Plot Synopsis
Hong Kong billionaire's daughter Wu Jiayue, driven by love-turned-hatred, used her father's connections to cause Lin Xiaofan's bankruptcy. Lin Xiaofan, using the historical event of the retail investors' battle on Wall Street, made a comeback by founding Xiaofan Technologies. He took the lead in the mobilephone market with a cutting-edge search engine, directly competing with Wall Street's representative, Liu Yuanqing. However, he unexpectedly found himself in a life-or-death situation trapped in a capital-planning IPO trap.
Where to Watch "Return to Nineteen Ninety Three Season 3"
TencentVideo (Subscription)Episodes Recap
- 1-5
- 6-10
- 11-15
- 16-20
- 21-24
Question 1: How did Wu Jiayue die? The only thing that is clear about Wu Jiayue's death is that she died for Lin Xiaofan. Lin Xiaofan carries guilt and memories of her, which is why he renamed the company as Jiayue Group.
The specific cause of her death was deliberately left open-ended, including whether Hong Jie and Jiang Yan survived the conflict or if only Lin Xiaofan survived. It can be understood as the production team hoping to have some room for a fourth season or other sequels.
At present, the hope is that this open-ended design will leave room for imagination for everyone.
Question 2: The relationships between Chen Yuan, Liu Yuanqing, and Lin Xiaofan (two of them) are essentially soul transmigrations.
The difference is that after transmigrating, their corresponding ages align with their future ages. That's why Chen Yuan always appears older than Lin Xiaofan, but in the 1990s, Liu Yuanqing and Lin Xiaofan are in the same age group.
In this 1990s timeline, there is still a young Chen Yuan (i.e., Liu Yuanqing) and a young Lin Xiaofan. Chen Yuan coincidentally encounters his younger self (i.e., Liu Yuanqing), but Lin Xiaofan does not disturb his younger self.
Question 3: Why did Liu Yuanqing, after becoming Chen Yuan, kill the younger Lin Xiaofan? This is the deepest hidden plotline in the entire story. In fact, there is only one core question: When did Liu Yuanqing realize that what Chen Yuan said was true?
Liu Yuanqing is not a fool. Although he never believed Chen Yuan when he said, "I am you," when he thought Chen Yuan was killed in a car accident and chose to start over using Chen Yuan's identity, he gradually realized that everything Chen Yuan said was true.
With his intelligence, how could he not understand that there is another young Lin Xiaofan who is "connected" to the one he hated? The turning point came when he saw the young Lin Xiaofan's first company go public, and he saw this identical Lin Xiaofan.
However, the grown-up Lin Xiaofan had never seen Liu Yuanqing, and Chen Yuan, who went to prison after childhood, couldn't remember his appearance. Moreover, there was an age difference of nearly 30 years between them.
So, at the celebration banquet, he couldn't possibly believe that the Chen Yuan next to him, who was only a little older than himself, was the one who had adopted him over 20 years ago. Do you remember the scenes from episodes 23 and 24?
In episode 23, Chen Yuan and Liu Yuanqing fight each other, and Chen Yuan chokes Liu Yuanqing but suddenly lets go because Liu Yuanqing is his younger self. If he kills Liu Yuanqing, the future Chen Yuan ceases to exist, and the concept of time travel and rebirth won't exist.
Therefore, Chen Yuan cannot kill Liu Yuanqing. However, Liu Yuanqing can kill Chen Yuan without any consequences. In episode 24, the scene where the elderly Lin Xiaofan meets the elderly Chen Yuan at the seaside, after Lin Xiaofan and Chen Yuan kill each other during the celebration banquet, the young Lin Xiaofan and Liu Yuanqing disappear, leaving only a wheelchair.
This is because the deaths of the young Lin Xiaofan and Liu Yuanqing trigger another round of rebirth and transmigration, causing the current elderly Lin Xiaofan and Chen Yuan to cease to exist.
It is precisely because of understanding this principle that Liu Yuanqing's logic for revenge is as follows: there are only two people connected to the death of Wang Mengjie, one is Chen Yuan, and the other is Lin Xiaofan.
Chen Yuan is himself, the soul of the Lin Xiaofan he hates, and the soul of the current young Lin Xiaofan. As long as both of them perish together, the previous versions of Lin Xiaofan and Chen Yuan will naturally disappear.
This is Liu Yuanqing's ultimate revenge! Question 4: What are Lin Xiaofan and Chen Yuan fighting for? The core understanding of the production team regarding the theme of returning and rebirth is to struggle against fate, rather than simply achieving a miraculous comeback.
Chen Yuan's struggle is against the recurring cycle of fate in which he always loses to Lin Xiaofan. Therefore, in his world, notions of national righteousness and love are all nonsense.
His sole purpose is to kill Lin Xiaofan.
On the contrary, Lin Xiaofan is a businessman at heart. His rebirth is aimed at changing the weak and backward state of Chinese enterprises and core technologies.
He aspires to become someone like Ren Zhengfei.
Young Liu Yuanqing represents the technical and trade faction, and the technical and trade path he walks is inherently opposed to the path Lin Xiaofan hopes to take.
This is the historical wheel of the entire '93 series! Question 5: Why weren't these contents directly portrayed?
Let's analyze how these contents could have been presented if they were to be filmed:
Wu Jiayue's death: Portraying the death scene and Lin Xiaofan's reaction in a typical and melodramatic manner would be clichéd and far inferior to the open-ended ending that allows for more imagination.
Lin Xiaofan's path to the peak: Chen Yuan has already lost all the cards he had to compete with Lin Xiaofan. The powered-up Lin Xiaofan, coupled with the accumulated capital, is virtually invincible in the business field.
His ultimate success is only a matter of time. If this part were to be filmed, it would be more like a straightforward account of events.
Liu Yuanqing's revenge: If Liu Yuanqing's inner journey of revenge were to be portrayed, it would introduce a strong sense of suspense and deduction, which would create a significant disconnect from the current content.
Therefore, it is better to leave enough room for imagination, which we believe is a more suitable approach.
The above is a sharing of some creative logic from our production team, which also addresses most of the questions regarding the grand finale.
During the completion of this grand narrative, there may still be some plot omissions, unresolved aspects, or logical inconsistencies, for which we ask for your understanding.
Finally, we would like to express our gratitude: Thank you for being with us throughout the three seasons!
The timeline goes like this: Modern Lin Xiaofan, who traveled back in time, encountered the abusive version of the ordinary Lin Xiaofan and died on the spot.
Middle-aged Chen Yuan, on the other hand, went back in time while retaining his current age and guided his younger self, Liu Yuanqing, to challenge Lin Xiaofan.
After faking his death, middle-aged Chen Yuan continued to live in the present day and groomed the young Lin Xiaofan, who was still a child, to become the CEO of a company. Liu Yuanqing, using Chen Yuan's identity, also lived in the present day and acted undercover alongside the grown-up modern Lin Xiaofan, eventually sacrificing himself and traveling back in time again.
In the ending, it was the soul of Lin Xiaofan, who had traveled through time and lived until the present day, who welcomed the elderly Chen Yuan's release from prison at the pier. On the same day, a new cycle of reincarnation began.
In other words, Liu Yuanqing personally cultivated a competitor and simultaneously battled his younger and middle-aged selves.
This explanation makes it clear. At the end of the third season, Liu Yuanqing, using the alias Chen Yuan, and the child Lin Xiaofan, both perished in 2022 at the beginning of the first season.
Then, with their modern memories, they were reborn in 1993 as another middle-aged man named Chen Yuan and a young man named Lin Xiaofan. The original hosts of these two individuals are already dead, and Chen Yuan also experienced soul transmigration.
Otherwise, it wouldn't explain why the original Chen Yuan had a wife and a company in the first season. However, the process of Chen Yuan's soul transmigration is not explicitly explained in the drama.
Meanwhile, in 1993, the child Lin Xiaofan and the young Liu Yuanqing were living fine.
Initially, the reborn Chen Yuan personally fought against the reborn Lin Xiaofan, but after failing, Chen Yuan encountered his younger self, the destitute Liu Yuanqing, in the timeline of the first season's ending, at the audio-visual store.
He began to guide Liu Yuanqing to fight against the reborn Lin Xiaofan, which led to the plot of the second and third seasons. Eventually, Chen Yuan found the child version of Lin Xiaofan and trained him to fight against himself.
Superficially, it may seem like Chen Yuan is the biggest winner, manipulating everything. However, in reality, he is the biggest loser. Driven by his damn desire to win, he lived with hatred for most of his life.
He was a failure before his rebirth and ended up spending over twenty years in solitary confinement after being imprisoned. In the end, he achieved a remarkable life for both versions of Lin Xiaofan, before and after rebirth.
It has to be said that Chen Yuan's grand vision of sacrificing himself to benefit others is truly unparalleled.