Bon Appetit, Your Majesty has been one of the biggest Netflix hits of the fall season, drawing in Korean drama fans with a winning combination of period romance and culinary adventure. The 12-episode series adapted from a web novel called Surviving as Yeonsangun’s Chef by Park Guk-jae follows modern chef Yeon Ji-yeong (King the Land’s Lim Yoon-a) as she falls through time to Joseon-era Korea. Once stuck in the past, Ji-yeon must use her culinary prowess to stay alive under the notoriously tyrannical rule of King Lee Heon (Hierarchy’s Lee Chae-min). [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]“Given the added fantasy elements, our main goal was never to deliver strictly historical facts,” Lee Hye-young, Chief Producer at Studio Dragon, tells TIME of the series’ period drama philosophy. “The historical content functions as an intriguing supplementary element, a delightful side dish to the main course of romance and drama.” The light historical touch is no doubt necessary for a series trying to sell its viewers on a love story between a modern protagonist and a character originally based on a real-life historical tyrant. When the King orders Ji-yeon to be the royal cook, the two begin to grow closer. “Since their love story is built through food, their chemistry had to be conveyed through taste, aroma, and atmosphere—not just physical gestures,” said director Jang Tae-yoo. As Bon Appetit, Your Majesty moves toward its conclusion, Ji-yeon becomes increasingly determined to keep the man she is beginning to love from becoming the ruler history remembers. Does she manage the herculean, history-shifting feat? Let’s break down the bloody, romantic ending of Bon Appetit, Your Majesty…The King asks Ji-yeon to stayHeading into the final two episodes of Bon Appetit, Your Majesty, King Lee Heon has confessed his love to Ji-yeon and asked her to stay with him in Joseon. Ji-yeon, who has realized she has feelings for the ruler, is torn. She wants to return to the 21st century where her father and career are waiting, but she doesn’t want to leave the man she loves. Before Ji-yeon can make a decision—let alone find the mangurok, the Joseon-era text that brought Ji-yeon to the past—bloodshed finds them. Prince Jesan (Choi Gwi-hwa), who has spent the entire series scheming to overthrow his nephew, makes his move. During the birthday celebrations for the Grand Queen Dowager Inju (Seo Yi-sook), Lee Heon’s paternal grandmother, Jesan orchestrates the arrival of evidence regarding the truth behind Heon’s mother’s death.The deposed queen’s executionThe bloodshed the King wrought in the past was driven by an insatiable need for vengeance. His mother was exiled and then executed when he was just a child. Through Jesan’s machinations, it is finally revealed that the Queen Dowager and many court officials campaigned for the execution. Overcome with fury, the King announces his plan to slaughter anyone who was complicit, including his own grandmother. Jesan watches on with glee, confident that if Lee Heon leads another literari purge, he will have the political ammunition to replace him. Before the King can swing his blade, Ji-yeon gets in his way. She tells him that she loves him, and that he must stop. He promised he would not become a tyrant. Her plea only temporarily stays Heon’s hand. It is only a revelation from Heon’s maternal grandmother, who has been rolled out by Jesan as emotional proof of the horror of the deposed queen’s death by poisoning, that fully stops him. The old woman has severely suffered mentally, becoming completely disoriented following the death of her daughter, but a taste of Ji-yeon’s homemade chocolates helps her find her senses. She announces to the court, including Heon, that her daughter wished for her son to seek justice by becoming a sage king. Heon puts down his sword.Prince Jesan gets his coupOf course, Prince Jesan has a backup plan. That night, he dons the same mask and costume Lee Heon wears for his talchum performances, and slaughters many members of the court, including the Queen Dowager. He lures the King out of the palace by kidnapping Im Song-jae (Oh Eui-shik), Heon’s chief royal secretary and friend, and tells the surviving members of the court that the King is acting erratically, killing many, and has now gone hunting. With Lee Heon away, Jesan convinces Queen Ja-hyeon (Shin Eun-jung), Heon’s stepmother, to support her young son’s ascent to the throne. Fearing for Prince Jin-myeong’s (Kim Kang-yoon) young life, she reluctantly agrees and he becomes King. Meanwhile, Lee Heon has walked into a trap, where Jesan’s armed men are waiting to kill him. He manages to survive, but Song-jae sacrifices himself in the fight. Lee Heon returns to the palace to confront his uncle, but notably doesn’t try to take back power. He just wants answers. Jesan freely admits that he wants to be king. Objectively, Lee Heon is not a sage King. While he may not have led the most recent palace slaughter, he did lead the last one. Before Ji-yeon’s arrival, he was gathering up girls and women from across Joseon for personal entertainment. When he first met Ji-yeon, he immediately tried to kill her. While the character sees some considerable growth over the course of the series, it isn’t until his conversation with Jesan that he finally takes accountability for any of the bloodshed and pain he has caused. In a sign of remarkable growth, Heon no longer vies for power, but rather vows to kill his uncle to ensure that his half-brother, Jin-myeong, can perhaps grow to be the sage king Heon never truly was. First, though, he is sent into exile where Jesan plans to have him killed. Heon’s allies, including Ji-yeon, gather to fight alongside their King. Jesan escapes from defeat by kidnapping Ji-yeon and requesting Heon meet him alone.The power of the mangurokIt all comes to a head in the forest where Heon and Ji-yeon first met. Heon brings the mangurok, the recipe book it has now become clear Heon wrote because of his love for Ji-yeon. Over the course of the series, Heon has been diligently writing down and illustrating each of Ji-yeon’s culinary creations. The result is the original version of the book that brought Ji-yeon through time, beckoned by the message Heon penned at the end of it, asking his love to return to him.Again, Ji-yeon’s decision to travel through time is made for her. When she steps in the way of Jesan’s sword to protect Heon, she bleeds out in Heon’s arms. A distraught Heon desperately wants to save her, but it’s only the mangurok that has the power to. Activated by Ji-yeon’s blood, it pulls her away from Heon and back to the present. Before she loses consciousness, Ji-yeon tells the King that she wanted to stay.Heon kills Jesan, and is left alone. Does Bon Appetit, Your Majesty have a happy ending?Ji-yeon wakes up in a Seoul hospital. While it’s not clear how she got from there from the airplane she was in before her time-slip, the wound across her back matches the cut of Jesan’s sword. She and her father share a teary reunion, but Ji-yeon cannot bring herself to forget Heon. Once home, she takes out the mangurok and tries to return to him, but nothing happens. She can’t activate its magic.A month later, Ji-yeon is trying to get on with her life. She is asked by a friend to temporarily come on as a chef at his restaurant. To her surprise, the culinary team there looks exactly like her friends from the royal kitchen in the Joseon-era court. However, they have no memory of her. Are they reincarnations of her friends or just eerily identical descendants? The show does not care to answer such questions. The cooks are not the only doppelgangers. A rude patron who looks exactly like Im Song-jae visits the restaurant pretending to be a Michelin judge. As Ji-yeon argues with him, someone comes to her aid. It is Heon, styled in modern clothes and hair. He has traveled across time to be with Ji-yeon. The two embrace. Later, we see Heon cooking a bibimbap breakfast for Ji-yeon, just like he promised. Yes, Bon Appetit, Your Majesty has a happy ending—euphorically, nonsensically so. How did the king travel through time?Bon Appetit, Your Majesty actively does not answer this question, teasing viewers with a line, “that’s not important—because we’re together again,” during the series’ epilogue. There are theories, of course. Lee Heon was left with a torn page of the mangurok when Ji-yeon was swept away from him. These sorts of things matter when it comes to fantasy worldbuilding. Perhaps Heon was able to activate the mangurok to come through to Ji-yeon’s time. When Ji-yeon checks the internet for information about Lee Heon’s rule, history has changed to note that Heon’s body was never found. This implies his appearance in modern-day Seoul is not a reincarnation situation, but rather the same kind of time travel that brought Ji-yeon to Joseon.In the end, Bon Appetit, Your Majesty ended as it began: prioritizing meticulously researched culinary creations first, character drama second, and fantasy mechanics third. While Bon Appetit, Your Majesty may not have lived up to its full potential as an epic K-drama romance in the same tier as Crash Landing on You or Alchemy of Souls, it was a delicious run nonetheless.