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The Apothecary Diaries season 2 episode 3 was released on January 25, 2025. The episode returned to normal, pacing the slow start, and promising an amazing future. However, one peculiar thing about the episode was how dark it got, shifting the series' narrative to the 'seinen' side first time since the sequel started.
Despite the shift, the series continued to portray Maomao's insensitive character who was only obsessed with obtaining herbs, instead of showing remorse for the dead. The episode assured that the future might return to season 1's pacing, introducing one mystery at a time.
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The Apothecary Diaries season 2 episode 3 review: The demographic shift and Maomao's oblivious character
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The Apothecary Diaries season 2 episode 3 was mostly centered around the murder mystery of the consort, Lady Jin. The lady died of a mysterious illness which had Jinshi asking Maomao to investigate mushrooms.
The plot points in the episode were also pretty straightforward because they didn't entangle with other issues in the Rear Palace. The initial 'mushroom' clue proved more crucial than expected, leading to Maomao breaking down the entire murder mystery.
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However, this mystery had layers to it which Detective Maomao explained before Jinshi, even though she wasn't sure about everything. The roles of Tao (a maid) and Lady Sou (a consort) were crucial to the entire case as the former replaced Lady Jin, and the latter's moves revealed that the consort's death wasn't real.
This was also where the series turned to a 'dark' approach as Lady Jin was killed by Tao, who was later forced to act as the consort to maintain Lady Jin's image in the Rear Palace.
It might be hard to imagine someone taking on such a great responsibility based on pure pressure, and this made The Apothecary Diaries season 2 episode 3 the series' darkest episode.
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The Apothecary Diaries is a shojo-seinen series with a key emphasis on both demographics. However, 'seinen' is hardly dominant in the series, which made the latest episode a spotlight.
On the other hand, The Apothecary Diaries season 2 episode 3 didn't change Maomao's character as she was still a medicine freak. After explaining the entire murder mystery to Jinshi, Maomao started bragging about how she found out about Lady Jin's corpse through the mushrooms that grew on corpses. As expected, her attitude creeped out both Jinshi and Gaoshun.
The Apothecary Diaries season 2 episode 3: The return to normal pacing
The Apothecary Diaries season 2 commenced with a very slow start as the 'slice-of-life' genre was the series' main highlight. However, The Apothecary Diaries season 2 episode 3 might have changed the tide because the episode was not only moderately paced but also perfect for the current episode where a murder mystery was being solved.
Murder mysteries require neither slow nor fast pacing because they become boring or ununderstandable in such conditions. So, moderate pacing worked well for this episode. The future might also see Maomao solving more mysteries at the request of Jinshi and this pacing would be perfect for such a case.
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