When I first started watching Empress Ki, I never expected to actually finish it and I am (sort of) to this day surprised that I finished it. Not because it was bad or I thought it would be bad. It was mainly the size of it because to me 50 episodes are a lot of episodes and I just wasn’t sure if I could make it threw that but I liked the cast so I decided to give it a go and it just turned out so great. The first 5 episodes of the drama had me hooked and suddenly I was just so far into it that I started to see myself actually finish it and here I am. This is therefore the longest drama that I have watched and funny enough the longest drama that I had watched before EK was the drama that introduced me to Ji Chang Wook (which was one of the main reasons for watching EK). I know a lot of people were annoyed by the not-so-historically accurate plot and the costumes. I did read a bit up on Empress Ki before the drama and tried to do a bit of research here and there while it was airing but it sort of doesn't bother me that it wasn't historically accurate (I feel the same way about Reign as well) because I am mainly watching it for the historical setting not the historical accuracy. I am very found of period or costume dramas and while I liked it when they are historicity accurate (if I know th history beforehand or when I read up on it) but I am mainly just there for the costumes and the period setting and all of that and to me Empress Ki delivered on that. The set and the costumes were gorgeous and just really well done. The drama says in it’s description that it is a “historical” romance drama and while there is romance in the drama (like there is in most tv shows or dramas) I felt like a lot of the romantic stuff was sort of put on the back burner for some parts of the drama, which I didn’t mind that much. A lot of the drama was just about Empress Ki /Seung Nyang revenge and quest for justice/power and the political aspect of things and while I did enjoy it a lot I think a lot of other people where annoyed by it or by Seung Nyang and her politics. I liked how the women of the drama were powerful and involved in the politics and I really enjoyed that aspect of the show. I really didn’t expect to like the politics since they sometimes bore me in these dramas. Maybe Game of Thrones is making me like that sort of thing more. It has happened that I am watching a drama and as soon as the plot goes away from the main couple I lose interest but that didn’t happen here. I feel it was most of all a character driven drama and not necessarily a otp driven drama. The main story is not how they got together but how Seung Nyang became Empress Ki. The story does go on for a long time though, so there are bound to be plotlines that were more fun than others. Now that I look back my favourites were between episode 1-6 and episodes 24-37. Those were the plot-lines that I enjoyed the most and I felt like were best written. For the most part I felt like the story was fast paced and all in all decently written. It went a little thin in the end but overall I found it very entertaining. Because it is so long and therefore you have plenty of room for a lot of things happening at once and a lot of different side plots and side characters you really could flesh out some of the characters. Some for the better and some for the worst and I think most of the characters went threw some sort of character journey, except for some of the bad guys which were just evil and bad just for the sake of the plot like El Temur and his lot. Aside from Tanashiri which I always liked even if she wasn't the best character. I felt like I could sympathize with her but not her action. I understood why she felt why she had to do what she did, because she was the empress and she needed to secure her place in the palace because that was her only job in life but I didn’t really like how she handled everything but I found her amusing and I liked the actress who played her and I will be keeping an eye out for her in the future. I liked how I could understand most of the time why people did what they did within the palace because you had to be hard and ruthless if you wanted to survive in the palace and I especially liked how the women where written and that they were just as powerful as the men. Wang Yoo however was one of the good guys and he was suppose to be the main lead until the public (and most of the fandom I think) decided that they liked the emperor more and he was sort of swept aside and he didn’t get that much character development at all. He was just always very consistent and noble but just sort of there in my opinion and I just found it sort of plane. I couldn't even get behind his love-line with Seung Nyang and I just sort of feel bad for Joo Jin Mo but their love-line felt so much like a duty thing and that she was always just his subject that I never got behind it. In the beginning I also rabidly shipped Seung Nyang og Ta Hwan / The Emperor but that sort of went away later in the drama and while I liked them together for the most part of the drama my rabid shipping never returned. I mostly saw them as friends later on but I don’t doubt their love for each other. I just really liked their Ta Hwan did go threw a lot of character development, which is why for the longest time he was my favorite character on the show. Untill he became a bit too possessive for my taste and it almost looked like the writers forgot all about his character development and just decided to toss it out of the window because they needed a bad guy. I think the best character in the end was Tal Tal but he was amazing and he really started to bloom in the later half of the drama. Empress Ki is just a very character driven drama to me. In the end the story was getting a little bit thin and a little bit wonky but I still enjoyed it for the most part and I sort of expected it to go a little bit like that just because of how long it was. I never felt like it dragged and I wasn’t really that annoyed by it or anything. It just felt like the writers didn’t know what to do with all these episodes and just started to add in some shock-value. I don’t think it could have been ay longer than 51 episodes and 45 episodes or something would have served it just fine and made made the story just a bit more stronger and not at thin but I still enjoyed myself a lot while watching it. The last 10-15 episodes were not as good as the rest of the show. The ending though didn’t bother me at all nor did I find it lame or anything. It was sort of what I had come to expect given how the story was going and how the story actually went (historically) so I was’t really mad about it. Empress Ki was such a roller-coaster ride and some parts were better then others and it did go a bit crazy in the end but I still enjoyed the drama a lot. It was entertaining and for the most part fun and easy to watch and I will miss it.