Grid: Episode 6

by solstices

Confrontation and conflict are rife this week, with various characters taking bold steps to advance closer to their goals. But the rules of equivalent exchange are at play, and getting their hands on what they want may cost more than they expect.

 
EPISODE 6 WEECAP

After a fierce tussle, Sae-byuk manages to take Ma-nok down. Handcuffing him and pointing a gun to his head, she demands for him to tell her where the Ghost is, but he knows nothing. He’s never even heard her voice.

Ma-nok is taken into custody, and meanwhile, the Administrative Bureau watches CCTV footage of the Ghost. She seems like an ordinary human apart from all the teleportation and time-traveling, so Sun-wool emphasizes that they must avoid inflicting injury while capturing her.

Later, in a conversation with a colleague, Eo-jin reveals that Sae-ha was also once in the Grid Control Team — though he only stayed for six months as compared to Eo-jin’s four years.

While overseeing the preparations for the Ghost stakeout, Sun-wool points out that renegades and defectors will arise if the operation stretches for too long. In response, Sae-ha counters that having people switch sides could conversely be beneficial since it’d form a link between them and the Ghost. Whoa, he really takes pragmatic and rational to a whole new level.

Ma-nok’s arrest makes the news, and Sun-wool realizes that it’ll lead the ghost to the police station instead of the Administrative Bureau, thus rendering their trap futile. Sun-wool heads to the station to take over custody of Ma-nok, only for Sae-byuk to walk right up to her and aim her gun at her face.

The two ladies are unflinchingly resolute; Sun-wool challenges Sae-byuk to shoot her so they can get it over and done with, while Sae-byuk staunchly refuses to waver or back down. She doesn’t have any trust in the Administrative Bureau, but Sun-wool’s resolute conviction eventually convinces her.

Sae-byuk follows behind as the administrative trio leave the station, and Sun-wool turns a blind eye, since she knows she can’t stop Sae-byuk. I like that both ladies are proactive and assertive, but also that they’re shrewd enough to pick their battles.

As expected, the Ghost shows up at the Administrative Bureau, teleporting between hallways until she reaches the Grid control room. She’s right where they want her, in the middle of their crosshairs, and the agents fire on the count of three — but she teleports away in the split second before the bullets reach her.

Right as our protagonists arrive in the hallway, the Ghost materializes in front of them. Sae-byuk points her gun at the Ghost, but Sun-wool steps in front to push her arm away — and then everything happens in a split second. The agents shoot, the Ghost falls, Sae-ha catches the disc that slips out of her hands, and red blooms across Sun-wool’s chest.

Hit by a stray bullet, Sun-wool crumples to the ground, dead. The Ghost has been captured, but at what cost? Major Ji-yoo claims that their use of live ammunition was a necessary evil, making Jong-yi (and me) seethe.

Holding Sun-wool’s limp body, Eo-jin stays frozen in a stunned daze, uncharacteristically shaken. He’s always been the placid and unperturbed one among the trio, and he’d remained strictly professional with Sun-wool as compared to Sae-ha’s palpable distrust and Jong-yi’s earnest enthusiasm. Still waters run deep, though, and Eo-jin clearly feels much more than he lets on.

A spherical chip is discovered in (and painfully extracted from) the Ghost’s arm, and it appears to transform nerve signals from her brain into electronic ones. The disc then translates that into motor commands, presumably allowing her to teleport.

After delegating tasks and sending everyone else out, DIRECTOR JO (Kim Hyung-mook) instructs Eo-jin to inject the Ghost with what seems to be truth serum so that they can interrogate her. Under the serum’s influence, the Ghost ekes out that she was born in 2091, and that she didn’t reverse time to come back — in fact, time doesn’t flow at all.

Sun-wool’s death is the tipping point for Sae-ha; as much as he was skeptical and distrustful around her, having yet another person die because of the Ghost is too much for him to bear. Taking the guns he’d previously confiscated from the agents, Sae-ha decides to take matters into his own hands.

Sae-byuk senses his turmoil and tries to stop him, but Sae-ha refuses to let his superiors dismantle and destroy the disc in their research attempts. “With it, I can do anything,” Sae-ha asserts, desperate tears in his eyes. “I can bring everyone back to life.”

He stalks off to continue with his mission, only to stop short upon noticing another presence. It’s the head of security, who’s come to return Sae-byuk’s gun to her. Both fall silent, wary of how much the head of security might have overheard, but he remains composed (perhaps oddly so, considering he just walked in on a heated argument).

Right then, Sae-ha’s phone buzzes with text messages, and he opens them to see several video clips of the Ghost in his house. Staring straight at the camera, as if directly issuing a challenge to Sae-ha, she injects an unknown substance into his mother’s arm.

Panic immediately rises in Sae-ha, and he races to the elevator, pressing its buttons desperately. That’s where we end off this week, and while we know that the clip is likely from a while back, Sae-ha doesn’t know that. Since the Ghost is currently in captivity, I wonder if he’s rushing to confirm that she’s still there, or racing home to check on his mother.

I’m so glad the story has made significant progress this week, because we were really starting to turn our wheels there for a while. The plot may have stagnated while the characters played catch-up, but now that the board has been set, the pieces are finally starting to come together in intriguing, incendiary, and even devastating ways.

I didn’t expect to like Sun-wool as much as I do, but she has a humanity to her that makes me want to root for her. Despite her cold and stern demeanor, she isn’t unreasonable, and she’s still deeply affected by the horrific death of the janitor. It’s seared so deeply into her mind that she’s spent the past 24 years in the Administrative Bureau just to track down the Ghost, and she’s willing to stop at nothing to achieve that goal.

Now that Sae-ha is having thoughts of time-travel, I’m not willing to grieve Sun-wool just yet. She’s gotta come back, right? I want to see the reunion and reconciliation between her and Sae-ha when they find out that she was the researcher who offered him comfort on the most traumatic day of his life.

This episode did not hold back in showing just how callous humans can be, from the unnecessary tormenting of the Ghost in the medical examination room (anesthesia exists, y’all), to the reckless use of firearms in a space with defenseless civilians present. Sun-wool’s death was tragic because it could have been so easily avoided, yet she was brushed off as a necessary sacrifice for the greater good.

Talking about the Ghost, her revelation that time doesn’t flow is an interesting one. Does that mean that all timelines are simultaneously occurring, and that she isn’t hopping from one track to another, but existing in multiple realities concurrently? In that case, how do the mechanics of her cognition work?

The previous assumption that she time-travels because of information from a linear future no longer seems to hold. Instead, the simultaneous-timeline theory would suggest that she not only has awareness of events that happen at any point, but that she also has the power to attain the best possible outcome at any given moment. (But if this is the case, then why walk willingly into the Administrative Bureau’s trap?) If her consciousness is present in so many universes all at once, it’s no wonder that she’s so weak and reliant on endless sugar consumption.

In any case, I’m excited to see Sae-ha take proactive action against the Ghost. He’s previously been biding his time to gather information, clandestinely working from the shadows and keeping a low profile. However, that won’t cut it any longer, not when he has people to protect and mysteries to solve.

If he and Sae-byuk do end up going down the path of time-travel, it’ll definitely be a risky decision for them (and for the drama’s plot, haha), but I’m anticipating the unpredictable twists and turns that it’ll lead us down.

 
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