drama since 2021! Thinking of checking this one out, or on the fence? Here are a few reasons to give this show a go!

Warning: spoilers for episodes 1-2 below.

1. Fun, fast-paced plot

“Knight Flower” doesn’t waste any time throwing us right into the thick of things. We meet Jo Yeo Hwa as she enters a gambling den to tell off a wastrel of a man who’s about to wager the title to his house to get his gambling fix, despite his wife and children begging him not to destroy their lives. He couldn’t care less about them but sobers up real quick when Yeo Hwa threatens to end him if he doesn’t behave. Naturally, the gambling den guardsmen aren’t pleased about being cheated out of a customer (who was prepared to wager his house to boot), and a fight ensues. The odds are 17 to one, but Yeo Hwa wins—albeit with one not-so-minor complication.

Park Soo Ho (Lee Jong Won) is a military officer on stakeout in the den to catch a cheat when Yeo Hwa’s fight enters his room. In the ensuing scuffle, he and Yeo Hwa end up in each other’s arms. And Yeo Hwa’s startled enough to use her real voice when exclaiming, so he realizes that she’s a woman. Yeo Hwa takes down her foes and flees, certain that she’ll never see Soo Ho again. But little does she know that this incident is about to become Soo Ho’s central focus. And that’s all in the first 15 minutes! What follows from then on is a fun examination of a woman’s double life in the Joseon era and the difficulties of maintaining that life when a woman becomes a widow. It’s “Healer”-esque, down to running on the rooftops!

2. Jo Yeo Hwa

Yeo Hwa blossoms to life in the hands of the lovely and talented Honey Lee, who imbues her with charm, tenacity, and enough self-consciousness to make her deeply relatable. Yeo Hwa’s proficiency at martial arts came by way of her brother, an officer, who taught her everything. Unfortunately, he also went missing 15 years ago on a mission of some sort. This basically left Yeo Hwa without a protector in Joseon. Women weren’t allowed to make decisions for themselves, so Yeo Hwa’s uncle had full carriage of her life, and within a few years of her brother’s disappearance, Yeo Hwa was married off to the son of Seok Ji Sang (Kim Sang Joong), the Left State Councillor. Yeo Hwa has no choice but to go along with it, when fate strikes again: Ji Sang’s son dies, and Yeo Hwa is made a widow right on the day of her wedding. And that’s when her troubles really begin.

3. Commentary on Confucian rules applied to women

Women in Joseon lived restrictive lives, but widows had it even harder. Unmarried women were supposed to be paragons of perfection until marriage (a rule the men didn’t bother keeping on their end), and wives were supposed to be slaves, baby-makers, and yes-men for their husbands. But widows weren’t meant to be seen or heard. They lacked the protection of a male authority figure due to their husband’s death and were seen as a burden on their in-laws. Confucian rules demanded that widows show penance and observance of their husband’s death. They were only to wear mourning white and never step out of the house and be seen (because they should be living as they are dead since their male authority figure is dead).

As a result, Yeo Hwa only gets to leave her in-laws’ home once a year if she’s lucky. Her life has been drained of color quite literally because she isn’t allowed to wear it. She endures the daily lectures of her mother-in-law, Yoo Geum Ok (the fantastic Kim Mi Kyung) and the spite of her sister-in-law Seok Jae Yi (Jung So Ri). Moonlighting at night to assist others with the help of her savvy maid, Yeon Sun (Park Se Hyun), and a wealthy female merchant, Jang So Woon (Yoon Sa Bong), is her only bright spot of hope in life. But Park Soo Ho could threaten it all.

4. Park Soo Ho

Despite Yeo Hwa’s status as a widow, she’s had pretty much nothing in the way of romance and has had so much Confucianism drilled into her that she couldn’t help reacting badly when Soo Ho clutched her and used her real voice. Unfortunately for Yeo Hwa, Soo Ho is fascinated by the mysterious female fighter he encountered. He digs deeper into her and finds stories known across the capital of a masked figure in black who assists the poor and downtrodden. Little does he know that that figure is the same widow he found so hilarious when he encountered Yeo Hwa hiding cookies in her sleeves on one of her rare public outings.

Soo Ho has his own reasons for being in the capital. His father, a loyal friend to the King’s father, was murdered 15 years ago. Soo Ho was adopted by the family of Royal Secretary Park Yoon Hak (Lee Ki Woo), who cares deeply for him but doesn’t show it in an effort to protect him. From who? It appears to be the Left State Councillor, Yeo Hwa’s father-in-law. Yoon Hak’s protection of his adopted brother seems to mean keeping him in the dark about what he and the King are up to, which can only spell trouble in the future once these secrets inevitably come out.

Things come to a head with one of Yeo Hwa’s acts of aid. She replaces the Minister of Finance’s invaluable tiger painting with a hilarious mockery (done by her) in retaliation for him nearly beating his elderly servant for getting a drop of water on it. But her act is mistaken as treason by Soo Ho’s bumbling superior officer Hwang Chi Dal (Kim Kwang Gyu). Suddenly, Soo Ho, who knows that the masked woman is a do-gooder, is in the uncomfortable position of having to investigate her as a possibly treasonous thief on his boss’s orders.

Even better, Soo Ho’s just run into Yeo Hwa herself on her only other public outing of the year: to visit her brother’s memorial. He thinks she’s a widow in need of aid from robbers, which she isn’t. She told the thieves to just take her grain because she knows they’re starving and doesn’t mind. And she thinks she needs to throw off suspicion (fast). She’s pulling a Park Bong Soo in “Healer,” pretending that she’s a damsel in distress, and he’s only too happy to be the hero. But when a maneuver throws her back in his arms, will he figure out that she’s the masked woman who was there only a couple nights ago?

From pacing to characters, this show is just good zippy fun. Everything about it just works, and its reduced episode count (12 episodes) has pruned a lot of the bloat that can clog up other sageuks. We’ve quite a few mysteries in place with respect to Yeo Hwa’s brother and Soo Ho’s family, not to mention a potentially huge obstacle if Yeo Hwa’s brother was involved in killing Soo Ho’s family. Add a fantastic group of supporting actors (Kim Mi Kyung!) to that, and this might give MBC a well-deserved ratings win. It’s going to be fun seeing this flower bloom in the night!

 

cr: Soompi