YMMV / Scarlet Heart

• Base-Breaking Character:
  • There are some fans that admire Ruo Xi’s ability to adjust being stuck in the Qing dynasty despite being in another person’s body. However, some critics think she’s too perfect and that she learned absolutely nothing throughout the entirety of the novel/TV series and that none of her screwups were her fault and that it was the plot, all because she blames Yin Zhen for changing way too much in the second half of the TV series/novel.
  • Some fans find Yin Zhen to be a tragic character, especially in the end of the TV series/novel, one thing that is admirable for him is despite the fact that his primary consort and empress along with Ruo Xi both outlived their children, he doesn’t abandon them for it. He tries to support them since he knows how it feels to have a child/baby die before him since it really hasn’t been his first time being a father. Others think he is too extreme and too much of a tyrant in the second half of the series (the last straw was him having Yu Tan steamed to death in the 30th episode) to be considered a sympathetic character.
• Fandom Heresy: Go up to a Scarlet Heart fan and say you think Moon Lovers is better than the original series. Go on. Try it. Even fans of the remake almost universally agree the original is better.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Unlike Ruo Xi/Zhang Xiao and Yin Zhen, who suffer an unhappy epilogue in the series, their actors Liu Shi Shi and Nicky Wu Qi Long fell in love with each other for real and got married. They currently have a son together. Even Tong Hua, the writer of the original novel, attended their wedding.
  • Liu Shi Shi (Zhang Xiao) and Han Dong (Yin Tang) went on to appear together in Lost Love in Times. Amusingly, here Han Dong plays a prince fighting for the throne, while his character in Lost Love in Times doesn't want to get involved in the princes' fights.
• Narm: Like in all Chinese series the actors' voices were dubbed. In some scenes the movements of the actors' mouths obviously don't match their dubbed lines, and sometimes they continue talking even after their mouths have stopped moving.
• Nausea Fuel: Yu Tan's execution by steaming, in fact, one of the servants that was made to watch likely on Yong Zheng's orders and to make an example of anyone daring to continue to spying on him and Ruo Xi ended up vomiting afterwards.
• Never Live It Down: Yu Tan’s death by steaming still has fans and haters of the TV series holding Yinzhen under contempt because most thought him having her executed in that manner makes him a tyrant for doing that.
• Retroactive Recognition: Ma Tian Yu appears briefly as Zhang Xiao's present-day boyfriend.
• Special Effects Failure: The birds in episode fifteen are blatantly CGI.
• The Woobie:
  • Ruo Lan. She falls in love with Qing Shan, but he's deliberately set up to be killed so she can be forced to marry Yin Si. After marrying Yin Si she hears of Qing Shan's death and becomes so ill she miscarries. Then she has to put up with being married to a man she dislikes for years.
  • Lu Wu. She is Driven to Suicide by Lady Fu Ca because the latter is jealous over the fact that her husband is in love with her under the threat that if she keeps continuing to raise Cheng Huan on her own, Cheng Huan would end up potentially suffer from harassment by other kids. She is quite hurt by her words and the only comfort she could have before her suicide is that she got a chance to share happy memories with Cheng Huan. Even worse, Yin Xiang and Cheng Huan both are Locked Out of the Loop from ever knowing how she died and thus, in their perspectives, she disappeared without a trace. He is also unable to view her corpse after she slowly drowned after jumping into the river, not to mention, had he arrived on time, her suicide most likely wouldn’t have occurred.

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