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Hong Gil Dong is ending, it’s ended. It’s been dragging a bit over the last three episodes but I loved it and I didn’t want to watch the last episode because I didn’t want this great series to end. But all things come to an end…

And what a great ending it was. I cried.

There were some amazing images in the show and there were some great moments.

The image of them all watching the burning arrows in slow motion is great. And then the black and white, while Gil Dong and Yi Nok are in color was nice too, and sad; it was if they were already dead.

Seeing their hideout burning was tragic, especially considering that the shot before this sequence is the last time we see anyone besides Gil Dong. I loved how the PD just put that simple ethereal music on. It made it even more sad, more touching, more hopeless.

Mal Nyeo and Su Keon’s wedding table while everything was burning.

The flowers that Yi Nok had picked for the wedding and gave to Mal Nyeo.

And then it’s the next day, and the viewer knows that it’s over…

Two wedding and a hundred funerals… Gil Dong dies but the people refuse to believe that he’s really gone because he gave them hope. But it’s really done, and Gomi has to carry on, which I thought was a nice touch to the drama.

So the ending is kind of bitter sweet, Hong Gil Dong dies… but, since we live in the society we live in today, no nobles, no peasants we know that his death wasn’t in vain. Of course, we are not without our class distinctions as Gil Dong’s teacher tells us in closing.

-He’ll live on for a hundred years, even five hundred years. Even in the future peoples lives will be the same, just like there are peasants and nobles now, in the future there will be the strong and the weak…What’s more important is the fact that there will always be someone that is watching and observing society. There will always be a sword that will watch, observe and correct society. There will always be a Hong Gil Dong.

I’m so happy I stuck it out for all 24 episodes, this one is going down in my “Great Dramas” list. I really enjoyed this. The PD and writers handled the deaths of the characters so well. We never see them die, we don’t even see them fight to the death, just simple images of barrenness and the symbols of their lives destroyed. Which makes it more sad, less melodramatic, more inevitable. Not showing us that they died shows us how fleeting it all was but how meaningful it turned out to be.