The ending of Against the Current is bittersweet rather than completely tragic. After years of political turmoil, family conflict and danger, Xu Lanxiang and Lin Jinqi finally reach the quiet life they had been fighting for.
But the peace does not last forever.
The final episodes bring several long-running conflicts to a close. Episode 46 deals with the threat posed by Wona and the pirates, allowing Jinqi to turn his attention back toward home finally. His return, however, is delayed because of Han Liang.
Han Liang has fallen out of favor after challenging the emperor’s reliance on the eunuchs. His criticism puts him in danger. He is eventually left outside the imperial cabinet during the cold and dies the following morning.
Jinqi later explains that he could have returned to his family sooner, but he chose to escort Han Liang’s coffin to Suzhou and help the man’s family make the funeral arrangements.
Six months later, Jinqi finally returns home.
There is no elaborate reunion between him and Lanxiang. Instead, the drama keeps the moment simple. Jinqi tells her that he is home. Lanxiang responds by saying that she has waited a long time for him.
That quiet exchange says more about their relationship than a grand romantic speech could have done.
After everything they have endured, they no longer want power or recognition. They simply want to live together and raise their children away from the dangerous world of court politics.
For Lanxiang and Jinqi, that ordinary family life is the happiness they had been denied for so long.
Does Lin Jinqi die in Against the Current?
Yes. Lin Jinqi dies in the final episode.
The series makes his death particularly emotional because it first gives viewers a glimpse of the family life he and Lanxiang managed to create.
Their children are older, and Jinqi spends time teaching his daughter how to use a sword. Yet even during the lesson, he makes it clear that fighting is not the only measure of strength.
He tells her that avoiding a fight can sometimes be wiser than winning one.
When his daughter suggests that she should learn more from her mother, Jinqi agrees without hesitation. He may consider himself clever, but he sees Lanxiang as the truly wise person in the family.
His words become more meaningful as the episode moves toward his final conversation with Lanxiang.
Lanxiang reveals that she visited the Matchmaker Temple. Jinqi initially assumes she went there because of one of their children’s future marriages.
That is not what she prayed for.
Lanxiang had gone there to ask for something much more personal. She wanted the two of them to find each other again in their next lives.
By this point, Jinqi understands that his health is failing. He regrets not taking better care of himself when he was younger. He tells Lanxiang that if he had known they would eventually become husband and wife, he would have treated his health differently.
Lanxiang promises that if they cannot find each other in their next life, she will follow the red thread until she finds him.
The conversation also brings their complicated identities full circle.
Jinqi remembers that the woman he was once promised to marry was Shen Jialan, while the woman he eventually married was known as Xu Lanxiang. To him, however, they were always the same person.
That red thread had never truly been broken.
Jinqi’s death comes without a spectacular battle or sudden twist. The story simply allows his life to end beside the woman he finally chose and the family they built together.
That makes the goodbye even more painful.
Why Lanxiang keeps writing about the Shen family
Jinqi’s death is not the only loss Lanxiang must face.
The Shen family still has not received justice.
Before Jinqi’s death, the scholar Shouyi gathers intellectuals from Jiangnan and submits a petition asking the emperor to reconsider the convictions against Shen Qihan and his sons.
The request is rejected.
The problem is political as much as it is personal. Overturning the judgment would mean challenging a decision made by the founding emperor, something the current emperor is unwilling to do.
There is still a small sign that the petition has made an impact. The emperor orders the release of other officials being held in the imperial prison.
But for the Shen family, justice remains out of reach.
Lanxiang eventually grows old.
By this stage, she is surrounded by younger generations of the family she helped create. She speaks with her descendant Lin Zhihuan about the women who appear in her plays, many of whom carry the name Tanniang.
Lanxiang connects the name with the udumbara flower, something considered extremely rare.
The comparison reflects one of the central ideas of her story. Women who are allowed to choose their own lives may be rare, but that does not mean they do not exist.
Her writing becomes much more than a creative pursuit.
At first, Lanxiang writes because she wants to preserve her memories of the Shen family. She remembers her grandparents, her parents and the life that was taken away from her.
As the years pass, that purpose becomes larger.
She begins writing because she wants future generations to know what happened.
The official record may have condemned the Shen family, but Lanxiang refuses to let that become the only version of the story.
Her plays keep their names alive.
They preserve the family members she lost and the injustice they suffered. Though she has no power to force the emperor to change the past, she knows memory can outlast political decisions.
As long as people continue watching her plays and passing their stories down, the Shen family cannot simply disappear.
Justice arrives 113 years later
The final twist comes long after Lanxiang’s lifetime.
One hundred and thirteen years later, the Shen family is finally cleared.
The decision comes after repeated petitions from ordinary people. The emperor eventually recognizes that Shen Qihan and his sons were wrongly condemned.
Shen Qihan is posthumously granted the title Wenqing. The women of the Shen family are also honored for their strength and virtue.
Their remains are returned to their ancestral land, where a tomb and shrine are established in their memory.
It is the justice Lanxiang spent her life hoping for, but she never lives long enough to see it.
That is what gives the ending its emotional weight.
Lanxiang loses her original family. She loses Jinqi. She never receives the official apology she wanted. She cannot undo the years of suffering caused by the original judgment.
Yet she achieves something that lasts.
She keeps the truth alive.
The young woman who once had to abandon the name Shen Jialan eventually becomes the person responsible for preserving that family’s history. Her life becomes a bridge between the injustice of the past and the recognition that comes more than a century later.
The 113 year wait therefore is not simply a final plot twist. It completes the story’s central message.
Justice can be painfully slow. Sometimes it does not arrive within the lifetime of the people who deserve it. But that does not make the struggle meaningless.
Lanxiang’s writing ensures that the Shen family’s story survives long enough for someone to finally listen.
That is why Against the Current ends on such a complicated note. Lanxiang does not get everything back. She cannot reclaim the years she lost, and she cannot grow old beside Jinqi.
What she can do is make sure their lives meant something.
Jinqi’s final goodbye closes their love story, while the Shen family’s eventual pardon closes the larger story of injustice.
The result is an ending that is sad, hopeful and deeply tied to the idea that remembering someone can sometimes be the first step toward giving them justice.
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