The Guest: Episode 11

by odilettante

We finally learn the true origin of Park Il-do and his connections to the earthly world. The demon spirit is still determined to complete what he started twenty years ago, but this time the trio are adults who are capable of fighting against him. But will it be enough? Or will evil continue to triumph?

 
EPISODE 11 RECAP

Hwa-pyung’s possessed father tries to attack him, but Hwa-pyung ducks out of the way. He’s shocked that his father is possessed, and Geun-ho — in his demon voice — blames Hwa-pyung for killing his mother and his wife. Geun-ho says that Hwa-pyung should have died back then, and tries to hit him with the fire extinguisher that, moments ago, he used to kill the landlord.

The two men fight and they crash out of Geun-ho’s small rented room into the hallway. In a move eerily reminiscent of the way he tried to kill Hwa-pyung twenty years ago, Geun-ho starts to strangle his son. The younger man manages to fight off his father, who’s momentarily distracted by a neighbor who pokes his head into the hallway to see what the ruckus is about.

Apparently the threat of an audience is enough to deter Geun-ho, and he runs out of the inn. Hwa-pyung tries to follow, but his father has supernatural strength and speed, and Hwa-pyung loses him in the alleyways.

Hwa-pyung returns to the inn and sees the landlord on the floor. He checks to make sure the man is okay, but the man is dead. The other curious tenants see Hwa-pyung and assume he’s the one who killed the landlord. Realizing that this isn’t looking good for him, Hwa-pyung runs away.

Kil-young’s among the police dispatched to the inn. The tenants tell Detective Go their version of the story, and Detective Go is shocked to realize that once again Hwa-pyung is involved in yet another of their cases. Kil-young’s boss orders them to make an emergency arrest, since Hwa-pyung is their primary suspect.

Kil-young resists, insisting Hwa-pyung shouldn’t be considered a suspect. When her boss doesn’t back down, she pleads that he at least postpone the arrest and that she’ll bring him in peacefully. But her boss doesn’t see any reason why they should give special consideration for someone they have on CCTV running away from a murder scene.

Worried about Hwa-pyung, Kil-young calls to warn him he’s a murder suspect and that he needs to get to the police station. Hwa-pyung tells her about his father being possessed.

He refuses to go to the police station because he needs to find his father before it’s too late — after all, if his father is possessed by Park Il-do, it’s only a matter of time before he kills again, then pokes his eye out and dies.

Hwa-pyung goes to Yoon, asking for his help — and begs him not to answer the phone when Kil-young calls. Yoon looks mildly conflicted, then ultimately decides to help Hwa-pyung find his father, choosing to ignore Kil-young’s call.

At the construction site, the foreman is in his office, going over paperwork. He hears a noise outside and, assuming someone’s trespassing, he grabs a flashlight and investigates. But it’s only Yoon and Hwa-pyung secretly staking out the construction site. Hwa-pyung assumes that Geun-ho will come here since the foreman is one of the people who Geun-ho felt wronged him.

Another is the employment agency manager, so Hwa-pyung has Yook Kwang keeping an eye on that office. When he calls to check on his shaman friend, Yook Kwang just whines that he’s keeping watch all by himself and doesn’t have any company like Hwa-pyung does.

Detective Go is in charge of finding Hwa-pyung, and Kil-young sighs when they get the reports back that both Geun-ho and Hwa-pyung’s fingerprints were at the scene of the crime. Detective Go finds it strange that Kil-young keeps wanting to protect Hwa-pyung, wondering if there’s something going on between them.

Hwa-pyung asks Detective Go to trust her, and Detective Go grumbles that she keeps talking about trust but not explaining why Hwa-pyung keeps popping up in their cases. Kil-young says she’ll explain it later, and heads out to track down Hwa-pyung.

Yoon and Hwa-pyung hide as a police car drives by, and Yoon muses that they’re acting like criminals. But he also reassures Hwa-pyung that they’ll find his father. Aw. Yoon wonders how Geun-ho was possessed, and Hwa-pyung says his father was fine until he received that phone call.

The strange thing, though, is that right before Geun-ho was possessed, he told Hwa-pyung that Park Il-do was actually in Grandpa. Hwa-pyung finds it hard to believe, but the only way to get answers is by finding his father and exorcising him.

He asks Yoon for his help in the exorcism, and Yoon agrees without hesitation. Except, of course, we all know that he’s been cursed, and the next time he performs the exorcism, the stabbing pain he feels will be revealed and his body and soul will begin to rot. But he doesn’t mention that to Hwa-pyung.

Realizing there’s another place his father could be, Hwa-pyung asks Yoon to stay put and continue watching the foreman. Then Hwa-pyung leaves.

Meanwhile, Yook Kwang takes a break to relieve himself on a scrap pile, only to be confronted by Kil-young. Ha, is that where Hwa-pyung gets his “I just happened to be peeing in the area” cover stories?

She demands to know what he’s doing there — not why he’s relieving himself, but why he’s in front of the employment agency. Yook Kwang starts to babble some made-up shamanistic nonsense, but Kil-young cuts straight to the point as she hauls out her handcuffs. If he doesn’t tell her where Hwa-pyung is, she’ll arrest him for being an accessory to murder.

Yook Kwang immediately cracks, so Kil-young heads to the construction site. But only Yoon is there. She’s mad at him, too, since he’s helping Hwa-pyung without talking to her. She demands to know where Hwa-pyung is, but Yoon points out that they need to find Geun-ho.

If they don’t find Geun-ho and something happens to him, Hwa-pyung would go crazy. But Kil-young points out that if she doesn’t get to Hwa-pyung first, he could be arrested by someone else, and then Hwa-pyung will be sent to jail and be even more helpless as Park Il-do continues to kill people.

Hwa-pyung returns home and sees someone in the darkened room. It’s his grandfather, much to Hwa-pyung’s surprise. Grandpa says that Geun-ho told him where he lived, and says Hwa-pyung should turn on the light so they can see each other.

Hwa-pyung hesitates, asking why Grandpa is there. Grandpa says he just wanted to see how Hwa-pyung is doing, but Hwa-pyung is suspicious that Grandpa didn’t contact him first. Grandpa’s cheery demeanor fades when Hwa-pyung says he knows that Grandpa went to see Geun-ho.

When Hwa-pyung demands to know how Grandpa found Geun-ho, Grandpa says he looked up the phone number when Geun-ho called him. Hwa-pyung suspiciously asks why Grandpa has been taking bus rides despite telling Hwa-pyung that he gets sick on the bus. Grandpa confesses he’s been looking for Geun-ho, following up every mysterious phone call he’s received for the past five years.

As Grandpa steps closer, Hwa-pyung yells at him to stay away. He doesn’t trust Grandpa, especially since his father changed after meeting Grandpa earlier that day. He demands Grandpa prove if he can see out of his right eye.

Realizing that Hwa-pyung believes he’s possessed, Grandpa angrily refuses, asking why Hwa-pyung doesn’t believe him. That’s because Grandpa has lied to him for twenty years, since he was the one who told Geun-ho to kill Hwa-pyung. Grandpa yells that it isn’t true, but Hwa-pyung wonders if Grandpa is really Park Il-do.

Grandpa slaps Hwa-pyung, then immediately regrets his angry action. But Hwa-pyung, hurt both physically and emotionally, storms out of his home. He sees Kil-young waiting for him, and he takes off running.

She chases after him, and his way is blocked by Detective Go. He’s trapped between the two detectives as Kil-young pleads with Hwa-pyung to come with them, promising that they’re still looking for his father. Detective Go arrests him for the murder of the landlord and escorts a hand-cuffed Hwa-pyung to the police station.

Detective Go takes the lead in the interrogation room while Kil-young stands in the corner, watching. They have witnesses that insist Geun-ho accused Hwa-pyung of killing the landlord, but Hwa-pyung sighs that they misunderstood what his father was saying. But he can’t explain why they were fighting, which makes him seem even more suspicious.

When it’s just the two of them, Kil-young tells Hwa-pyung that she’ll search for his father. Hwa-pyung blames himself for his father being possessed. Geun-ho had been hiding for twenty years, but it wasn’t until Hwa-pyung found him that Park Il-do possessed him.

Kil-young drives back to the construction site and checks in with Yoon. No sign of Geun-ho so far. He asks about Hwa-pyung, and they both wonder how Geun-ho was possessed by Park Il-do.

Kil-young reveals that she discovered Park Il-do was a real person. By tracking down Lee Chul-yong’s son, she found out that Park Il-do was the youngest son of rich and powerful family during the Japanese occupation.

Park Il-do was sent to Japan for school, and when he returned, his bizarre tendencies turned brutal when he killed all his servants. The bodies were found dumped in a well, and the family quietly tried to cover it up, removing Park Il-do from the family registry.

They sent him away to the seaside, but while there, he killed his wife and son, saying that he wasn’t human and needed to return to his true form. Park Il-do stabbed out his right eye and then drowned in the sea. The last thing Park Il-do said was that he wanted to become a superior spirit.

Yoon realizes that this must be why everyone possessed by Park Il-do stabs out their eye and then dies, but he wonders if Park Il-do actually chose to be a spirit. Kil-young’s not sure, but the next person to be possessed was Lee Chul-yong, who was also the last man to see Park Il-do alive, and Park Il-do continues to possess people every twenty years.

Kil-young also discovered that Park Il-do’s brother is Hong-joo’s grandfather. Which means Park Il-do and Hong-joo are related by blood.

Hong-joo visits her father in the hospital. She’s got her own questions about Park Il-do and why he’s been helping her. Her father explains that his uncle, Park Il-do, was kicked out of the family due to killing many people — including a family member. He muses that she looks a lot like Park Il-do, and then starts coughing.

Hong-joo cooly watches as her fathers gasps and coughs, flailing as he tries to reach the nurse’s call button. But he can’t reach it, and it looks like she won’t be too sad to see him die.

Alone in the interrogation room, Hwa-pyung can’t stop thinking about his last encounters with his father and grandfather. Meanwhile, Grandpa packs up his belongings and leaves Hwa-pyung’s apartment.

Yoon’s still staking out the construction site, although he’s now alone. A unknown number calls him and it’s Geun-ho — or, at least, a demon voice. He warns Yoon that they’re going to go to Hwa-pyung and finish what wasn’t completed twenty years ago.

Kil-young investigates the inn, studying the spot where the landlord was killed. She cautiously makes her way to Geun-ho’s room, looking for anything that might prove Hwa-pyung’s innocence. Yoon calls, warning her that the possessed Geun-ho contacted him and is planning to go to Hwa-pyung.

She’s confident Hwa-pyung is safe, since he’s still at the police station. But she sees a man suddenly run from the inn. Kil-young chases him down and tackles him, but he’s just a petty thief — not a possessed killer.

She drags him down to the police station, since he’s also a witness and can confirm that it was Geun-ho who killed the landlord, not Hwa-pyung. With this new evidence, Hwa-pyung is freed. Kil-young waits outside, worried about him, asking if he’s eaten.

But he’s determined to find his father. Yoon is also there, which annoys Hwa-pyung since Yoon should be looking for Geun-ho. But Yoon doesn’t need to keep watching the construction site since he knows that Geun-ho will find Hwa-pyung. Yoon relays what the spirits told him about completing their unfinished business from back then.

Hwa-pyung calls his grandfather, but Grandpa doesn’t pick up. Instead, he’s on the bus, trying to stifle his queasiness after the long ride. He walks home, but stops when he sees a worn-out pair of unfamiliar shoes in front of his house.

Those are Geun-ho’s shoes, and the man looms ominously over Grandpa, saying that it’s nice to be back. Grandpa embraces his son with open arms, crying with joy as he welcomes Geun-ho home.

Grandpa worries over the state of his son’s feet, and Geun-ho says he walked all the way there. It took him all night, and he didn’t stop once. The possessed Geun-ho stares at the family picture and covers Hwa-pyung’s face with his finger.

A neighbor calls out to Grandpa. A couple of policeman are with him, and they ask about Geun-ho, wondering if Grandpa has seen him recently. He nervously asks why the cops are looking for Geun-ho, but they don’t tell him anything.

Grandpa worries for a moment when the cops notice the worn out shoes, but the neighbor assumes that Grandpa must have walked instead of taking the bus, a fact that Grandpa nervously affirms.

Grandpa returns to the house, worriedly asking Geun-ho what he did to make the police so interested in him. But Geun-ho is too busy gulping down water to answer. He starts to scratch at his neck, and Grandpa realizes something is terribly wrong.

He quietly picks up his cell phone, but the battery is dead. Then he reaches for the landline, but Geun-ho — with his back still to his father — asks who Grandpa is calling. Grandpa says he wanted to let Hwa-pyung know Geun-ho was here, but the possessed Geun-ho says it doesn’t matter, since Hwa-pyung is already on his way.

Geun-ho grasps for the knife he has hidden in his jacket and tells Grandpa that he has unfinished business to complete — and this time, Grandpa had better not stop him.

As the trio drive to Hwa-pyung’s hometown, Hwa-pyung has a vision of his father attacking Grandpa. He comes out of his trance as soon as they pull up to Grandpa’s house, and Hwa-pyung runs inside, worried about his grandfather. The old man is covered in blood and, as Kil-young calls for an ambulance, the guys attempt first aid.

Grandpa’s barely conscious and is losing a lot of blood, but Hwa-pyung desperately says that he can still live. Grandpa gasps out that he’s sorry that he originally told Geun-ho to kill Hwa-pyung — he was just afraid Hwa-pyung would become like Lee Chul-yong, who floated three days without dying.

Hwa-pyung tells Grandpa to save his energy, but Grandpa gasps out that he’s always regretted that day. He just wanted to see Hwa-pyung grow up and get married. Grandpa’s eyes lose focus and he says he can see his wife.

Hwa-pyung watches in horror as Grandpa takes one last breath and loses consciousness. Kil-young continues to perform CPR on the old man as Hwa-pyung stares in shock. Yoon tries looking for Geun-ho, but Hwa-pyung sees his father standing in the middle of the road road with rope in his hands.

He takes off running after his father, and Yoon runs after him. All three men race down the country road. Turning a bend, Hwa-pyung suddenly stops, unable to see where his father went.

That’s because Geun-ho’s behind him, and he tries to strangle Hwa-pyung with the rope. Hwa-pyung struggles and reaches into his pocket, pulling out his mother’s wedding ring. It’s enough to distract Geun-ho — and even momentarily knock the demons out of him.

Bewildered, Geun-ho wonders where he is. He tells Hwa-pyung that there’s something important he needs to share with him, but Geun-ho’s grow wide with horror at something behind Hwa-pyung.

As Geun-ho fights against being possessed, he gasps out an order for Hwa-pyung to run away — and that he’s sorry for everything. But he can’t win against the demons, and he’s soon possessed again and continues running down the pathway.

Hwa-pyung follows his father to a bridge, where he stands on the edge, the rope around his neck. The spirits inside Geun-ho warn Hwa-pyung that everyone around him will die — his parents, grandparents, Yoon, and Kil-young.

Then he stabs out his right eye, and as Hwa-pyung runs to his father, Geun-ho steps off the bridge and dangles by his neck from the rope. Hwa-pyung desperately reaches for his father as Yoon runs up.

They both attempt to reach Geun-ho to pull him up on the bridge, but instead they can only helplessly watch him die. Hwa-pyung screams for his father.

 
COMMENTS

Ooof. What an emotional rollercoaster. It feels like a terrible thing to say, but I almost wish Hwa-pyung’s family died when he was boy, like Kil-young and Yoon’s families did, than for him to have to endure this. He’s only barely found his father again, just to watch him die in such a brutal manner. And not only that, he’s convinced his father died because of him. Which isn’t true, of course, but how can Hwa-pyung avoid the guilt associated with knowing the spirits are determined to kill anyone that surrounds him? Just by existing, Hwa-pyung has doomed others. That’s not something I’d wish on anyone, and only serves to prove just how evil Park Il-do is. Brutally killing other people is one thing, but this is straight up emotional and psychological torture.

Then there’s Grandpa. Sob. I was so relieved that he wasn’t Park Il-do. I refused to believe it, because Hwa-pyung needed one good person in his life, but I’m not ready to say goodbye to Grandpa! He was trying to do the right thing! He spent his life determined to protect Hwa-pyung, paying penance for a lifetime of guilt because he originally decided Hwa-pyung needed to die. And it comes down to this. Ugh. I’m just not ready for more people to die, especially ones we’ve gotten to know and love. Park Il-do, why are you so evil?????

Well, at least we know that that evil is hereditary. Hong-joo may not be quite on the same bloodthirsty level as Park Il-do, but I can totally believe that her mental instability is something passed down through her DNA. Which makes me wonder that if something happens to her, would she decide to kill herself just so she could become an even more powerful, more vengeful spirit than her great-uncle? Seriously, that would even more terrifying than the already-terrifying Park Il-do. (If this show wants another season, I think I’ve figured out the new Big Bad.)

Now I’m nervous about how many of our beloved trio will make it to the end of the drama. I’m pretty sure Kil-young could survive, but I’m worried about the boys. Yoon still hasn’t told them about his curse, and if my understanding is correct, he’s only on the first part of it, where he feels like he’s being stabbed each night. That means he hasn’t entered the second phase, where his flesh and soul will rot. But he still blithely agrees to perform exorcisms for Hwa-pyung, despite knowing full well that, thanks to the curse, it will kill him, too. I’d mutter something about him being a Noble Idiot but I suppose if you only had it in you to perform one or two more exorcisms in your life, and you could use them to save your boyfriend’s, er, I mean, totally-platonic-nothing-more-mmm-hmm-sure psychic friend’s life while ridding the world of a super-evil boogeyman, well, it’s maybe not that idiotic, despite being frustratingly self-sacrificing.

But now that puts me in the awkward place of hoping Park Il-do continues to evade capture (and ultimately kill more people) just for my own selfish need to watch Yoon and Hwa-pyung bicker like an old married couple until they realize the other is in danger, which results in them dropping whatever they’re doing to rush to the other’s side. Kil-young’s also there, of course, rolling her eyes at these two idiots, but she’d unquestioningly give her right arm to protect them. Because they’re family now. They have no one else but each other. And let’s hope nothing — and no one — tears them apart.

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