The Untamed consumed at least three months of my life. I regret nothing.

In her review of The Longest Promise, Peiying let slip that she hadn’t watched The Untamed, the drama that catapulted Xiao Zhan to stardom. 

HOW CAN. It thus falls to me, The Untamed and Boys’ Love (BL) enjoyer, to plug this gap. You’re welcome.

Here’s what you need to know: The Untamed (sometimes referred to by fans as CQL, a reference to its original Chinese title 《陈情令 chén qíng lìng》) is a 2019 xianxia drama adapted from Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation, a danmei (the Chinese version of BL) web novel written by Mo Xiang Tong Xiu (MXTX). It’s set in a world of spirits, ghosts and the walking dead, of spirit cultivators and politicking sects with distinct cultures and traditions. It stars Xiao Zhan as the free-spirited and innovative Wei Wuxian, and Wang Yibo as Lan Wangji, his stoic, repressed foil. These two main characters go way back in a world of power plays between sects, and after a long separation are thrown together again to investigate a series of mysterious events that unravel into shocking revelations. Opposites attract, but for the purposes of this drama, they only attract in the totally heterosexual and righteous ways of the cultivation world. At least, that’s what we’ll say to the Chinese state censors. 🤞🏼🤞🏼🤞🏼

I’m not going to pretend otherwise: The Untamed requires commitment at the outset. The drama drops you straight into the middle of the action, and it can be confusing watching it for the first time, as you struggle to get your bearings.

There are plenty of characters, and the situation isn’t helped by MXTX giving her characters each multiple names. Most of the main characters have a 名 míng, 字 zì and 号 hào. This is an old Chinese practice: in a nutshell, your míng is the name your parents give you at birth, your zì is the name you get as an adult, and your hào is another name you are given (or you give yourself) that people use if they want to show respect, or if they aren’t in a social position to call you by your other names. For example, Xiao Zhan’s character’s míng is Wei Ying, his zì is Wei Wuxian, and his hào is the Yiling Patriarch, while Wang Yibo’s character is Lan Zhan, Lan Wangji, or Hanguang Jun. It’s quite a lot to remember at the beginning, but because the use of míng, zì or hào reflects the closeness, intimacy or hierarchical relationship between people, it pays off in the end by adding yet another layer of subtle storytelling over everything. Be still, my One True Pair (OTP) shipper heart, every time Lan Wangji calls Wei Wuxian by his míng, Wei Ying, while being assiduously formal with everyone else. 😍 😍 😍 

If you feel utterly lost in the earlier episodes, don’t worry. We’ve all been there. Stick with it, though, and before long nothing will be as important to you as The Untamed. What do you think was in my head throughout the whole first quarter of 2021?

It’s complex as hell and we love it

MXTX does not mess around. The original Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation novels span four volumes, which is why the drama is 50 episodes long but doesn’t have much filler. (Heaven’s Official Blessing, another of MXTX’s works, is a whopping six volumes long. Yes, I’ve read it. In Traditional Chinese. That is how much I stan.)

Long as they may be, the beauty of a MXTX story is that she creates complex characters with deep backgrounds, and never takes the easy way out. Barring the most minor characters, every individual in The Untamed has a back story—even more so in the novels—that provides context for their choices and actions. The result is that every character is interesting, and comes across as having lives and experiences that exist off-screen, even if we’re never privy to them. There are people who do pretty horrific stuff, but MXTX doesn’t make it easy to write anyone off as simply “good” or “bad”. Some people are absolute sadistic shits, yet even they have moments of vulnerability that speak to a deeper trauma. Others try their best to be good, only to be put into situations that force them to make morally ambiguous choices. Then there are those who are neither hero nor villain, and are defined more by their complicity and bandwagoning than any individual action. 

They could create a spin-off series with any Untamed character and I would probably watch it. In fact, they did make a couple of spin-off films: The Living Dead, which follows the “Ghost General” Wen Ning and Lan Wangji’s protégé Lan Sizhui as they solve a mystery, and Fatal Journey, about the relationship of the brothers of the Qinghe Nie sect, whose story ties very closely to the main plot of The Untamed. (I loved Fatal Journey and watched it twice; The Living Dead, not so much.)

If, after this, you still doubt The Untamed’s commitment to character and story arcs, all I can do is present you with the link to this album featuring character songs for most of the major characters or story arcs. Many of these songs are sung by the respective actors from the drama—one other thing the show has going for it are multi-talented cast members who can act and sing (and, especially in the case of Wang Yibo, dance like an absolute boss.)

Straight BL

Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation is pretty spicy danmei. The novels leave no doubt (zero, zilch, nada) that Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian are lovers. (An aside here to say that the confession scene between these two male leads in the novel is probably my favourite confession scene, ever.) Some of the extra content that falls outside of the main novel is pearl-clutchingly R-rated. Before the explicit version of Jungkook’s ‘Seven’, there were WangXian bonus chapters. 🫣

Not so in The Untamed. The Chinese state censors don’t take kindly to LGBTQ portrayals in TV and film, so BL stories that get adapted to the screen have to shed any trace of overt queerness. There’s no mention of WangXian being partners in the show; they’re simply referred to as being each other’s “soulmates”. There is no sex, and everything is framed in terms of friendship and loyalty and mutual appreciation of each other’s skills and power. 

It’s still devastatingly 🏳️‍🌈romantic🏳️‍🌈. 

There is, more or less, only one heterosexual love story in the entire show. What happens to that couple is pivotal to the plot, but in terms of screen time, the straight romance barely makes a blip in the 50-episode epic. Everyone else—they’re all men—is wife-less (as far as we can tell) and engaged in serious “brotherhoods” with “soulmates” they seem to spend huge amounts of time with and trust to the ends of the earth. Heterosexually, of course. Absolutely. Sure. Whatever made you imagine anything else? No more questions. 

I’m a sucker for rom-coms and romances in general, and censorship sucks. But when it comes to Chinese BL dramas, sometimes the fact that the B-s aren’t allowed to explicitly L might actually work out fairly well (from a viewer’s perspective, anyway). Since they aren’t overt romance dramas, certain (tired) tropes can’t be deployed. There are no love triangle misunderstandings, no multi-episode will-they-won’t-they-oh-they-might-oh-no-they-didn’t-oh-wait arcs that outlast their welcome, no irritating second leads scheming to steal one partner away from the other. The production team has to find other ways to depict the depth of feeling between characters, and spin arresting stories of connection and devotion.

A lot of credit has to go to MXTX’s source material, but even stripped of the physical expressions of affection and desire, The Untamed’s central romance is beautiful. It’s a love revealed through subtle moments, small actions and understated lines of dialogue that hint at huge emotions. One example: Like everyone in his sect, Lan Wangji wears a ribbon around his forehead, a sacred piece of clothing that can only be touched by the people closest to the wearer. Tying the ribbon to another person is basically akin to a declaration of lifetime commitment. But in one scene, when Wei Wuxian finds himself unable to enter a sacred Gusu space that’s shielded against outsiders, Lan Wangji ties their wrists together with his ribbon, bringing Wei Wuxian into the space as his spiritual plus one. 🥹🥹🥹

The whole drama is scattered with subtle touches like this that hint a relationship far beyond the typical bromance. It makes for excellent repeat viewings, and the more you know of the lore—either through reading the novels or surfing fan forums—the more you can pick up.

Long live danmei

The Untamed was a gigantic hit. It was among one of the top earners of 2019, spawning fan concerts (and not just in China) and plenty of merch. Some of the supporting cast members even formed a boy band, The Untamed Boys (T.U.B.S), that’s still (kind of) active today. By the end of 2021, The Untamed had 10 billion views on the streaming platform Tencent Video. For many people, myself included, this drama was a gateway to the much bigger world of danmei literature.

It’d be lovely to wax lyrical at this point about what a win for LGBTQ representation in China this is. But it’s not that simple. BL doesn’t necessarily mean better or authentic representation of LGBTQ stories; in fact, BL is often created and written by heterosexual women for women. It’s seen as an opportunity for women to break away from patriarchal, sexist or downright misogynistic portrayals of romance (we all like trashy TV from time to time but there’s only so much 霸道总裁 or “tyrant CEO/boss” trope dramas we can stomach) and indulge in romantic stories in which there is no obvious gender disparity between the two partners. (Unfortunately, like in The Untamed, sometimes this ironically has the side effect of there being next to no meaningful representation of women in the narrative at all.) It’s not necessarily the case that, just because a story involves two male leads, it’s a story that is alive to the very real struggles and experiences of China’s LGBTQ community. That said, BL has still been observed as making significant and important contributions to LGBTQ visibility and awareness.

By right, we should be absolutely buried under an avalanche of BL drama adaptations. There’s been much fanfare about the adaptation of many a danmei web novel, only for things to fall silent after some time. Such productions are often stuck in between competing goals and demands, from fan expectations to streaming services’ bottom lines to clampdowns by the Chinese authorities. Some productions fall through. Some are stuck in limbo for ages. Some make it to screens, but only after significant changes that might have changed the story almost beyond recognition. Much as fans would absolutely love to wallow in a bingeworthy pile of BL dramas, there is sadly no escaping the political and commercial context in which such shows are made.

At least we can rewatch The Untamed one more time on Netflix. And then again.