Is Kingdom Scary? The Verdict and the Whole Plot
Yes, 6 out of 10. It's a zombie outbreak with jump scares that runs alongside a plot to take the throne.
Ruling: Watch it with the lights on and the door locked, which is more than anyone in it manages.
Kingdom runs two seasons of six episodes each. The king is ill, the Cho clan is running the palace, and the crown prince has noticed that nobody will let him see his father. There are also zombies, which turn out to be bad for everyone's travel plans.
The premise, briefly
A crown prince who suspects his sick father is being hidden from him flees the palace and runs into a plague that brings the dead back hungry.
The verdict above is spoiler-free. Everything below, including the ending, stays hidden until you pick a depth.
Lee Chang lures the zombies onto a frozen pond in the palace garden and breaks the ice, which destroys the undead and cures the bitten. He makes Mu-yeong's infant son the new king. Seven years later, he, Seo-bi and Yeong-shin are still tracing where the resurrection plant came from.
Early on, in the second episode, the patients from the clinic wake at sundown and attack the city of Dongnae. At the clinic, Seung-hui's corpse infects Beom-il, and Chang cuts off the zombie Beom-il's head.
The dog is fine in Kingdom: nobody sees a dog die, though horses die, mostly off screen.
It is a long, steady zombie siege with jump scares, and the political plot gives you somewhere to rest between the attacks.
How it ends, the scene you're dreading, what happens to the dog, and the bottom line. About twenty seconds to read.
What actually happens
A stew with a regrettable ingredient
The king of Joseon has been sick with smallpox for ten days. Only Lord Cho Hak-ju and his pregnant daughter, Queen Consort Cho, are allowed to see him, so the Haewon Cho clan is effectively running the country. They arrest and torture eighty-nine scholars accused of plotting to replace the king with his son, Crown Prince Lee Chang. Chang is in fact the ringleader. He sneaks into the palace to check on his father, is caught by Cho Beom-il, the queen's brother and an army commander, and decides to run with his bodyguard Mu-yeong to find the royal physician. Meanwhile in the city of Dongnae, sick patients are crowding Jiyulheon, a clinic run by Lee Seung-hui, and there is not enough food for them. The physician returns carrying the body of his assistant Dan-i, killed by something unseen in the palace. A patient named Yeong-shin cooks Dan-i's flesh into a stew for everyone, and Seo-bi, the physician's assistant, catches him at it. Every patient dies, and then every patient gets back up as a flesh-eating monster.
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The patients wake at sundown
Chang and Mu-yeong reach Jiyulheon, find it barricaded, and learn from Seo-bi that the patients have turned into cannibals who can't be killed and who become active when the sun sets. The scene to brace for comes in the second episode. When night falls in Dongnae, the patients' corpses wake up and attack. At Jiyulheon, Chang is in a duel with Beom-il when soldiers find Seung-hui's corpse, which attacks and infects Beom-il. Chang watches the transformation and then decapitates the zombie Beom-il. In the third episode the zombies spread through Dongnae and the nearby countryside, then go dormant at sunrise by stuffing themselves into any tight space they can find. Chang takes command of the local soldiers, orders the bodies burned and the city quarantined, and discovers there are too few soldiers to do either. Seung-hui's journals explain that the late king was treated with the resurrection plant, but he only fell ill and died. Chang vows revenge on the Cho clan and heads for Sangju, while the aristocrats of Dongnae take the last boat and leave everyone else behind.
A governor with a firm door policy
On the aristocrats' boat, a noblewoman who stole away her zombified son lets him out, and the nobles are overrun. In Dongnae, Chang leads the abandoned peasants into Jiyulheon for the night, and a huge number of zombies lay siege to it until dawn. A royal army then arrives to arrest Chang, sent by Lord Hak-ju to avenge Beom-il, and Mu-yeong tricks the soldiers away while the refugees escape. Chang travels toward Sangju with Mu-yeong, Yeong-shin and Seo-bi, and Beom-pal joins them, a Cho clan magistrate. They are rescued from a pack of awakening zombies by Lord Ahn Hyeon, who was Chang's childhood tutor, and he gives them shelter but dodges the request for help. In Hanyang, Lord Hak-ju tests the disease on prisoners, gathers pregnant women into the palace, and puts his daughter on the throne as Queen Regent. Her first decree seals Gyeongsang off from the rest of the country. Hyeon then has a platoon sent to arrest Chang executed, warns him about a mole, and backs his command of Sangju. Chang plans defenses surrounded by water, and Seo-bi finds the resurrection plant in the Frozen Valley and works out that temperature decides when the zombies move.
A siege with no lunch breaks
In season two, the zombies arrive in daylight and overrun the fortifications, and the defenders of Sangju start to starve. Beom-pal's uncle, Lord Hak-ju, finds Seo-bi and Beom-pal outside the walls and takes Seo-bi back to Hanyang because she knows about the plant and the king's death. Chang suspects that Mu-yeong is the mole and questions him. Chang then leads a small force through the cordon to assassinate Hak-ju, but the raid on Hak-ju's camp is a trap. Chang is cut off and meets his zombified father, whom he decapitates, while Hyeon defies Hak-ju and is shot down. That looks like proof of Chang's treachery, and the Cho clan consolidates its power. As the army prepares to execute the traitors, Hyeon returns as a zombie, turned by Seo-bi with the resurrection plant, and bites Hak-ju in front of everyone. Chang then beheads Hyeon and rallies the royal army, which starts to relieve Sangju. Mu-yeong turns out to have been spying for the Cho clan since they took his pregnant wife.
A bathtub, as medical advice
Wounded Mu-yeong tells Chang about the Queen Regent's plot before he dies, and Chang finds Mu-yeong's wife, who tells him the Queen took her infant son. In Hanyang, Hak-ju is close to death from the bite. Seo-bi and Beom-pal notice that zombies refuse to step into even shallow water, so they lower Hak-ju into a bathtub, and worms come out of the wound and he recovers. Hak-ju takes Seo-bi to examine the Queen Regent and confirms that Mu-yeong's baby is not her child. The Queen has him poisoned before he can say so, then locks Seo-bi in a dungeon under the palace and orders her to learn everything about the disease. Chang launches a surprise attack on Hanyang to stop the executions of his supporters, and many royal soldiers switch sides, Beom-pal among them. In the throne room the Queen Regent refuses to give up the crown and orders the infected held in the dungeons to be let loose across the palace. Most of the courtiers and officials turn, and the outbreak is past containing.
The ending, explained
The undead overrun the palace defenses, kill the Queen Regent and infect Mu-yeong's baby, but Seo-bi gets the baby out. Chang lures every zombie across the frozen pond behind the palace and breaks the ice, so they all drop into the water. This destroys the zombies and cures the living who were bitten. Chang is pressured to execute the baby, the last power of the Haewon Cho clan, and instead makes him king. Seven years later the boy king is still infected but shows no symptoms, and he has kept the country stable. Chang, Seo-bi and Yeong-shin keep investigating where the resurrection plant came from, and they learn that someone spread it across Korea on purpose. The trail takes them to the far north, where they meet a mysterious woman.
The post-credits ruling
Nobody has confirmed whether there is a scene after the credits, so stay for a moment if you like.
Questions people ask at 1am
The whole plot of Kingdom is hidden, ending included. It stays that way until you ask.
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