The Early Spring Episode 20 Recap
**SPOILER ALERT**
Table of Contents
TL;DR (Quick Overview)
I WILL WATCH OVER YOU FROM BEYOND THIS WORLD, UNTIL YOUR LIFE IS WHOLE
Ten months on, distance and misplaced jealousy nearly derail things between Zhitao and Luan Nian all over again, until an honest conversation pulls them back from the edge. But the episode’s real gut-punch comes from Sun Yuanzhu, whose quiet suffering was far deeper than anyone around him realized, and whose loss leaves both Zhitao and Sun Yu forever changed.
A Long-Distance Check-In
Ten months later, Luan Nian’s driving while on the phone with Zhitao, who’s preparing to head back to Beijing once her assignment wraps. She admits they haven’t spoken in nearly a week, explaining she’d been out in the Gobi Desert with barely any signal. He’s meant to be flying out to the US for a debriefing, and admits, almost sheepishly, that he delayed leaving just to make sure she was safe first.
They fall into easy, teasing banter about the strangeness of long-distance love and their shared custody of Luke, agreeing to video call once he’s home. When she mentions wanting to see the dog specifically, he pretends to be wounded, “so you only want to see Luke?” She smiles and corrects herself, “our dog,” and they hang up warmly.
A Painful Reunion
Getting dropped off at her building, Zhitao’s surprised to find Sun Yuanzhu waiting, explaining his project in the northwest has wrapped and he wanted to see her before heading back to Beijing himself. She invites him in for a drink, but he declines, it’s too late, and instead hands her a bunch of wildflowers he’d picked from the mountains himself.
She loves them instantly, then asks, half-joking, if he was the one secretly sending her flowers all those years ago at the office. He admits it was him, he’d just wanted to cheer her up during a hard week. She asks if he’s planning to visit his family before returning to Beijing, and asks after his mother. His expression shifts instantly, and he tells her, quietly, that she passed away, during Chinese New Year.
Stunned, Zhitao asks why he never mentioned it, and he explains he didn’t want to dampen everyone’s mood while they were all celebrating with their own families. She asks about his sister and father, and he deflects, insisting they’re fine, that he’s doing well too.
As they say goodbye and she starts walking back toward the building, he suddenly breaks down, admitting the truth, he isn’t doing well at all. No matter how hard he works, no matter what he does, he can only ever seem to reach ninety-nine percent, never that last bit further. Emotionally drained, he weeps openly, and Zhitao, utterly heartbroken for him, cries too, pulling him into a hug to console him.
A Jealous Misunderstanding
From a distance, Luan Nian sits in his car, watching the two of them embrace, and drives off in silence, clearly wounded, having apparently rushed back specifically to surprise her.
Zhitao calls Sun Yu right after to share the news about his mother, and Sun Yu, devastated, books a flight immediately, mentioning she’s made the trip up to see him plenty of times before, sometimes just for a meal and a chat before flying straight back.
Zhitao then tries calling Luan Nian, who initially won’t pick up. When he finally answers, his voice is cold and clipped. He tells her he’s busy, mentions he’s dropped Luke off at the pet shop before his flight to the US. Sensing something’s badly wrong but unsure what, she doesn’t push, and lets the call end.
Rumours and Return
Back at the office, a group chat buzzes with a photo of Luan Nian alongside a woman named Yilia, colleagues speculating she might be the future “lady boss,” warning each other to watch what they say around either of them.
Word is they travel together often, share frequent meals, and given that she’s the daughter of Lime’s biggest client, someone whose father controls next year’s entire advertising budget and reportedly favours Luan Nian, people are already calling them a perfect match. Zhitao reads it all quietly, clearly unhappy, but says nothing.
Lumi’s thrilled to have her back, chatting excitedly about her upcoming promotion interview, insisting Tracy’s always treated her fairly and Luan Nian’s nothing if not just and transparent, the promotion’s basically guaranteed. She mentions Luke actually came back from the US a week early, and suggests Zhitao go report in.
When Zhitao does, he’s entirely closed off, all business, offering no explanation for the early return, barely making eye contact as he works through his laptop and paperwork. She tells him she’s back, reports in as expected, and leaves when he doesn’t engage further.
A Confrontation, Long Overdue
That night, she waits until he finishes work, and they drive home together in tense silence. She finally asks what’s actually going on, whether something happened in the US. He insists everything was fine.
She points out they haven’t seen each other in two months, doesn’t he miss her at all? “Did I?” he replies coldly, before turning it back on her, asking if she’s done something to make him question things, accusing her outright, wasn’t she the one hugging another man downstairs, crying with him for what looked like the whole night?
She’s stunned, and he keeps pushing, sarcastic now, insisting she’s clearly quite something, claiming to miss him while apparently keeping her options open elsewhere. Furious, she fires back that he can choose not to trust her, but he doesn’t get to accuse her of something she never did.
She pulls up the photos circulating of him and Yilia, pointing out she never once confronted him about any of it, never questioned the office gossip, because she trusted him completely, believing they understood each other’s social circles by now. And yet here he is, throwing a massive accusation at her simply because she tried to comfort a grieving friend.
He insists he isn’t trying to keep her from having friends either, that he gets along fine with women he works with too. She reminds him plainly that she’s never once felt jealous watching him admire someone, and asks him to view her friendship with Sun Yuanzhu with the same rationality.
She reminds him that during some of the hardest moments in her life, it was Sun Yuanzhu, Lumi, and Sun Yu who carried her through, and that no matter how much she loves him, she will never give those people up. He tells her that’s a fair trade, and he expects her to hold to it, both of them clearly still furious.
A Small Reconciliation
He drops her off, and when she taps on his window trying to talk further, he ignores her at first, only stepping out once she’s turned to walk away, visibly guilty. She asks him plainly if he’d actually been in the northwest that day, how else would he have known Sun Yuanzhu was crying?
He counters, quietly, that he’d like to know why she was crying too. She explains everything, his mother’s death, how emotionally shattered he’d seemed, how she’d cried simply out of sympathy for a dear friend, and asks him gently not to misread anything about their relationship.
He softens, telling her he’ll try his best going forward. When she asks again why he’d shown up that day in the first place, he admits, simply, that he’d suddenly missed her. He gets back in the car and drives off, leaving her smiling quietly to herself.
Six Years, Reflected
During her performance review, Zhitao reflects on six full years spent building her career at Lime, and both Tracy and Luan Nian are genuinely impressed watching how far she’s grown.
A Devastating Loss
Afterward, she and Sun Yu plan a small celebration together, since Sun Yuanzhu had quietly helped shape her report behind the scenes.
Sun Yu shares happy news, he’s been receiving treatment for his depression, finally eating properly, smiling and talking like his old self again. Heading out to meet him, the two women pass a crowd gathered near a building where someone’s reportedly jumped. As they draw closer, Sun Yu’s phone rings, the police, asking if she’s related to the deceased.
Zhitao spots a pair of glasses on the ground, and the truth lands instantly. She breaks down completely. Sun Yu simply freezes, unable to process what’s happening, before the two of them collapse into each other’s arms, sobbing in a grief too enormous to hold. For one fleeting second, Sun Yu imagines him walking toward her in the sunlight, but the ambulance pulling away makes the reality inescapable.
Grief, Shared
Back home, Zhitao makes a simple bowl of tomato and egg noodles, trying to comfort Sun Yu, who eats in total silence in the dark until she’s sick. Later, sorting through his belongings, Sun Yu finds letters he’d left behind, ones where he tells her he hopes she finds real love, marries, builds the family he could never give her himself.
Through tears, Sun Yu wishes she’d somehow met him earlier in life, so she could have loved him fully and shielded him from whatever pain led him here. She shares his diary with Zhitao too, and its pages reveal a quiet, long-held love for Zhitao herself, someone he’d always viewed as a beautiful, distant star, something to admire from afar rather than ever reach for.
He’d written about the flowers he’d once sent anonymously, about the depression that consumed him following his mother’s death, and finally, about his decision to say goodbye to a world he’d genuinely loved. Leaning on each other now, the two women find whatever comfort grief allows, choosing to remember him simply as the gentle presence who brought real warmth into both their lives.
The Early Spring Episode 20 Recap: My Thoughts
Let’s start with Luan Nian’s jealousy issues, because I swear, I wanted to slap this man through the screen. Everything Zhitao said in that car during their fight was completely spot on. She wasn’t hugging some stranger, she was hugging Sun Yuanzhu, her roommate and an extremely close friend Luan Nian already knew about.
I genuinely don’t understand the double standard here either, back at the park, when Zhang Yao asked for a last hug before leaving for the UK, that was somehow perfectly fine, but Zhitao hugging her close friend isn’t? After so many years together, if you see your partner crying, something is clearly wrong, and the mature response is to ask if she’s okay, not spiral into rage and accusations. Watching that scene made me angry.
And further to that, after finding out that a tragedy occurred in Yunzhu’s family, he didn’t admit fault or that he overreacted. He just looked a bit guilty and then stormed off again.
The rest of the episode was devastating in a completely different way. With all of them traveling so much and never really under one roof together, nobody had a real chance to notice how badly Sun Yuanzhu was struggling, and it’s just awful that things ended the way they did.
The scene where they read through his diary afterward was absolutely heartbreaking. Sun Qian nailed that moment completely, you could feel every ounce of Sun Yu’s pain, that uncontrollable, deep grief that no words could possibly console.
Thanks for reading! Would love to hear your thoughts about The Early Spring recap and review. Let’s chat below!