When it comes to demanding patience, this season of Kingdom is the gift that keeps on giving.

One thing I can say for sure – when we get to the end of Kingdom season 3, fans will definitely be able to say we’ve earned it.  After a delay of a full year (as far as I know the longest pandemic-related delay in TV anime), we finally got re-started this spring.  And now we’ve seen a three-week break between cours, right in the midst of one of the headline battles of the series.  This has never been an adaptation that’s made it easy on its viewers, so I don’t suppose it should be any different now.

One thing I’d like to assert right off the bat is that it was kind of dumb for Han Ming to take on Meng Wu in the first place.  The status quo strongly favored Chu and the coalition – both numbers and time were on their side.  So why risk a major defeat in single combat?  Obviously Han Ming is massively (over) confident in his own invincibility, but pride goeth before a fall, as they say.  There’s certainly no question that Han Ming is a haughty spirit, but his arrogance has given the enemy a victory they desperately needed.

How it came about was interesting, I’ll say that much.  Wa Lin sends her brother Wa Yan (our first encounter with him I believe) in the stab Meng Wu in the back.  This is a rare concession to practicality for her – even she knows losing Han Ming would be a massive psychological blow to the coalition armies.  But Meng Tian figures out what’s up, and heads in to intercept.  He arrives just in the nick of time (I have no doubt Han Ming would indeed have been furious if Wa Yan had killed Meng Wu in such a fashion), but Han Ming fells him.  And it’s anger over seeing that that spurs Meng Wu to victory in their duel.

Meng Tian appears to be close to death here, but his father refuses to acknowledge him (or death).  Whether this will be enough to keep Meng Tian around I don’t know, though his death would be a big moment for Kingdom (and Xin).  Meng Wu orders his son not to die and proceeds to lay waste to Han Ming’s army single-handedly.  And indeed, shock waves do reverberate far and wide, all the way to Xi’an – where Chengping basks in the glow of his stratagem bearing fruit.  I don’t know if all this bad omen stuff (a rare Xin sighting!) refers to Meng Tian or something else, but if it’s the latter we have a pretty good idea what that something else is.

With Han Ming gone Wa Lin becomes the de facto commander of the might Chu armies, though she expresses little interest in trying to rally Han Ming’s forces.  She has a master plan she’s been working from the beginning, one she hasn’t even told Li Mu about – those oft-mentioned 5000 elite troops she sent off an a mysterious mission some episodes back.  They’re the key to her strategy to take down Hangu Pass – and now, with Han Ming’s death having shuffled the deck, it appears she’s finally ready to put that plan into action.