First Impressions: Love Upon a Time Takes a Leap Through Time

“Do you believe in multiple lifetimes?”

Your answer may be persuaded by Love Upon a Time, historical fantasy BL drama from Domundi TV adapted from the novel of the same title by author littlebbear96. 

Love Upon a Time centers around Nakhun (JJ Radchapon Phorpinit), a pragmatic and unsuperstitious student who keeps running into bad luck. In a twist of fate, he gets transported 400 years back to the Ayutthaya Kingdom, where he assumes the identity of Klao, a young master who has gone missing. As Nakhun tries to find his way back to his world, Klao’s friend, Phop (Net Siraphop Manithikun) hovers closely over him, trying to discern as well if this is the Klao he knows. 

Fans have been eagerly anticipating Love Upon a Time’s release as the drama is Domundi’s first period and historical series. Bringing the story to life was a lengthy journey, with production stretching for two years, being filmed during Thailand’s rainy season and experiencing major setbacks and delays with flooding on set. 

But the wait was worth it when the first episode of Love Upon a Time finally aired on March 27, already immersing viewers into the past and present. Will Nakhun be able to return to his present world or will he remain as Klao from Ayutthaya? Or perhaps there’s more than what meets the eye, if you believe in multiple lifetimes. 

Note: This article discusses key points and contains spoilers!

A Promise From the Past

The first episode begins with a scene from the past, showing Klao and Phop strolling through a night festival. It’s an immersive opener, with warm candle lights glowing against the temple backdrop, festival goers adorned in Ayutthaya-era clothing, and a Thai classical score. 

Klao and Phop peruse the vendors when a hidden figure pulls out a pistol. Shots are fired and the crowd scatters in panic. Klao and Phop flee until they find themselves cornered in a forest. Phop tells Klao to leave so he can confront the criminal himself. Klao refuses, but Phop promises him that he’ll return and nothing will separate them again. From the very beginning, we’re clued in on their close relationship. It’s a weighted promise from Phop that appears to extend beyond their current predicament.

The story shifts to December 2023, where Khun’s friends Thi (Latte Thanutchon Chankaew-armon) and Pun (Kim Pongsaton Sittipan) attempt to throw him a surprise birthday party. The celebration is dampened when Nakhun arrives at the party, hair dripping and his white pants sullied. The tonal shift from the dramatic and melancholic opening is marked by the disheveled, rain-soaked entrance of Nakhun, pulling viewers out of the past and grounding us in a lighthearted modern setting.

“He’s really forsaken by the heavens,” Thi laughs. Ignored by taxis, Nakhun had to walk in the rain, only to have his umbrella break and then have a motorcycle splash him. 

Pun scolds Thi, trying to keep Nakhun’s spirits up. Thi and Pun are clear opposites, with Thi’s playful and cheeky humor tempered by Pun’s calm, mature personality. It’s also clear that Thi is pining hard after Pun, and the latter wants nothing to do with them.

Despite Thi’s teasing words, he’s proven right when Nakhun is continuously met with a string of misfortunes, from being the target of bird poop, getting elbowed in the face, and mistaken as a thief.

His friends take him to a fortuneteller despite his apathy for the spiritual and otherworldly. 

“You are about to experience misfortune,” the fortuneteller tells him ominously. 

“And?” Nakhun deadpans. It’s nothing new to him. 

The fortuneteller warns him of more hardships coming his way and that the past is calling him to fulfill a promise. He gives Nakhun a protective amulet, rattles off ways for him to combat bad spirits and energy, and reminds him to take care of his mother. Nakhun simply brushes it all aside, but hangs onto the mention of his mother.

The Logic of Fate

Nakhun is attending a lecture about time travel literature. He’s astute and studious, dutifully taking notes while Thi bothers him. The professor calls him out and asks him if he believes in multiple lifetimes. 

He replies that he doesn’t and thinks that humans made up the belief to explain the unexplainable in their lives. Instead, he believes in logic. The professor smiles and rebuts that in the world of time travel literature, one cannot always rely on logic. 

It’s a pivotal moment that viewers get the sense to hold onto, hinting at the ominous opening, the fortuneteller’s warnings, and what mysteriously lies in the past. The exchange feels foreboding, even to Nakhun. While walking through campus, his attention is caught by a present version of Phop, but only the audience can recognize him. Before Nakhun can act on his curiosity, the protective amulet pulls him towards a speeding car that he narrowly misses. Before he can breathe, metal bars from leftover construction almost flatten him. 

Nakhun goes home to a dinner prepared by his mother, who’s on her way out to attend a wedding. Their warm and endearing relationship leaves us wondering if the fortuneteller warning held any deeper meaning. There’s no time to ponder as his grade for the Thai history exam was just released. And he absolutely bombed it. 

Drowning his sorrows away, Nakhun goes out to feed the ducks and lets out his frustrations. “If past lives do exist, why aren’t my past memories carried over into this life so I don’t have to study Thai history?” he yells at the sky. He looks up at the stars, bleary-eyed, and suddenly a shooting star is hurling towards him in a blinding flash.

A Leap Between Worlds

When Nakhun wakes up, he finds himself laying on a forest floor, and a crowd of people clad in loincloths calling him “Master Klao.” According to them, “His Excellency” and “The Lord” had instructed them on a search to find Klao, who had been missing for several days. 

The lord himself enters, and it is Lord Phop from the opening scene. Nakhun finds him familiar, but still can’t wrap his head around this strange situation he’s already in. Everyone is speaking in an older dialect of Thai so he believes he must’ve stumbled upon a period drama filming in his drunken stupor. He tries to leave, but darts away in a panic when the servants chase after him. To Nakhun, a character who’s so grounded in logic and modernity, this can’t be anything beyond a drunken dream or lucid nightmare.

It’s a chaotic sequence as Nakhun runs through what looks like an extremely realistic filming set, dodging chickens and crashing into other servants that he praises for keeping character. Phop and the servants try to pacify him, but Nakhun starts to fear he’s been kidnapped or trapped in a cult. As Phop and the others close in, he’s cornered by a stream and begins to think that perhaps this isn’t a film set. Because why did Phop look at him like he’s known him forever?

Left to his wits’ end, Nakhun recalls his professor’s words of a portal being the point of transfer between alternate worlds, sometimes triggered by a death, and in a turn a birth or reincarnation. He jumps in the water. 

When Nakhun doesn’t rise, Phop proves that he’ll follow wherever his Klao goes, unceremoniously takes off his shirt, and dives into the water.

Ayutthaya Beyond the Books

Domundi TV are proving to be leaders in the Thai BL industry by pioneering Thai soft power. After the success of Khemjira, which centered around Isaan traditions and shamanism, Love Upon a Time seeks to depict Ayutthaya on the screen beyond what’s written in history textbooks. 

Director Den Panuwat Inthawat explains that the setting of the series caught his interest because Ayutthaya was known as the trade center of that era. The Ayutthaya Kingdom reigned from 1351 to 1757, but the series specifically takes place during King Songtham’s rule during the early 17th century, marking a period of expanded overseas trade.

“People from many nations of different languages settled in Ayutthaya. We often have the image that love between men was forbidden… But once I got to make this series, where the story centers on two men in love, I had this question: Was it possible then?”

Upon further research, Inthawat discovered that Thailand never had laws that punished same sex relationships until King Rama V. He sought to explore Ayutthaya with this possibility and how people might’ve lived. Love Upon a Time depicts men outside molds of traditional masculinity. “We’re not talking about warriors. It’s not about kings. It’s not about the wars we’ve known. We look at Ayutthaya through another lens,” says Inthawat. Beyond the politics and economics that are taught in school, he wants to portray Ayutthaya through “the story of the people.”

In the next episode, we can look forward to seeing how Nakhun will settle into the world of Ayutthaya, a place he’s only encountered in his Thai history classes. History is often thought of as logical and linear, but just as Nakhun’s professor said, one cannot always rely on logic to show us answers. Love Upon a Time is precisely the kind of story that invites us to reimagine the past and the boundaries between what’s recorded and what’s possible. 

Fans can expect to see alternate versions of Thi and Pun respectively as Jom and Kaew, who have a flipped dynamic from the present timeline. The cast’s dedication to portraying paradoxical characters, especially Nakhun’s conviction of how tradition and modernity can’t coexist, attests to the friction between past and present. 

Out of place and clearly a man out of his time, Nakhun, must search for a way back home while navigating this strange world, perhaps with the help of a certain lord who won’t let him go. 

Tune into Love Upon a Time on iQiyi every Friday at 10:30 AM EST or 10:30 PM ICT.

Need another show on your watchlist? Check out EnVi’s refresher of “XO Kitty” for the upcoming season!