The Johnny Huang Jingyu (黄景瑜) and Xiao Zhan (肖战) led series, “Ace Troops” (王牌部队), made a surprise announcement on December 26 that it was going to air on the same day. The announcement was only made a few hours before the scheduled air time. The series was filmed in August 2020 and was Xiao Zhan’s first series since the AO3 scandal. The official announcement for the filming of the series wasn’t made until October 2020. Even when filming wrapped up in December 2020, there was no posts about it from the official Weibo account.
Shortly after the series aired, the hashtag, “Ace Troops ratings”, was trending at #1 on Weibo’s main hot search list. Despite the last minute announcement and a lack of promotion for the series, “Ace Troops” raked in high ratings in its debut episode. The series aired on iQIYI and on JiangsuTV. On JiangsuTV, the first episode achieved over 1.7 points and was #1 at the 8pm time frame. It was also #1 in realtime popularity at 8:30pm.
Fans are still waiting for Xiao Zhan’s series from 2019, “The Oath of Love”, to air after getting pushed back so many times.