The Remarried Empress Episodes 1-4 Review

This is a spoiler-light review of the first four episodes of The Remarried Empress, which are now available to stream on Disney+.

In the streaming wars, Disney has the obvious and not insignificant edge on princess stories. However, that edge tends to come in their kids/family content, which makes their biggest Korean drama swing yet — a big-budget romantasy epic called The Remarried Empress — kind of a brilliant programming decision. The 10-episode series is a live-action adaptation of a very popular web novel-turned-webtoon; the latter has accumulated almost three billion views on Naver. While technically the main character is an Empress and not a Princess, try telling that to her dresses, her gaggle of ladies-in-waiting, and her Beauty and the Beast-esque ballroom dance scene.

The Remarried Empress stars Hometown Cha-Cha-Cha's Shin Min-a as Navier, the elegant empress of the fictional Eastern Empire and wife to Emperor Sovieshu (The Trauma Code’s Ju Ji-hoon). Navier and Sovieshu share a respectful if not particularly passionate marriage, maintaining a stable royal leadership for the Eastern Empire. However, they have yet to have a child. When Sovieshu rescues escaped slave Rashta (The Red Sleeve’s Lee Se-young) from bounty hunters, he quickly falls for her, forcing Naiver to accept Rashta as an imperial mistress.

In a more stereotypical princess story, rags-to-riches Rashta would be the aspirational protagonist, and there’s a lot of potential in subverting that trope. However, The Remarried Empress does not live up to it, in large part due to the shallowness of its characters. The K-drama tries to give Navier more emotional interiority than her webtoon counterpart, but seems ultimately unwilling to stray too far from the source material characterization to make Navier particularly sympathetic in the first four episodes.

The result is a lead that is not particularly fun to root for. Though Navier may be beautiful and played by the likable Shin, it’s hard for a peasant like myself to care that the empress’ pride has been slighted and her commitment to the noble hierarchy upset. Perhaps another genre or a more masterful script could convince me to judge Emperor Sovieshu for his choice to chase love rather than duty, but The Remarried Empress is a romance, which means it needs viewers to believe that love is one of the most powerful forces of all and should be valued above most else. As the episodes progress, Sovieshu and Rashta become more and more like cartoon villains, securing a likability-by-comparison for Navier that is effective in building some sympathy.

Another potential path to establishing more gripping stakes would necessitate articulating the political stakes of disruption in the imperial marriage, or why Navier cares about having political power. However, at least in the first four episodes, it’s unclear what the Eastern Empire — or Navier — stands to suffer politically from the imperial divorce teased in the show’s title. The Remarried Empress premiere offers a peek at the fantastical danger in the kingdom when a massive worm-beast almost kills Navier while she and Sovieshu are out for a hunt. She is saved through her own skill and the help of enigmatic and handsome Prince Heinrey (Romance is a Bonus Book’s Lee Jong-suk), when he is in his secondary form as a bird; yes, a bird. These glimpses at magical world-building are intriguing, but don’t pay off in any cohesive way in the first act of the season.

The momentum suggested in the first episode does build when Prince Heinrey properly enters the narrative in his human form. In the first few episodes, he fosters a relationship with Navier solely as a bird, delivering messages to the empress from a mysterious admirer (i.e. him). In these encounters, the notorious ladies’ man begins to fall for the beautiful and lonely Navier. While Navier begins to see the bird as a confidante, she does not yet know that the creature she cares for and shares her secrets with is actually a human man, let alone the next in line for the throne of the Western Kingdom.

When Heinrey-as-human finally arrives at the Eastern Empire court, along with nobility from other empires for a New Year’s Celebration, The Remarried Empress utilizes some killer historical-romance-on-screen shorthands to great effect. When Navier and Heinrey share a dance in a ballroom of their royal social circle, it builds on the cinematic language crafted by Pride and Prejudice adaptations and recently utilized by Bridgerton to instantly communicate authentic, romantic intimacy. More broadly, the charismatic irreverence of Prince Heinrey’s character brings a much-needed levity to the self-serious triangle of Navier, Sovieshu, and Rashta, and his instant devotion to Navier gives us something more substantial to root for.

The interplay between these four main characters is helped immensely by the quality of this cast and by the lavish production design and setting. The Remarried Empress seemingly spared no expense in bringing the fantasy romance to the screen. Unlike most Korean historical fantasy dramas, Remarried Empress' palace setting is inspired by European architecture, fashion, and etiquette, and was filmed in the Czech Republic and Germany to capture a Western aesthetic. This blend of a Western-inspired fantasy setting with a Korean cast and story sensibility gives The Remarried Empress a unique watchability, even if it doesn’t have anything particularly interesting to say about power or politics thus far.

The Remarried Empress also benefits greatly from the current dearth of big-budget romantasy series. Despite the massive success of book series like A Court of Thorns and Roses, we have gotten so few big-budget TV shows in the genre, which speaks to Hollywood’s broader devaluing of romance-centric storytelling over the past few decades and women as our own audience. While this is beginning to change in no small part due to the massive, proven success of Korean dramas around the world, we have yet to see a breakout hit. Netflix’s Shadow and Bone had immense potential, but was canceled (despite its strong viewership) before getting to the main Six of Crows storyline, widely considered to be the meatiest part of Leigh Bardugo’s Grishaverse; I still lament.

So far, The Remarried Empress is nowhere near as good as Six of Crows, though it might be on par with Shadow and Bone; I hope it gets a chance to evolve in a way the Shadow and Bone adaptation never did. In a global streaming landscape that takes so few big swings on romantasy series, we can’t be too hasty about dismissing a series like The Remarried Empress. In its first four episodes, it has yet to live up to the potential of the immense creative and financial resources invested in it, but what’s a princess story for if not believing in a happier ending?