Given the premise, Queen Woo seemed to be a promising historical drama– the costumes are great, the cast is stacked, and because it was set before the Joseon Dynasty, there’s much more room for the showrunners to play in, since many of the records were lost to history. However, while we can forgive some historical inaccuracies, Queen Woo unfortunately struggles to introduce these real-life figures in a compelling way. It tosses its viewers into a wall of text, then delays introducing the characters that it wants us to root for, for scenes that establish their status, but not their principles. Given the map-like animation that comes along with it, the stunning production design, and of course, the nudity, it seemed like Queen Woo aimed to be somewhat like a Korean Game of Thrones, but it’s hard to say that the show was genuinely more interested in what the queen’s real life has to say about power, rather than treading the usual melodrama that comes with it.

It’s pretty rare to see nudity in K-dramas, so understandably, it was rather shocking for some viewers. Given that the real queen did have to choose between princes, and that her fertility did have consequences with the real king’s reign, I’ll have to say that it does make sense to include this element because of the stakes it had on the kingdom. That being said, the way the drama uses it was rather ineffectual.