The Sign (Thai BL) – Episode 8 Recap & Review

Prince Chalothon (Ruler of Naga City) is Master Garuda’s (Phaya) Love Rival

Episode 8 of The Sign starts with Tharn and Phaya sleeping after their intimate time together. Suddenly, Phaya starts choking like someone is strangling him, and he cannot breathe. Meanwhile, the Abbot is telling some invincible person to stop, and a voice sounding like Chalothon tells him that he will not stop since Phaya dares take what is his.

The Abbot tries to reason with the voice, telling it that Tharn did not choose him, so he should let go of his selfish love, but the voice says it will separate them for eternity. Phaya continues to struggle in bed. The Abbot starts praying, and his voice wakes up Tharn. When he touches Phaya, he suddenly wakes up from the bad dream, and Tharn asks him always to wear the necklace even when he sleeps. The two go back to sleep.

Tharn calls the Abbot the following morning to ask him about Phaya’s bad dream. He remembers the Abbot telling him to keep Phaya and Chalothon from each other. He says that when he heard Abbot’s voice calling him to wake up, he also heard another voice screaming, which sounded familiar. The Abbot tells him and Phaya to protect each other since danger lurks in the darkness.

In addition, Tharn and Phaya must stay away from the river because that is where the dangerous person threatening their lives stays. Tharn tells Phaya about it, but Phaya does not take the warning seriously. 

When they arrive at work, Tharn and Phaya first go to the gym and find Khem, Thongthai, and Yai already working out. The friends start teasing Phaya and Tharn about spending the night together, and as they goof around, Sigh calls them out for a meeting about Kao’s case.

The police had noted that Kao’s credit card had been used recently, and after following up, they found out that someone had found Kao’s wallet near a swamp in the forest where he alighted the taxi. Akk sends Yai, Phaya, and Tharn to investigate near the swamp while Thongthai and Khem question his girlfriend, Ning. 

When they arrive at the swamp, Tharn reminds Phaya to stay away from the river, and he wants him to sit the investigation out, but Phaya insists on participating so long as Tharn stays by his side. They promise to keep each other safe, and they continue the investigation.

Suddenly, Chalothon calls Tharn, and he has to step away from the group to take the call. When Phaya turns to look for him, he sees Tharn disappearing into the forest and hurriedly follows him, but it turns out to be an illusion. Tharn is still talking on the phone, and when he is done, the team gets an update on something and runs in a different direction from the one Phaya saw Tharn disappear to, and Tharn runs after them.

Meanwhile, Phaya arrives at a riverbed and sees Tharn disappear underwater, and when he tries to run after him, some invisible force that he cannot resist starts pulling him into the water. After Phaya is pulled underwater, he wakes up in a different dimension and meets with a woman who claims to be Wansarut’s sister. According to the woman, Wansarut is Phaya’s lover, and the sister wants to make amends for what she did to them by showing Phaya the truth about his past. The woman calls Phaya Master Garuda. 

Phaya starts seeing a vision of a Garuda fighting with a Naga, and he feels the pain as they fight when the Naga constricts the Garuda. The woman tells him he feels pain since he is the Garuda in his vision. The Garuda manages to escape from the Naga’s constriction, and Phaya sees it change into Chalothon. The woman calls him Prince Chalothon, the ruler of Naga city. In addition, he is his love rival. Phaya is injured from the fight with Prince Chalothon, and Wansarut (Tharn) finds him. Even though they are enemies, Tharn chooses to heal Phaya. The woman explains that the Naga and the Garuda were siblings, but due to a conflict brought about by jealousy between bloodlines, they became enemies and were always fighting.  

Our story continues, and eventually, Tharn and Phaya fall in love. However, the sister was jealous since she wanted Chalothon to love her. She hatched a plan to make it look like Wansarut was poisoned to death, and when Phaya found out about it, he went to the river to look for Wansarut, risking the Naga finding him. Phaya was scared that Wansarut’s life was in danger and wanted to take her away.

However, Wansarut disliked the war between the Garuda and the Naga, and she did not want to leave with Phaya. She did not want anyone to die because of her. Chalothon found them, and Wansarut chose to stay with Chalothon to save Phaya, but Phaya would not let her go, and he fought Chalothon for Wansarut’s love.

Chalothon throws a stone spear to end Phaya’s life, but Wansarut stands in front of Phaya. The spear went through both of them, and they fell to the ground by the riverbank, holding each other. Before they took their last breath, they made a vow to find each other and be by each other’s side in their next lives. 

The story confuses Phaya since he did not take Wansarut away from Chalothon and had no idea they were together. Consequently, the person he is in love with is not the Nagini from the vision but Tharn. The sister explains that Tharn is an incarnation of the Nagini that the Garuda was in love with, and no matter how many lives pass, they are always in love with each other in every life.

Even though they find each other in every life, they never end up together because Prince Chalothon is always there to tear them apart by killing Phaya. However, he is unable to kill Phaya since Wansarut coughed out her soul and gave it to the Garuda, and it is contained in the necklace that Tharn gave him. 

Wind and lightning start to tear apart the dimension that Phaya got pulled into. Wansarut’s sister tells him that Chalothon must have found them, but before she leaves, she asks Phaya to protect her sister on the 15th night of the 11th waxing moon. He should not let Chalothon take her, or they will be apart forever. 

 Back to Kao’s case at the swamp, the team finds Kao’s body. Yai thinks that he was killed somewhere else and dumped into the swamp. Kao’s wrists and legs are tied together, which reminds them of Lieutenant Tam’s case. Suddenly, Tharn sees a vision of how Kao died and when he looks around, he sees a man watching them from the trees, and he chases after him. Meanwhile, Yai requests a forensics team at the scene. 

Tharn catches up to the man, and while they are fighting, he notices that the man has the same tattoo as the man who was involved in his parent’s accident. The man overpowers Tharn and starts strangling him, but Yai arrives in time. He lets Tharn go, and Yai runs after him. Suddenly, Tharn saw a vision of Phaya drowning and ran to his rescue.

He gets him out of the water, but he does not respond to Tharn’s attempts to resuscitate him. At the end of the episode, Tharn holds onto Phaya and shouts for help. 

The Episode Review

The episode connects the dots between the past and the present, and we now understand the conflict between Phaya and Chalothon. Wansarut’s sister mentions that Chalothon goes after Phaya and Wansarut every lifetime, ensuring they do not end up together. Still, he cannot kill Phaya because of Wansarut’s soul, which is protecting him. Does Chalothon kill Wansarut instead? Chalothon had once mentioned that he would rather kill Tharn than let him end up with Phaya.

We must appreciate the team responsible for CGI effects and the editing of this episode because the Naga, Nagini, the Garuda, and the transitions are fantastic. Those dragon and bird creatures are so realistic that they transport the viewers to a magical, mythical world.

One thing I like about The Sign is that the plot development and pacing of every episode take into account all the subplots, and they mesh perfectly so that a viewer does not feel like one story is dragging while the others progress swiftly.

The boys investigate murder cases, while the romance story between Phaya and Tharn is woven into the scenarios without forgetting to tie the story of the past to the present, including the death of Tharn’s parents. When will Tharn realise that their enemy is his favourite doctor, Chalothon? Let us follow to find out what happens to Phaya in the next episode.