Angel’s Last Mission: Love: Episodes 27-28

by SailorJumun

Hope is never a solid reassurance, as it can’t promise any guarantees, but it’s all our couple has. They have to hope that they can avoid any paths leading to tragedy and somehow create their own happy ending. And if they come to find out that a happy ending just isn’t meant for them, then they’ll have to devise a compromise.

 
EPISODES 27-28 RECAP

With new knowledge of Yeon-seo’s imminent death, Dan meets her after rehearsal and finally gives her what she wants by asking her to marry him. She hugs him, over the moon, and he musters up a smile.

Later, as they discuss the date of their wedding, Yeon-seo mentions that it hurts her pride a bit to have been the one to buy the rings and propose first. So Dan gets down on one knee and says that he’d propose a hundred times if he had to.

“Lee Yeon-seo,” he says. “You’re my first. When I was human, when I was an angel, and now, there’s only you.” Again, he asks her to marry him, promising to make her happy, and again, she hugs him.

Yeon-seo suggests they live thousands of years together, and Dan nods. However, he still has Hoo’s warning in mind late into the night. He eventually leaves for the church to throw his angel reports at the altar.

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Go ahead, take back your proposal

He tells God that he’d thought reuniting with Yeon-seo was destiny. But now God is trying to tell him that Yeon-seo’s destiny is to die? No — he refuses to accept that. He clenches his fist and states that he’ll be doing things his way.

He returns home, stopping by Yeon-seo’s room to get more off his chest. He sadly admits that he didn’t become human and that he doesn’t think he ever will. She tries to grasp his hand, but it does that ghost effect (since his human body is wearing out).

He tells her that this will continue happening, but she just grabs his hand again, successfully this time, and says that she’ll grab hold of him every time. He then asks if the thought of him disappearing in front of her scares her.

“I’m more scared of not being there when it happens,” she answers, teary-eyed. “I’m scared of you dying all alone again.” So, she says, she wants them to stay together no matter what. She gives him a sweet kiss, hoping that they can leave the tears behind and start smiling again tomorrow.

The next day, the couple sit Chief Jung down to announce their marriage. Dan even gets on his knees to ask for her blessing (ha, cute). Jung is flattered, so she goes along with it by acting like a disapproving mother. She dramatically states that Dan isn’t good enough, which is when Yeon-seo snaps.

Having gotten way too into Jung’s performance, Yeon-seo yells that she’s going to marry Dan even if the heavens are against it. She orders Jung to prepare the wedding for next week and storms out.

Jung follows Yeon-seo out into the courtyard, where Yeon-seo mumbles an apology for getting carried away. Jung smiles, though she does admit that she wasn’t entirely acting back there.

Jung likes Dan just fine, but she worries that this love will fade and leave Yeon-seo alone again. “Don’t worry,” Yeon-seo says. “I can handle being alone. I can live off of the happiness I have now.”

Meanwhile, Nina visits instructor Elena to officially end their lessons together. When Elena tries to change her mind, Kang-woo appears and gets in the middle of them. He’d been wanting to see who had been coaching Nina all this time, but Nina stops them before they can argue. She walks away, but Kang-woo catches her and returns her resignation letter.

Now agitated, Nina yells that she can’t dance anymore — she feels so terrible about her family’s crimes that she wishes she could just die. Kang-woo calmly asks that she give him another chance, adamant on putting on a spectacular “Giselle” show. She asks if this is for Yeon-seo’s sake, and he responds, “For Yeon-seo. For you, for the corps de ballet, and for me.” However, she doesn’t believe him, nor does she care.

Yeon-seo sighs as she looks over the news, remembering Chief Jung informing her that no arrests have been made since Luna’s minion Joon-soo hasn’t been located. She cheers up, though, when Dan shows up to join her for a shopping day.

They go around buying new appliances and furniture for when they’re married, and several workers comment that they’re a bad match whenever they can’t agree on something.

These workers are, of course, all Hoo in disguise. He eventually shows his face to Dan, grumbling that he’s tired of following them around. Annoyed, Dan takes him aside and tells him to stop trying to break them up.

Seeing that there’s no convincing Dan, Hoo says that he’ll have to convince Yeon-seo instead. Dan stops Hoo from leaving by tackling him to the ground, and Hoo desperately states that he can’t let his junior disappear.

Hoo doesn’t understand why Dan is wasting his time when Yeon-seo will be dead soon. Dan cries that it’s because they have a deadline that he and Yeon-seo are staying together and imagining a forever. Can’t Hoo understand that?

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Every day is precious because there’s an end

Yeon-seo finds them and, assuming Hoo started the fight, she boldly orders him not to harm her man. They relocate to a cafe, where she then asks Hoo if he wants to officiate their wedding.

The boys look up in confusion, and she explains that while she’s not happy with Hoo or their deity, Hoo is Dan’s only family. Hoo sighs and snaps that they won’t be getting his or anyone else’s blessing. He wishes Yeon-seo luck living with an idiot like Dan and vanishes.

Later, at home, Yeon-seo assures Dan that she doesn’t need anyone’s blessing; all she needs is him. He smiles and then shows her the wedding invitation he made as a keepsake, which is decorated with drawings of their younger and adult selves. Ah-freaking-dorable.

At the police station, Director Choi asks her husband why he would turn himself in when he wasn’t involved with anything. Even so, he blames himself for sitting back and watching their daughter stoop so low. Despite Choi’s protests, her husband states that it’s over for their family now.

As Luna is packing up her office, the lights go off. She isn’t alarmed, however, when she sees that her intruder is Dan. He’s here to deliver his last warning to stop her schemes. She smirks and asks if he’s got superpowers — how else was he able to save Yeon-seo from a ten-story fall?

She steps closer, saying that she likes people like him, who are strong and competent. “It’d be great to do something fun together,” she says, caressing his face. He grabs her hand and tells her to forget whatever she plans to do to Yeon-seo, because he’ll save her every time.

She tells him that he’s already lost this fight, since he should’ve killed her long before. He explains that he’d wanted to give her another chance, thinking that all humans had to feel some kind of remorse. But now, if she doesn’t stop, he might really kill her. With that said, he leaves.

The next day, Fantasia’s “Giselle” show suffers multiple ticket refunds due to the media chaos. Yeon-seo and Kang-woo meet with reporters to do some damage control.

Afterwards, when they’re up in Kang-woo’s office, Yeon-seo hands him her wedding invitation. She says that the invite is her answer to the bomb he dropped before (of Dan disappearing). He yells that he told her that to make her run away, and she states that it only made her want to get married.

Frustrated, Kang-woo says that it’s understandable to feel like Romeo and Juliet, but that that story only took place over five days. He begs her not to invest in something that’s sure to pass. “Five days,” she repeats. “Some people can live their whole lives within those five days. Don’t you know that feeling?”

So Yeon-seo asks Kang-woo once again to just tell her how he became human, crying that she’d do anything to help Dan live longer. Kang-woo shouts that it was that kind of thinking that killed Seol-hee and pulled him into a torturous life.

Kang-woo stops, seeing the shock on Yeon-seo’s face. She stands to leave, only to turn back and say that Seol-hee would feel heartbroken — she saved her love’s life, and he calls that very life torturous.

Besides, Yeon-seo continues, she’s going to make sure that doesn’t happen to her and Dan. She walks out, her confidence melting away as soon as she’s alone. It all starts to make sense as she remembers Dan asking if there was some way her show could end without Giselle dying.

She hurries over to the church and asks Hoo if it’s true. Either way, she says that she would give up dancing, her eyesight, or even her life for Dan. Hoo shakes his head and reminds her that she begged for her life the night of her car accident.

Hoo grimly states that Dan must be punished for saving her; she can’t change his fate. There’s a trace of despair in Yeon-seo’s face that quickly shifts to anger. She says that she will change his fate and that she will save him.

Once Director Choi and Uncle Kim come home from the police station, Nina sits them and Luna down. She tells everyone that she’s officially moving out and that starting today, she doesn’t have a family.

Nina gets up to leave, but Luna grabs hold of her so they can talk alone. Nina questions if her sister even loves her, and Luna answers that she loves her in her own way. “The way you love is wrong,” Nina interrupts. “I won’t accept it anymore.” When Nina finally leaves, Luna lets out a frustrated scream.

That night, Yeon-seo and Dan sit down to write their vows. Yeon-seo can’t write “I love you” without getting choked up, so she puts her pen down and back hugs Dan. He takes her hand in silent comfort, but she wants to keep the mood light.

She mentions that she doesn’t want to get pregnant while working, and he argues that they need to get started now if they want ten kids. Even as they continue bickering, the sadness never leaves her eyes.

The next day, Yeon-seo takes Dan to her parents and Driver Jo’s memorials to introduce him as her fiance. He faces the memorials and promises to take care of Yeon-seo and to make a single day feel like a thousand years.

“I’m sorry,” he then says, making her look at him. He knows that he may not be able to stay by her side forever, so he prays that her parents and Driver Jo look after her and make sure she continues being the strong noisy gong that she is.

Yeon-seo walks away from him, annoyed that he’s talking about disappearing again. However, Dan gently tells her that they have to accept that he’ll probably turn to dust. He wants her to promise that she’ll still live happily afterwards.

But what if she were to die first, she asks — hypothetically, of course. Despite his denying that that would ever happen, she suggests, “Let’s promise that whoever gets left behind lives a happy life.” She holds out her pinkie and he reluctantly links it with his.

Later, Dan follows Luna and catches her meeting with a worker on Fantasia’s lighting team (her new minion). Once Luna is gone, Dan confronts the guy and brings him straight to Kang-woo.

Luckily, the worker seems like a reluctant minion. He spills that Luna has been sneaking him money, which, unfortunately, isn’t enough to report to the police. Dan asks him to keep pretending to work for Luna and sends him on his way.

Dan tells Kang-woo to take care of the worker while he takes care of Luna. Suddenly concerned, Kang-woo points out that angels can’t interfere with human lives. Well, Dan says, they can’t fall in love with humans either, so he’s already breaking the rules.

He knows that Kang-woo swore to kill Luna himself, but he wants Kang-woo to forget that and live on… with Yeon-seo. Helping her dance, making her shine brightly. We don’t get to hear Kang-woo’s response.

Yeon-seo calls Nina out to Fantasia to practice together, though Nina is still feeling too ashamed to dance. Still, Yeon-seo insists on her being the understudy in case something happens. Nina asks what she means, and she replies that she’s just taking precautions.

“I want it to be you,” Yeon-seo says, genuine. That finally convinces Nina, and she suits up so the two can go through the routine together. It’s quite hypnotic watching them dance in sync; such a lovely scene.

Afterwards, Yeon-seo comes home and immediately hugs Dan. He wishes he could watch her performance, and she tells him that he can. They both know, however, that one of them won’t make it to that day.

The following day is the big wedding day, and Dan is just a bundle of nerves. Hoo appears and offers a cake as a peace offering, though he still can’t give him his blessing. But, Hoo does say that Dan might as well go as far as he can. With a smile, Hoo says his goodbyes.

We see that Chief Jung organized a beautiful setup in the courtyard, and that she’s the couple’s only guest as well as the one officiating. Yeon-seo and Dan come walking down the aisle arm-in-arm, smiling at each other the whole time. Jung then has them read their vows, and they recite them together.

Dan: We will happily love each other, as if a day is an eternity and as if we are one.
Yeon-seo: We were each other’s first and will be each other’s last.
Dan: We were saved by saving each other.
Yeon-seo: We believe in destiny. No, we don’t believe in it.
Both: We believe in ourselves.

The couple seal it with a kiss (making Jung shield her eyes, heh). They’re so lost in each other that they don’t notice the cards with their vows burning away or the sudden gust of wind.

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A wedding for eternity

We skip to the next morning, and Yeon-seo wakes up to see that Dan is getting ready to head out. She gets up to caress his face, and he does the same, neither of them wanting to say goodbye.

When he finally gets up and leaves, she rushes to the window to get one last glimpse of him walking away. From where he is, Dan calls Luna’s minion and asks him to call her out. And back at the window, Yeon-seo has tears streaming down her face as she says, “Goodbye, Dan.”

Yeon-seo gets ready to go out herself, her destination being the church. At the altar, she addresses God, saying that He took her parents and Driver Jo away from her, only to send her an angel. She’s okay now, but she can’t let Him take Dan — not when he already died tragically as Sung-woo.

She repeatedly cries that she loves Dan, so if God had a conscience, He wouldn’t just make him disappear. She then takes out Dan’s handkerchief and says that if God is all for give and take, then she has no choice.

Meanwhile, Dan shows up to Luna’s usual meeting place (an abandoned building) and finds her standing by a ledge. She’s genuinely surprised to see him instead of her minion, and he reminds her that he wouldn’t stand for her evil schemes anymore. He closes the distance between them and…

It fades to black. We see Yeon-seo fall to her knees in the church, along with a flashback to Dan doing the same much earlier.

After Dan had thrown his reports at the altar, he’d told God that if he had to kill for someone he loved, then he’s going to commit that sin. And in the present, Yeon-seo tells God to take everything from her; she’ll happily do anything.

“To save that person,” past Dan and present Yeon-seo say in unison.

 
COMMENTS

DAN, NO. For the love of all that is holy, no. I do not want our hero to become a murderer after everything he and Yeon-seo have been through. So please, please, please tell me that he doesn’t kill Luna. I’d actually love it if Kang-woo or Hoo showed up and intervened, but I’ll take whatever so long as there are no falling bodies. After Dan steps away from that ledge like a good boy, I want him to seek out legitimate justice, no matter how difficult it may be. Because, yeah, it’s going to be difficult. I was glad to see Uncle Kim turn himself in and to see him and his wife expressing guilt, but come on. THIS IS NOT GOOD PARENTING. You do NOT cover up your children’s crimes. I mean, whatever happened to Uncle Kim’s philosophy of weeding out the plant that’s dangerous to the other plants around it?

Since I’m already venting, I might as well go all out. But first, let me say this: Recapping this show has proved to be a real challenge these last couple of weeks, and I’m constantly struggling to articulate why. As I’ve mentioned several times before, I have little knowledge about religion, and throughout this show’s entire run, I’ve made no effort to do any kind of research on the subject. I wanted to focus solely on the religion — the lore, the logic, whatever you want to call it — that the show was constructing for itself. However, the construction is falling apart. Or, to be more accurate, it has been falling apart. And it’s actually kind of infuriating because the first half of the show was working so well for me. Maybe there are certain details I’m missing or maybe I’m slowly losing my mind (it’s happened with dramas before), but I just can’t piece things together anymore. I can’t keep up with the damn writing.

So let me try to get this straight, for my sanity’s sake. Yeon-seo almost dies in a car accident, but Dan intervenes and saves her. As punishment for saving her, he’s then given the mission of trying to find true love for her. If he fails to find her love, he disappears. If he falls in love with her — a human — himself, which he does, he disappears. The only way to be with her is to become human. But according to Kang-woo, the only way to become human is for Yeon-seo to sacrifice herself. Dan obviously doesn’t want that, so he decides to search for other options. His sunbae Hoo then tells him that Yeon-seo has to die anyway because it is her fate. But when Yeon-seo learns of this fact, Hoo then turns it around and tells her that she can’t sacrifice herself for Dan because dying is his fate. Now this is where I want to scream into a pillow until my voice gives out.

I completely understand that this process is frustrating for our characters. I understand that they don’t know everything and that it’s pretty much impossible for them to get the answers they want. I even understand that Hoo may not know everything and that he’s just piecing it all together like the rest of us. But if the latter is the case, then why don’t we get to see that? Why don’t we get to see when and how Hoo is getting his information from God? Because with what we’ve been shown, I can only assume that Hoo knew of the entire truth this whole time and he’s only now relaying it to our couple. There’s a chance that everything will become clear with the finale, but it wouldn’t change the fact that the journey there was a messy one. It makes me wish that the writer hadn’t over complicated the lore. She had a great start with her characters, who I still believe are the best part of the show. And if she’d spent a little less time on the death/fate aspect, or if she’d handled it better, the amazing characters could’ve held up the rest of the show. Perhaps we could’ve explored the parallels with Yeon-seo and Seol-hee. Perhaps we could’ve explored Yeon-seo’s family’s past dynamics. But all of that potential was pushed aside to stretch out the big fate debate. *exhales* Okay, I think the venting’s over.

As always, there’s still plenty of positives to talk about. For instance, I love our couple’s persistence. It’s disheartening enough when it seems like God is ignoring you and your prayers, but it’s completely different when He’s outright trying to snatch your happiness away. Now that we’re in a position where both Dan and Yeon-seo’s lives are at stake — and they know it — things are about to get very noble and very idiotic. And if you put one noble idiot with another noble idiot, what does that equal? Do they cancel each other out, somehow saving both lives, or do they equal a tragic Romeo & Juliet ending? Are they even thinking straight? Probably not. But there was one moment that really stuck with me. I keep thinking about what Dan said about cherishing a forever that he and Yeon-seo wouldn’t necessarily have. Hoo and Kang-woo don’t understand why they would waste time when there’s a definite end, and they don’t understand why they’re fighting for their love when it only makes situations worse. No matter how Hoo and Kang-woo look at it, it doesn’t make sense. And I can understand that — logically, it doesn’t make sense. But sometimes love doesn’t have to be logical. Sometimes a love, no matter how short, is so strong that it can be enough for a lifetime.

With Angel’s Last Mission ending next week, I’m having conflicting feelings of relief and sadness. The first few episodes, I thought, were incredibly fun and heartfelt, and it really set the tone for the rest of the show. We hit a few bumps here and there, and I’ve gone back and forth with my emotions, but you know what? I’ve consistently loved tuning in anyway. I guess my love for the show doesn’t have to be logical either.

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