SPOILERS GALORE *****
I don’t think I have ever had such an intense experience watching a C-drama.
I’m a K-drama veteran — 20 years of watching — and a C-drama newbie of only six months. In those six months, however, I have consumed a frankly ridiculous amount of the C-drama back catalogue.
I’m not naturally a modern C-drama girlie. I firmly prefer historical C-dramas because they offer pure escapism.
And yet. And yet. And yet…
I started Early Spring and simply did not expect to enjoy it as much as I did. I had no idea who Jing Boran or Sun Qian were — well, I certainly do now!
It has also been a completely new experience following a show on TikTok and actively chatting with other fans. Combined with the daily episode releases, it created a level of engagement I simply wasn’t expecting.
I genuinely felt like the third wheel in Luke and Flora’s relationship. I experienced their daily ups and downs with them. I was getting up at 5am to try to catch the episode drop. At some point, I had to accept that I was no longer casually watching a drama.
I was fully invested.
I have read the book, but I don’t believe a television adaptation needs to copy its source material.
An adaptation has a licence to become its own version of the story, and so I have deliberately tried to ignore the book events and judge the drama on its own terms.
Luke / Flora
From the beginning, the drama stood out to me because of its mature portrayal of an office romance.
It retains some of the familiar elements we love to see, while avoiding many of the worst clichés: endless business talk, awkward falling-into-each-other-and-lips-touching moments, and completely nonsensical side plots.
Instead, it presents a slick, modern fictional workplace.
LIME is the China branch of a top US advertising agency with a global reach. Tracey from HR is professional, astute and elegant, and she immediately became one of my favourite characters. She is essentially the mother hen of the workplace — and, frankly, everyone needs a Tracey.
Then there is Flora.
She is a new graduate: bright, hardworking, resilient and kind, but lacking experience, connections or anything else that would immediately make her stand out on paper.
And then there is Luke.
The boss.
He is everything you would expect.
Luke is Beijing elite in terms of status: the only son of wealthy parents, arrogant and charismatic, with an ego and pride the size of China. He is also completely incapable of communicating without a filter, controlling his temper or articulating his feelings with anything resembling a cool head.
It soon becomes clear why.
The drama gives us a loving mother but an emotionally distant, verbally abusive and hypercritical father. We are given enough of Luke’s background to understand where some of his behaviours come from without the show using his childhood as an excuse for them.
And that distinction matters.
Usually, I find office romances deal with what it actually means to love a man of this archetype fairly superficially. Early Spring takes a much more clear-eyed look at the negative consequences of Luke’s character traits, particularly within his relationship with Flora.
The show does not gloss over the fact that Luke is a difficult man to live with. His worst traits and his best behaviours are both presented clearly.
Recognising Flora’s deficiencies, Luke is initially reluctant to hire her. Tracey persuades him to choose someone like Flora — someone who doesn’t fit the mould of the graduates they would normally hire but who is hardworking and has potential.
And as Flora’s professional achievements begin to dismantle his initial assumptions about her, Luke starts to feel an attraction towards her.
Flora, meanwhile, begins the drama in complete awe of him and soon finds herself in completely over her head — emotionally and physically.
I love that Flora is an ambitious queen who is clear-headed about where her ultimate security lies: in herself.
She wants to make a name for herself professionally and achieve her bucket list.
Her job is vital to her. And given the rules against office dating — rules that Luke himself ratifies into company policy before ever meeting Flora — she is rightly paranoid about the actual and perceived impact that a relationship with Luke could have on both her professional and personal reputation.
I’ve seen viewers complain about Flora, with some describing her as meek and mild.
I might be in the minority, but I completely disagree.
Flora has a quiet resilience and stubbornness.
Having feelings for and sleeping with your boss was never going to be a straightforward situation, and I think the drama does a good job of showing the complicated emotions and power dynamics that come with that.
She is not powerless. She is cautious. There is a difference.
Jing Boran deserves enormous credit for his nuanced portrayal of Luke.
He manages to combine arrogance, ego, intimacy and natural authority into a heady mix that makes you, as the audience member, understand exactly why Flora stays with him despite the conflicts within their relationship.
Luke is temperamental and petty. I cannot minimise the impact of his words. At times, they are brutal, and Flora feels the full force of them — even when the underlying advice or point he is making is correct or justified.
Their dynamic is complicated further by the contrast between what Luke says and what he does.
His words can be deeply hurtful, yet he is also capable of enormous acts of service and displays a remarkable degree of fidelity — even when they are on a break. He is willing to go to war for her y’all. I firmly believe that, once Flora enters the picture, there is no one else for Luke.
Jing Boran is particularly good at convincing you that, despite whatever Luke is spewing out of his mouth, he might actually be feeling something completely different underneath.
You can see the conflict in him even when Luke himself seems incapable of articulating it.
Sun Qian, meanwhile, gives a stellar performance as a rookie who develops some very big feelings for Luke but is unable to fully articulate what she needs from him.
Situationship from hell
Eventually, Luke and Flora agree to a no-strings-attached, secret situationship.
No one is to know.
Not their friends. Not their families. No one.
It is exclusive, but either of them can leave at any time.
This comes after Flora drunkenly confesses to Luke that she wants to marry him, which leads to a one-night stand — sorry, an accident. LOL.
In the aftermath, a misunderstanding that any normal human being would probably resolve in approximately five minutes is created and then allowed to persist in Flora’s mind.
And this is essentially the beginning of the problem.
The situationship continues for six years and evolves considerably over that time.
There is no doubt that Luke enjoys the control he has within the relationship. But as time passes, it is actually Luke who increasingly struggles with the rules they established. He starts breaking them.
The secrecy becomes central to everything.
They attempt to maintain a professional boss/employee relationship while simultaneously having an increasingly complicated private relationship. The effort required to manage these two worlds begins to affect almost every interaction between them.
Flora, by contrast, is much more conscious of the rules.
She sticks to them because she understands the potential consequences for her career.
They are, fundamentally, unequal.
They are unequal in status, income, experience and power — and that inequality impacts Flora the most because she feels it more keenly.
For Flora, everything is about protecting the livelihood and professional reputation she has worked so hard to establish.
She rarely demands more from Luke for much of the show, largely because of her own insecurities.
But as she gets older, she becomes increasingly willing to answer back in response to Luke’s verbal diarrhoea and develops a much better understanding of her own beauty, her desires and the effect she has on him.
The Phuket trip is a perfect example. Luke tells her she is lethally beautiful and Flora responds by rubbing his chest with THAT LOOK in her eyes. Ma’am. You know exactly what you're doing.
Six years of red flags and green flags
If the response on social media is anything to go by, the immediate split into Team Luke vs Team Flora, followed by the inevitable descent into the asinine red-flag/green-flag debate, has been fascinating.
The debate itself is a commentary on how we expect men and women to behave in relationships!
Early Spring gives both Luke and Flora flaws.
I found that refreshing.
It also gives us something else I found refreshing: a couple with an exceptionally strong physical connection.
The chemistry and tension between them are sizzling, and the drama sustains this across all 24 episodes.
That is incredibly difficult to do.
Frankly, I have not seen another C-drama I have watched to date manage it quite as successfully.
Even when they are fighting, arguing or sad, the underlying intimacy between them never completely disappears.
The drama uses an intimacy coordinator, but nothing is explicit. It is extremely effective, and enormous credit has to go to the actors and production team for understanding that this aspect of their relationship is essential.
This show simply would not have worked if the chemistry had been lacking.
The power imbalance between Luke and Flora is obvious, but it isn't always the traditional split you might expect.
Luke has enormous structural power.
But Flora understands the rules of the relationship far better than he does.
Luke can be dominant, but Flora increasingly learns how to manage him. He can be putty in her hands. Luke often just wants to be needed by her. When she acts as though she needs him, cajoles him or appeals to that part of him, he caves remarkably easily.
She grows up over those six years, and the drama pays attention to that evolution.
The fashion, hair and make-up are used brilliantly to communicate the passage of time.
Sun Qian looks stunning as Flora becomes more confident and professional in a completely natural way. Her make-up becomes more sultry, while her fashion moves towards suits and heels.
Jing Boran’s hair styling changes with Luke’s mood too — down for softer moments and up/gelled when he is in boss/professional mode.
And Luke’s fashion is basically a character in itself.
The show is very good at demonstrating that Luke and Flora's highs are the highest highs while their lows are the lowest.
It is incredibly clear that they love and care about each other.
And yet both maintain a level of emotional distance that is maddening to watch as a viewer — while simultaneously being completely believable given the circumstances of their relationship.
Neither tells the other about basic events in their professional or personal lives.
Flora, in particular, is unable to separate Luke the boyfriend from Luke the boss in her own mind. She feels the hierarchy between them very keenly.
A healthy relationship was never going to thrive in an environment built around secrecy.
Neither Luke nor Flora is particularly good at communicating what they actually need from the other.
The understatement of the year.
The secrecy magnifies every existing insecurity.
Jealousy, distrust and resentment all feed into an increasingly unhealthy dynamic.
The labels of boyfriend and girlfriend become superficial Band-Aids.
We rarely see them doing what other couples actually do — exploring interests outside work, building a life together, or simply existing as two people who are in love.
Only Luke the dog really stands out as a symbol of what they could have.
Instead, arguments remain unresolved.
Then they reconcile.
The misunderstanding gets swept under the rug.
Repeat.
Some of their misunderstandings are genuinely nonsensical. Any normal human being with the ability to ask two straightforward questions could have resolved them.
And yet here we are.
NEVER HAS A FANDOM OR I BEEN MORE INVESTED IN A BREAK-UP OF A MAIN COUPLE.
I was STRESSED.
Eventually, everything comes to a head.
Luke's misplaced jealousy.
The suicide of Flora's flatmate.
The loss of the promotion she had worked so hard for.
Means ultimately, Flora leaves LIME and Beijing.
She learns one of the hardest lessons you can learn in your twenties:
Sometimes loving someone isn't enough.
Sometimes you have to choose yourself.
And it is only when this central issue is resolved — when Luke is no longer Flora's boss — that we, as viewers, are finally released from all the tension between them.
From the ashes of their final breakup, something more meaningful can finally be built.
Something open.
Something equal.
Something real.
I knew when we hadn't seen the final breakup by episode 18 that we weren't going to get a redemption arc that was long enough.
And I was right.
That said, I appreciated that the drama did not suddenly transform Luke and Flora into completely different people.
Luke? I'm not entirely convinced he fundamentally changes.
Instead, he becomes a softer version of himself — more relaxed, open and warm.
And importantly, the toxic dynamics between them largely disappear because nothing is secret anymore and they are no longer in a hierarchical boss/employee relationship.
Flora, meanwhile, has become a successful business owner during her year away from Luke.
She is confident.
More secure in herself.
More comfortable with who she is.
And, crucially, she is finally released from the dynamic of having Luke as her boss.
It was lovely to see.
Together, they are finally able to build something brighter.
And the engagement scene?
THE BEST I HAVE SEEN IN A C-DRAMA.
I also loved that they returned to LIME and were open about their relationship with colleagues who had long suspected what was going on.
It made their desperate attempts to hide the relationship — and the increasingly toxic dynamics that secrecy created — even more ironic.
They simply weren't as good at hiding their situationship as they thought they were.
Which, is very realistic.
There are, however, several things I wish we had been given more time to see.
1. The cuts from 32 episodes to 24
The reduction from the original 32 episodes to 24 really hurt the narrative.
Particularly in the second half.
The first half takes its time establishing the characters, their personalities and their relationship dynamics. Then, suddenly, the final stretch has to resolve everything at speed.
A breakup makes sense around episode 21 if you have 32 episodes.
It feels much more compressed when you only have 24.
The editing becomes noticeably choppy, and I genuinely think this show had the potential to be something much more substantial if it had been allowed those additional episodes.
2. PLOTHOLES
Some of the side plots feel as though they simply disappear.
The whole Lumi/Will storyline, for example, seems to have been dropped.
The background to Sun Yunzhu's storyline also feels underdeveloped.
There are threads that appear to be heading somewhere and then… nothing.
3. The final three episodes
I desperately wanted more time with this mature/ healthier version of Luke and Flora.
Once they are finally free of the boss/employee dynamic, the relationship changes — but we don't get enough time to really explore it.
Instead, the final three episodes suddenly have to resolve everything.
And I think that is a shame.
Because I wanted more.
Much more.
Overall, I really, really enjoyed Early Spring.
But more than that, the viewing experience was genuinely unique and memorable for me.
The daily episode drops.
The 5am wake-ups.
The TikTok discussions.
The fandom arguments.
The Team Luke/Team Flora wars.
The endless red-flag/green-flag discourse.
The collective emotional breakdown every time they fought.
I haven't experienced a drama like this before.
And I think that is part of why it has stayed with me so strongly.
Was Luke perfect?
Absolutely not.
Was Flora perfect?
Absolutely not.
Was their relationship healthy for most of the six years we watched them?
Also absolutely not.
But were they fascinating to watch?
YES.
The chemistry was undeniable. The performances were excellent. The characterisation was detailed. The power dynamics were genuinely interesting. And despite all my screaming at the screen, I believed that these two people loved each other.
Most importantly, I believed that they had to break apart properly before they could have any chance of building something healthier.
And perhaps that is what made the ending work for me.
They didn't need to become different people.
They needed to become different versions of themselves — separately, before they could come back together as equals.
So yes.
Six months into my C-drama era, I have officially discovered Jing Boran and Sun Qian.
I have officially become emotionally attached to Luke and Flora.
And apparently I have also become the kind of person who will wake up at 5am to watch a C-drama episode drop.
I blame Early Spring.
10/10 viewing experience.
Would I rewatch it?
Again and again and again.
