Alternate ending that was deleted? Maybe a sequel planned but scrapped?

[thisfanfeels]

Just completed the series and the Feels is still breaking the heart. Not sure where I should be posting this? I'm slowly healing having discovered sid_guardian, and reading all the insightful meta-posts, re-watches, discussions particularly the ones that thought the ending fitting, so so so painful but ultimately true to the characters of Shen Wei and ZYL.

My first reaction to the final episode was purely hating it because they didn't both just die, one has to remain as a wick eternally. I had really hoped for a HEA, well-earned rest, domesticity, enjoying the sunshine while licking lollipops kind of thing. Thinking about it more, and again, reading through all these cathartic meta-posts, I think the ending was perfect.

I came across a couple other mentions that made me feel better too:

-apparently, there was an original ending that was leaked and not well-received by fans. That was replaced with the super-bittersweet ending that we now have. In the original ending, ZYL lived, and he had started a school in Dixing (Prof Zhou!!). As he was walking through the sunlit street, he met a pair of young twins (!!), of which one wore glasses (!!). They spoke and the show ended. It made me feel glad that the scriptwriters had originally intended for a slightly more hopeful ending.

https://www.facebook.com/GuardianChineseDrama/videos/true-guardian-ending/1509814542453770/
and
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8551028/trivia/

-Were there plans for an OVA, or something akin to a season 2?!

These seemed like hints -
CCG wrote in his journal towards the end "A new story will be written from today"
Opening song "the story will keep on going"

In 2020/2022, on MyDramaList website, a movie "Guardian" was listed with an entirely new set of cast playing SW and ZYL https://mydramalist.com/75211-guardian. Unclear what the status is. Presumably Z1L and Bai Yu are too committed to other projects now to resume their original roles. Maybe they don't even want to, because the ending for their characters is perfect as it was, pain and all, and anything "new" would probably spoil it.

Excuse me while I go back to moping (and re-watching eventually)...

Comments

[cathyw]

in general I blame the censors? I might be wrong but they're a convenient target. My understanding is that the more queer your production is, the worse your ending is required to be (as was the case under the Hays Code in the US). (for example: the originally-aired ending of Word of Honor, and the "rocks fall everyone dies" ending of Killer and Healer.)

It has struck me that without the scene where ZYL and SW meet up in "elsewhere" after everything, the ending would have been just too horrifying to bear, so I wonder if they were anticipating being required to have a bad ending but they sold the bromance well enough that they were allowed to have a neutral/open one instead.

But meanwhile the story is "keeping on going" - it's just CCG's story, instead of ZYL and Shen Wei's. :) (I'm not going to ask too intently about what the SID is doing if Dixing was cut off from Haixing lest the whole structure crumble.) I don't think I'd watch a remake without Bai Yu and Zhu Yilong (their chemistry was a big part of what made Guardian work for me) but if you were to tell me "there's a second season coming with Xiao-Guo and Lao Chu as the leads" I'd be there in a millisecond...

[thisfanfeels]

I agree censorship largely contributed to the choppiness of the whole production, which makes it doubly amazing (thank goodness!) that lead characters were able to convey as much love as they showed. All the looks and touches and nuances and WeiLan moments... *sigh* Guardian set the bar, chemistry-wise, for later shows like Word of Honor, Untamed etc I think Guardian caught everyone by surprise by how quickly and fantastically popular it became that it sort of steamrolled over extreme censorship.

"It has struck me that without the scene where ZYL and SW meet up in "elsewhere" after everything, the ending would have been just too horrifying to bear,"

Oh gosh, I so agree! That would be devastating. The parting words kept it somewhat open-ended though my brain hurts too much right now to understand the logic of it.

[trobadora]

OMG, the schoolboy ending, I'm so very glad they didn't go with that, I would have hated it SO MUCH. To me it's the worst of all possible options - one of them living while the other dies; reincarnation with a huge age gap; absolutely nothing romantic remaining at the end (because one of them is literally a little kid) ... it would have felt like the ultimate no-homo slap in the face to me. On the other hand, I really love the very hopeful, open-ended promise of meeting again that we got!

And, I mean, Wang Zheng and Sang Zan both died a hundred years ago (Ge Lan was even buried), and they still came back and were reunited, so death is no barrier there.

(And I've never even heard of a suggested second season/sequel, but IMO that promise of meeting again is the perfect sequel bait! Along with everything else you mention. But that's what fanfic is for, in the end. *g*)

I haven't heard anything new about the movie in ages, even though it must have been filmed, going by the pics on the mydramalist website. Anyway, it seems like it has not much to do with the drama - different actors, different story, historical rather than present or future ... doesn't look all that appealing to me.

[thisfanfeels]

Yeah, the school boy ending would have killed all possibility of romance, just too icky! I was just glad to see ZYL alive in that deleted ending scene instead of him burning for eternity in an endless loop of suffering. My mind is currently trying to reconcile how he got from soul-in-wick to soul-in-twilight meeting with Shen Wei. Regardless, kudos to the cast and writers for pushing the boundaries as much as possible to give us a layered, more complex, more emotionally meaningful story even if it didn't please every fan.

If there was a sequel, I would be ok if it's a spin off for other couples/characters but it feels really wrong to cast someone else as SW and ZYL. Their on-screen chemistry was off the charts and seems to have carried over to off-screen interactions. Which I think, made the series and them, so much more fun to ship and cry and melt over. This isn't to suggest any form of romantic relationship between Bai Yu and Zhu Yilong, though.

For me, it was just very pleasing to see how they instinctively played off each other's reactions (during filming/improvisations and in various joint interviews), and being so comfortable with each other. They had fun! We had fun watching them hang out! I don't think I've seen any Zhu Yilong interviews post-Guardian in which he just spontaneously laughs out loud, unguarded, and shows less reservation than his usual composed, somewhat formal, interactions.

Sorry, got off tangent there!

[trobadora]

My mind is currently trying to reconcile how he got from soul-in-wick to soul-in-twilight meeting with Shen Wei.

It looks similar to the inside of the wormhole when Zhao Yunlan went to the past, so I think it's just sort of an in-between Hallows-space.

Yeah, Zhu Yilong and Bai Yu have amazing chemistry, and they played so well off each other! It's an absolute delight, and I couldn't imagie anyone else in these roles either.

[grayswandir]

instead of him burning for eternity in an endless loop of suffering. My mind is currently trying to reconcile how he got from soul-in-wick to soul-in-twilight meeting with Shen Wei

I've wondered about that too, because it does seem like the whole point of his sacrifice at the end is that he becomes the wick, like... permanently. Presumably as long as the wick stays lit, he's stuck there. But I guess the planet of Haixing probably isn't eternal, so on a long enough timeline, they can still meet again in some other, more distant time and place? Or maybe eventually some solution will be found to replace the Lantern, and the wick can be extinguished...

[sakana17]

My mind is currently trying to reconcile how he got from soul-in-wick to soul-in-twilight meeting with Shen Wei.

The thing about the wick that I always think about is that we have only one person's statement (Zhang Shi's) about the eternal burning, etc. And when he said it, he may have been testing Zhao Yunlan's resolve, making sure Zhao Yunlan would really sacrifice himself (or sacrifice one of his team) if he had to. Personally, I take it with a grain of salt, because the other thing I think about is how would anyone know exactly what happens to the wick? If it is as Zhang Shi said, no one survives to tell the world about burning up. If someone is around testifying to the horrible burning, that means they survived and got out of the wick or found a way to communicate from inside the wick.

[thisfanfeels]

"The thing about the wick that I always think about is that we have only one person's statement (Zhang Shi's) about the eternal burning, etc. And when he said it, he may have been testing Zhao Yunlan's resolve, making sure Zhao Yunlan would really sacrifice himself (or sacrifice one of his team) if he had to. "

Ah! I forgot about that. You're right, this eternal burning statement was from just one (very ancient) entity, who might also have said something along the lines of it's never been done before. As you said, it could be a test of resolve. The willingness to sacrifice, is the point. Having sacrificed, and the lantern's flame lit, then what happened to the soul afterwards is open to speculation.

Thinking further, CCG was originally supposed to light up the lantern because of his purity of heart, wasn't he? There was no mention of him needing to sacrifice his life.

In response to grayswandir above,
"Or maybe eventually some solution will be found to replace the Lantern, and the wick can be extinguished..."

I hope so! Hey, maybe the idea may occur to CCG to light some fire... Haha, I guess now I've gone way beyond drama canon. But it helps, for me, to think there might be a logical out for ZYL's eternal burning after all.

[bladedweapons]

Yes, I think I tend to be okay with the yunlantern (and prefer it to the schoolboy option) because I don't put too much weight in the claim that it is definitely for eternity. Aside from the questionable source of the information, the hallows and the whole set up is so unusual and unknown and unique and that situation has never occurred before. Who knows if time even moves in the same way for someone within the lantern? Between how ambiguous the lantern situation is and how strange Shen Wei and Ye Zun's final scene is, it is not too difficult for me to place weilan's reunion in the "definitely going to happen even if I have no idea how" category!!

(Not sure how it will look but this is meant as a collective addition/reply to several of the above preceding posts in this thread.)

[china_shop]

Aside from the questionable source of the information, the hallows and the whole set up is so unusual and unknown and unique and that situation has never occurred before. Who knows if time even moves in the same way for someone within the lantern?

Agreed!! And even if the Lantern set-up works the way Zhang Shi said, there are a lot of people left alive with dark energy powers or impressive scientific inventiveness who can try to replace Zhao Yunlan with an actual wick, or disrupt the process some other way... For example, I feel like Li Qian would be pretty motivated to figure something out. :-)

(Basing this on the fact that presumably Sang Zan would have been stuck in his pillar indefinitely if the Envoy and the SID hadn't got him out; these things can be disrupted!)

[trobadora]

Between how ambiguous the lantern situation is and how strange Shen Wei and Ye Zun's final scene is, it is not too difficult for me to place weilan's reunion in the "definitely going to happen even if I have no idea how" category!!

This is where I'm at as well!

[thisfanfeels]

I've gone from super-despondent (first reaction) to super-hopeful (now) thanks to this thread! In thinking about the lantern, Someone else had lit it 10,000 years ago too. That, plus the 3 other hallows, bought years of peace. Obviously, it was no longer lit in the past year(s) (goodness knows how many years in storage) but the peace remained anyway. As someone said up-thread, the act of sacrifice, the willingness to give up one's life, might have been the spark needed.

What Zhang Si said about endless suffering might also mean the suffering of separation between soulmates (YZYL-SW), not physical trauma as I had imagined in horror of wick-ZYL literally burning for all time.

Haha, the holes in the drama series have actually turned out to be opportunities to interpret as positively (or negatively) as needed.

[trobadora]

Very glad we were able to make you feel better! ♥

And honestly, leaving some things open for interpretation is often an excellent writing choice, much better than trying to neatly tie everything up and leave the reader/viewer no room.

[china_shop]

*sends hugs and comfort kittens for your post-finale heartbreak* So glad you're finding some solace and meaning in the meta here.

(And of course, if you haven't already checked out AO3, there are tons of fix-it fics that show the two of them finding their way back to each other. After all, one of the great things about Hallows and SF-science is the ability to cheat death.)

Fwiw, I've heard that the romantic leads both dying at the end is an epic romance trope in China, so in some ways it's even more shippy than if they'd lived. So I'm not sure it's just a censorship thing; it might be that the creators wanted the drama to have that epic feel?

[thisfanfeels]

ha, yes, now that you've mentioned it! Romantic-leads-dying is very much epic-romance. Thks for the hugs and kittens!

[grayswandir]

Fwiw, I've heard that the romantic leads both dying at the end is an epic romance trope in China, so in some ways it's even more shippy than if they'd lived.

That was my thought, too. I've seen a lot of het romances in Chinese movies and dramas where one or both leads end up dead -- sometimes even on shows that were mostly comedy up until very close to the end, when suddenly everything gets serious and ends in tragedy. Generally speaking, I love both bittersweet endings and tragedies, but some of the ones I've seen have felt really out of the blue!

[autodach]

I'm so glad they didn't do the awkward originally planned ending.
I actually think what we got is really good as far as bittersweet endings go. If we can't have the HE from the novel, this is the next best thing, and it was executed well too.

[trepkos]

So many new things to think about! Weird that they would do a completely separate movie so soon.

CCG wrote in his journal towards the end "A new story will be written from today"
Opening song "the story will keep on going"

He knew about fanfiction!