Fans have fallen in love with The Apothecary Diaries anime because the slow unraveling of its many tightly-packed mysteries keep us wanting more. The first season’s mysteries were enough to whet fan appetites, but Season 2 kicks things up a couple of notches, revealing even more sinister courtly intrigue from the shadows, while also further developing the bond between its main characters, Jinshi and Maomao.

Many of the mysteries solved in The Apothecary Diaries Season 2 go back to a time before Maomao and Jinshi were even born. Other plots are twisted intricately into the Li Empire’s current political climate in ways that will take a real genius to untangle. Thankfully, Maomao has proven herself more than capable of taking on the darkness and dragging it into the light. In fact, if fans have learned anything from Maomao across 30+ anime episodes, it’s that even the most seemingly unrelated pieces of this puzzle will fall into place to form the bigger picture.

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Who Was Really Behind Consort Lihua’s Near-Death?

This Little Intrigue Was One of the Season’s Darkest Reveals

Maomao spent a significant portion of Season 1 in the Crystal Pavilion trying to heal Consort Lihua from near death after she lost her infant son to the lead-based face powder that was all the rage in the rear palace. Not only did Lihua’s ladies-in-waiting refuse to allow Maomao to treat her at first, by the time she got close enough to realize they were still applying the banned face powder to their lady so that, despite her sickly pallor, she still looked beautiful. It was appalling to discover they were pushing Lihua closer to the grave for the sake of beauty. It was a long road to Lihua’s recovery, but in the end Maomao got her through it. Unfortunately, that wouldn’t be the last fans heard of that incident.

With the Emperor’s concubine returned to full health, his visits to her resumed, and it was implied early on in Season 2 that Lihua was once more with child. Head Lady-in-Waiting, Shin, who was also Lihua’s cousin, seemed to discover this news, and behind the scenes she began working to poison her lady subtly. She was hiding fragrances that had been banned from the rear palace to specifically keep both the concubines and any unborn babies they might be carrying safe.

When Maomao unearthed her plot, Lihua and Shin went head-to-head, with Shin finally speaking her mind. She was jealous that Lihua had won the Emperor’s favor and believed it should have been her. After all, that was why they’d both been sent to court in the first place, but the fact that Lihua succeeded and Shin was never on the Emperor’s radar infuriated her. The pair shared a similar beauty, and in Shin’s mind, with Lihua out of the picture she could easily take her place.

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The Shrine of Choosing Set Up the Empire Brilliantly

Maomao’s Capacity for Solving the Unsolvable Led Her Perfectly Through Its Maze of Doors

Season 2, Episode 7, “The Shrine of Choosing”, was a rare opportunity for Maomao to spend one-on-one time with the Emperor. He’s come to appreciate her cleverness, in his own stoic way, and when he recognizes an opportunity to see if she can solve one of the Empire’s greatest mysteries, he seizes it. The Shrine of Choosing has been used for generations to determine those who directly descend from the Mother Royal, who gave birth to the first Emperor of Li.

As the Emperor made his way through the shrine’s maze of doors, which tell those attempting its path with subtle clues how to follow, he doesn’t solve its mysteries. When Maomao asks if she can attempt to lead them through, she does so after her inner-curiosity suggests that the true heirs of the Mother Royal may have been born with a genetics predisposition toward color blindness.

This would change the way they interpreted the colors of the doors, and following this logic, Maomao successfully navigates her way through the Shrine of Choosing and comes out to overlook the kingdom below. Of course, the old teacher already knew the secret, but the way she reveals it to the Emperor and Jinshi kind of gives them both a whole new respect for her. She’s not just clever; she knows her way around a puzzle in ways few others could manage, and that makes her remarkable.

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The Dowager Empress’s Unintentional Curse Against the Late Emperor Was a Tragic Reveal

The Truth About How the Moon Prince Was Conceived Is Heartbreaking

A lot of Season 2 has explored the well-earned reputation of the Late Emperor as the worst ruler the Li Empire has endured. Not only was he so inept as a ruler that his overbearing mother more or less ruled in his stead, but he also had an awful predisposition toward little little girls. The rear palace was once overrun with children, young daughters of lords offered to appease the Emperor’s appetites in exchange for political power, and Anshi was once one of them. Despite looking very young, Anshi had already had her first menarche, which meant that when she gave herself over to the Emperor, she was actually able to secure her spot as Empress by conceiving his child.

When Anshi grew too old to maintain the Emperor’s attention, he moved on to younger and younger girls, and though she never expected to feel jealous, she was. In a jealous rage, she cornered him and forced herself on him to make him pay. She wanted to show him how scared all those little girls were when he took their innocence away. Her actions were as vile as his, but she conceived a child with him, who went on to become the Imperial Brother. Anshi believed that what she did to him cursed him, because when he died, his body did not begin to decay, even after a year.

Maomao got to the root of the cause, discovering he had used orpiment to create yellow pigment for his paintings. Orpiment has a toxicity on par with arsenic, and over time the Late Emperor poisoned himself to death. The properties of orpiment also prohibited his corspe from decaying normally, which explained why his body remained the same as the day he died, even a year after his death.

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Maomao Perfectly Recreated the Moon Fairy

The Apothecary Diaries Doesn’t Settle for Paranormal Explanations

When the two foreign envoys arrive from the West, one of the few things they’re interested in (aside from the Imperial Brother and catching the Emperor’s attention, that is,) is a story their grandfather told them when they were young. He claimed to have witnessed the dance of the Moon Fairy on a visit to the Li Empire years earlier, and despite it seeming outlandish, they wanted to see this spectacular even with their own two eyes.

As Maomao begins investigating how this could have been possible, the first information she gains is from Shisui’s bug collection. The glowing moths would have explained the mysterious orbs dancing around the alleged Moon Fairy, lighting her up with an ethereal elegance that could be easily mistaken for paranormal. After seeing the painting they brought with them, Maomao turns to the one person who might actually have answers: Granny. The Verdigris House Madame comes to visit, and tells an almost identical story from her own perspective.

As it turned out, Granny was the original Moon Fair. After rivals smeared bug guts on her outfit before her performance in front of the visiting envoy, the moths were attracted to the scent on her clothes. As they fluttered around her as she danced, it turned an otherwise beautiful dance into a legend. Using everything she learned, Maomao was able to recreate this effect, using Jinshi, who made an even more beautiful Moon Fairy than the old Madame in her prime.

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Jinshi’s “True” Identity Is the Biggest Apothecary Diaries Mystery Solved In Season 2

Fans Wonder If Jinshi Is Really The Imperial Brother, or Something More

It became obvious way back in Season 1 that there was far more to Master Jinshi than meets the eye. Even before Maomao foiled the plot to assassinate him, there were signs that Jinshi was not just a disturbingly beautiful eunuch overseeing the concubines of the rear palace. His conversations with Gaoshun in Season 1 revealed that he was not a eunuch at all, but taking hormone-suppressing supplements to hide his manhood. For a lot of fans, it was hard to understand how the smartest mind in the inner court didn’t see the signs herself, but Maomao was subconsciously ignoring the truth.

In Season 2, Episode 12, “Ka Zuigetsu”, Jinshi and Maomao were trapped in a cave behind a waterfall after a failed assassination attempt. While down there, he admits that he has been trying to tell her something, but she doesn’t want to know. Even when she lands on top of him after falling, she tries to hold onto what she’s believed about him when she feels his arousal. It’s a frog. It has to be a frog, because Jinshi’s a eunuch, and that’s that. Part of her denial rests with the fact that, despite her constant insistence that she doesn’t really like Jinshi, deep down Maomao is more intrigued by him than she lets on.

The mid-season finale brought the truth about Jinshi’s identity to light thanks to Gaoshun’s reflections near the water. Anime fans know that Jinshi’s true name is Ka Zuigetsu, and he is the Moon Prince and Imperial Brother. This makes him the heir to the Emperor’s throne, so long as there are no male heirs from his consorts to pass it on to in the event of his death. But Maomao still refuses to hear it when Jinshi tries to tell her, admitting to herself that she’d rather not die for his secrets.