Restless Rewatch: The Untamed Episode 31, part two
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Warning! Spoilers for All 50 Episodes!
Flute Solo
Wei Wuxian is at the end of his tether, becoming more and more emotional until he decides he’s done talking and would rather express himself with a flute solo, like his sometimes-buddy Lan Xichen.
Yeah I know I keep making this same joke but it will never not be funny to me, how slowly Wei Wuxian gets into flute-attack position. And nobody ever interrupts him! Lan Wangji and his guqin would have taken out 40 guys in the time it takes Wei Wuxian to start playing.
Wei Wuxian likes to play with his eyes closed so that he can concentrate on the music and not be distracted by his minion(s) going ape shit in front of him.
Wen Ning takes advantage of the tight camera angle to sneak into the frame and punch his fist into Jin Zixuan’s spine.
Do we need a gif of Wen Ning punching his fist into Jin Zixuan’s spine? No, no we don’t.
Jin Zixun is so horrified I actually feel sorry for him. He’s a prick but he’s a loyal prick; he would never hurt Jin Zixuan, and probably really loves him.
Jin Zixuan is also horrified.
Goodbye, Hummington font; I’m going to miss you.
(more after the cut!)
Wei Wuxian finally realizes that things are not, in fact, under his control. Jin Zixun starts to get angry but Wen Ning quickly strangles him, which he totally deserves.
Party Pooper
Back at Jinlintai, Jiang Yanli is playing wiht a drum toy to keep Jin Ling entertained. The party is over but she’s still hoping Wei Wuxian will show up.
Jiang Cheng is waiting around with her. He picked up the wrong robe off the floor after his hookup with Zewu-Jun, so he is wearing dark blue and white with geometric acceents.
Jiang Yanli is wearing beautiful and luxurious pink and gold, in soft tones that suit her personality. Her husband and mother-in-law take good care of her.
The baby has hair now. How long does it take to walk from Yiling to Jinlintai?
Still Friends
Lan Wangji comes in and Jiang Cheng goes to talk to him. The big tragedies in this episode are sandwiched between small ones; for some reason seeing these two standing so close and talking relatively informally just gets me. They're still friendly, today.
Lan Wangji is wearing diaphanous ultra-sheer robes over blue, so pretty. He has dressed in this conspicuously sexy outfit in anticipation of seeing Wei Wuxian. In a modern AU this would be a white mesh tee shirt and robins-egg-blue leather pants.
Lan Wangji is worried. The boy he dressed up for is not showing up and he wants to know why. Also he wants to know why all the Lan cultivators his brother brought have fucked off to follow Jin Zixun. He has a sinking feeling that these things are connected.
He asks Jin Guangyao, who gives him one of his stock bullshit answers.
A lackey comes in to deliver the news that Jin Zixuan is dead. He doesn’t mention that Jin Zixun is also dead. Maybe he doesn’t remember who that is.
Jiang Cheng is horrified and looks to Jiang Yanli, who drops the toy drum, which breaks, just like her heart. She doesn't drop the baby, however, so good on her.
Jiang Cheng has many flaws, but he is always so good to his sister.
Jin Guangyao manages to hide how happy he is now that his plan has come to fruition; he’s taken out the heir and the spare in one move.
Lan Wangji takes no pleasure in discovering that he was right, all those times he warned Wei Wuxian about losing control.
Aftermath
One thing I both love and hate about this show is that when something terrible happens, we spend at least as much time on the aftermath than on the terrible thing itself. Which is how trauma survival often works. In a way the whole show is about the aftermath of the Lotus Pier massacre; Jiang Cheng’s capture and maiming is like a stone dropped in a lake, sending ripples of consequence onward into more and more lives.
Back in the burial mounds (how did they get back? nevermind, nevermind) Wei Wuxian is out cold, being tormented by vengeance voices. When he wakes up, he’s angry as we've ever seen him.
Wen Ning kneels in apology while Wen Qing stands by anxiously. Wei Wuxian kicks him across the room and screams at him.
A-Yuan picks this moment to come into the cave with his grass butterfly - the one that maybe symbolizes Wei Wuxian, or the happy bits of A-Yuan's difficult life, anyway.
Wei Wuxian gives him a terrifying angry look and A-Yuan drops the butterfly and starts crying. Wow, everybody’s dropping stuff in this episode.
Granny comes and carries him away--permanently, as it happens; this is the last moment of A-Yuan and Wei Wuxian's relationship, until they meet again in Wei Wuxian's next life.
Wen Qing stands by while Wei Wuxian rages at her brother, pain written all over her face; probably for both of them. Wei Wuxian calms down a little and asks himself, internally, why he bothered to do all of this, why he sacrificed so much. He realizes that it's not Wen Ning's fault that he's a fierce corpse.
Wei Wuxian laments that he doesn't know what to do and wonders who can tell him. Wen Qing takes this as her cue to stick a paralysis needle in him, because she and Wen Ning have already decided what needs to happen next.
Once Wei Wuxian is incapacitated, Wen Qing tells him, in one of the saddest scenes in the show, that they've decided that that the two of them are going to surrender. They think this will keep the Jins from coming after Wei Wuxian and from killing the rest of the Wens.
Wei Wuxian does not approve of this plan, and he super wants Wen Qing to let him up off the bed, but she refuses.
He is grasping at straws, hoping they can identify who placed the curse and clear his name that way. He explains that he doesn't have a rebound mark, etc. etc. Wen Qing tells him that nobody gives a shit about the truth, and that because he's the Yiling Laozu, no-one will believe it even if he can prove it. She counters all of his desperate ideas with relentless logic.
Next Wei Wuxian says that he should be the one to turn himself in. He's the one who turned Wen Ning into a ghost puppet and controlled him. "Why is the murderer not going and the knife is going instead?" he asks.
Wen Qing calls him "Wei Ying" instead of Wei Wuxian during this part of the conversation, incidentally, in case we weren’t already crying.
Wen Qing finishes up by saying that they should have been dead a long time ago, and that this has been bonus time. Then she dopes him with a ball of red energy, and tenderly bids him farewell as he drifts off to sleep, saying the “sorry, and thank you” that becomes a touchpoint phrase for him in his next life. FUUUUCKKKK.
Wen Ning bows formally to Wei Wuxian as he sleeps, and then they take their leave, as Wei Wuxian cries a single sleep-tear, like we've seen both of his siblings do.
All the Wens leave the burial mounds together, which is pretty optimistic of them. Wen Qing and Wen Ning are the only ones who are supposed to be punished; the rest are going as an escort, I think, not expecting to be victims. But the Jins are the worst, so.
When they leave the clearing in the Burial Mounds, they have A-Yuan with them and Wen Qing is also still wearing her Yiling outfit. Presumably they take a minute for Wen Qing to hide behind a tree and change into her final outfit, while someone else runs back with A-Yuan and hides him in the temple. Theoretically Wei Wuxian could wake up, grab A-Yuan, and beat it to some safer location, living out his life as an anonymous flute player who occasionally leaks black smoke. But he doesn’t know that A-Yuan is there, and has no reason to think anyone is left.
Wen Qing: I will leave 2 people behind to watch over you.
Narrator: No-one will stay behind to watch over him.
Surrender
At Jinlintai, Jin Guansghan is barely wearing mourning clothes, like maybe he already had some light-colored robes in his closet. Very fancy light-colored robes. Jin Guangyao is even more chill, in normal clothes with a mourning belt. Damn, dude.
Wen Qing looks beautiful in her bright Wen red with black underneath. Wen Ning is still in his previous robes, black with a dark red underrobe: Wen colors, sort of, but more recognizably the colors of the Yiling Patriarch.
Wen Ning looks pretty upset but Wen Qing seems to be at peace with this ending. Sigh. Farewell, Wen Qing.
In the great hall, Jiang Yanli and Jin Furen are wearing proper mourning clothes -- rough, plain whites -- and having servants burn joss paper for Jin Zixuan, because if you want to honor a Jin, exploiting a servant is the right way to do it.
Wei Wuxian is dreaming of being lost in a foggy forest, crying as he hears Yanli's voice telling him to come home and that no-one is blaming him. Which is probably not true, although Yanli is prepared to forgive him.
Then he hears Wen Qing's last words to him, and forces himself to wake up, while a mournful version of Jiang Yanli’s music theme plays on the soundtrack.
We never see him take the nail out of his back, which is the sort of thing that I get stressed about, but it doesn't seem to bother him. Maybe it's a dissolving nail, like dissolving surgical stitches.
Wei Wuxian stumbles out into the empty plaza, and runs away into the forest, headed to Jinlintai.
Soundtrack: Classical Gas by Mason Williams
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