Episode 54 of The Apothecary Diaries season 3, "Kami no Mura" (紙の村, roughly "Paper Village"), aired in Japan on November 6, 2026. In the episode, Maomao and a disguised Jinshi travel to the quack doctor's hometown, according to an Anime Anime episode recap.
Spoilers for episode 54 follow.
Two children come home singing, one of them carrying a basket full of wolfsbane. The man escorting them tells the poisonous plant apart from mugwort at a glance and knows that its root can be used as an herbal medicine. A quick test shows that he knows medicinal herbs and can read to some degree. Maomao then starts training him so he can stand in for her. Anime Anime reports that viewers posted comments such as "too capable" (translated) about him.
The quack doctor later sets out for his home village. Jinshi joins the group disguised as an attendant, having deliberately given himself a facial wound. The quack doctor alone fails to see through the disguise. According to the recap, Jinshi's new look drew a wave of excited fan posts.
After about two days by carriage, the group arrives. The doctor's sister says she thought her eunuch brother had brought home a young bride, and a flustered Jinshi drops his teacup. Her husband praises the doctor as a great physician who delivered the emperor's child, revealing that the doctor has been exaggerating his achievements. The husband also describes a land-rights dispute with a new landowner, caused in part by a grain tax increase for locust countermeasures. Maomao and the others will sit in on talks with the landowner the next day. The episode ends with the family's hostile eldest son in a barn, holding a crying young woman and promising that he will fix things.
Episode 55, "Kake" (賭け, roughly "The Bet"), is scheduled to air on November 13. Season 3 airs Fridays at 23:00 JST in the FRIDAY ANIME NIGHT block on 30 Nippon TV-affiliated stations in Japan, and ABEMA streams it free on Fridays from 24:00 JST. The season's second cour is set for April 2027.