Headscratchers / Kingdom (2019)

• Someone is betraying the Crown Prince, and it's implied to be one of the core 4. But we've seen notes ever since the first episode, implying it's the head of his Guard, the man routinely risking his life to save the Prince. Is it possible he's being blackmailed by the Queen (who is shown keeping the wife with the other "surrogates")?
  • Season 2 explains he is being blackmailed by the queen who is giving shelter to his pregnant wife.
• We are told that the infected can only be killed by severing or destroying the head, however there are many points in the show (especially the season 2 finale) where we see the infected be killed by other means, such as stabbing to the chest or being sliced in the neck. We are also shown infected being impaled in the same regions as where others died from being stabbed but still surviving.
  • Since the infected are Technically-Living Zombie, presumably catastrophic damage to the heart or other such organs that cause an immediate kill also work.
• How does biting someone transfer a parasitic worm to someone? Are the worms just always waiting in the mouth? Do they lay eggs in the saliva?
  • There is in fact a type of worm that can infect your lymph system through mosquito bites. The resulting disease is called lymphatic filiarsis. Presumably, these worms operate on a similar principle.
• Season 2 finale, Seo-bi claims the child is infection-free on account of the infant's brain not being fully formed...why in the name of Heaven and Earth would you not submerge it in water just to be sure that all of the worms are out?
  • There is a scene where Seo-bi dunks the baby’s wounds in water, and one can assume that the child took plenty of baths over the years. Presumably, he wasn’t infected with a full-grown worm, but perhaps one laid its eggs in him.
    • Perhaps that's why it hasn't infected him yet, the baths only kept the egg in stasis, and only at the scene has the child not bathed in a long enough time for the egg to hatch.
• We know the pathogen is destroyed by both heat and water. So how did it survive being stewed?
  • The most likely explanation is that the eggs are more resistant to heat and water, and the corpse had been infected for several days at that point, giving the worms plenty of time to breed and lay eggs. Presumably when the corpse was stewed, the worms died, but the eggs survived and were then consumed by the villagers.
• How did nobody notice the Noblewoman stowing her zombified son on the ship? While he wouldn't be moving around, it's mentioned that the zombies do smell awful.

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