✦ Season 3 at a Glance
Japan broadcast
Season 3 of The Apothecary Diaries began in Japan on Friday, October 2, 2026, at 11 PM. It is a split two-cour run of 24 episodes planned, and the first cour is airing now. A theatrical film is also set to open on December 11.
Watching the new season, one question keeps coming up: why do these people act the way they do? So today, let's read Maomao, Jinshi, and Gyokuyou through the Enneagram.
✦ The Nine Enneagram Types
Each number has a name
The Enneagram is a personality theory that sorts people into nine types. If MBTI is a tool that splits how people think and act along four axes, the Enneagram focuses on the motives and fears that drive a person.
The same action can point to a different type depending on why it is done.
The nine types run from Type 1 the Reformer, Type 2 the Helper, Type 3 the Achiever, Type 4 the Individualist, Type 5 the Investigator, Type 6 the Loyalist, Type 7 the Enthusiast, Type 8 the Challenger, to Type 9 the Peacemaker, and each type has what it wants most and what it fears most.
✦ Maomao, the Type 5
What she wants and what she fears
Let's start with Maomao, who reads as a Type 5, the Investigator. What a Type 5 wants most is to become capable and to understand, and what it fears most is being helpless and incompetent.
Maomao lived as an apothecary in the pleasure district, entered the rear palace as a maid, and later became Gyokuyou's attendant in charge of watching for poison.
She is abnormally obsessed with poison and medicine, with strong curiosity and a hunger for knowledge, plus a slight sense of justice.
The fact that her curiosity points at poison and medicine, which is to say knowledge, rather than at people, fits a Type 5 perfectly.
✦ How a Type 5 Faces Poison
The order of her moves
The most Type 5 scene is Maomao tasting poison herself to experiment. People who are afraid of poison stay away, but a Type 5 tries to find out because it is afraid.
If not knowing means helplessness, then living through it and understanding it crushes that fear.
When she solves incidents in the rear palace, Maomao approaches with evidence and knowledge rather than emotion, and when it is over she steps back and keeps her distance. Pulling away from people to protect your energy is also a Type 5 trait.
Reading Maomao as a Type 5, it feels natural to see her as a 5w6, a Type 5 with a Type 6 wing. A touch of Type 6 brings caution and a realistic sense of preparing for danger.
It resembles how Maomao throws herself into curiosity yet carefully avoids getting tangled up with people in power, calculating risk before she moves. Using what she knows as a weapon but having no plan to climb higher is part of the same picture.
✦ Jinshi, the Type 3
What he wants and what he fears
Next is Jinshi, who reads as a Type 3, the Achiever. What a Type 3 wants most is to be recognized as a person of value, and what it fears most is being worthless.
Jinshi holds the weighty job of managing the rear palace, and has a beauty that would have been called a kingdom-toppling one had he been a woman. That face is his strongest weapon, and he pulls it out with great skill whenever he needs it.
Calculating how others will take you and building an image from that is the signature skill of a Type 3.
Jinshi is also drawn as a workaholic who gets through work without end. A Type 3 tries to prove its worth through work, so doing is more comfortable than resting.
Under that dazzling surface lies the anxiety that without proving his usefulness he has no value, and that lines up exactly with a Type 3's deepest fear. That is why it makes sense that Jinshi clings so hard to Maomao.
He wants to be recognized as his true self by someone on whom looks and status don't work.
✦ Maomao and Jinshi, Moving Opposite Ways
Type 5 and Type 3
The relationship between a Type 5 and a Type 3 is interesting too. Maomao tries to step back while Jinshi tries to step closer. A Type 5 keeps distance from people to save energy, while a Type 3 relentlessly approaches someone who can give it recognition.
That is why we keep seeing scenes where Jinshi approaches with all his looks and rank and still cannot become an object of Maomao's curiosity. His biggest weapon doesn't work on the very person whose recognition he wants most.
That mismatch is the force that drives their story.
✦ Gyokuyou, Type 2 or Type 9
Comparing the two types
Last is Gyokuyou, a figure on whom opinions split between Type 2, the Helper, and Type 9, the Peacemaker. A Type 2 wants to be loved and needed, and a Type 9 wants to avoid conflict and keep inner peace.
Gyokuyou is a high-ranking consort who enjoys the emperor's favor, yet she keeps Maomao by her side and looks after her, and in the rear palace's web of schemes she keeps her balance without making an enemy of anyone.
Because there is so much caring, she looks like a Type 2, and because she avoids conflict, she looks like a Type 9.
Still, reading Gyokuyou as a Type 9 fits better. A Type 2 helps because it wants to be loved, so there are moments when it expects repayment or recognition after helping, but there is no such calculation to be seen in Gyokuyou.
Instead she has the ease to quietly watch the relationship between Maomao and Jinshi and enjoy it, and her habit of taking in anyone's opinion comfortably matches the Type 9's acceptance.
Keeping calm in a place where conflict never ends, the rear palace, is itself the strength of a Type 9.
If Gyokuyou is a Type 9, her match with Maomao makes sense too. Maomao, a Type 5, is uncomfortable getting close to people, and a Type 9 is someone who stays beside you without asking anything of you.
Maomao can work comfortably next to Gyokuyou because Gyokuyou does not try to close the distance. Maomao solving incidents with knowledge, Jinshi recognizing her ability, and Gyokuyou standing by her side becomes the three pillars of this story.
✦ The Three, Summed Up
Type and one line
To sum up, Maomao reads as a Type 5 Investigator who beats fear by finding things out, Jinshi as a Type 3 Achiever who runs without rest to be recognized, and Gyokuyou as a Type 9 Peacemaker who keeps her peace amid conflict.
If we can sort out why the three make different choices even when they go through the same event, our view of Season 3 should get one step deeper. It will be well worth watching how the three change from here.
Well then, shall we begin today's adventure?
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