Yonder: Episodes 4-6 (Final)

by lovepark

The second half of Yonder explores the world beyond death and the touted “heaven” made possible through science. However, as our protagonist succumbs to the temptations of the siren, he realizes that the perfect afterlife may not exist in the way he imagined. As it turns out, even everlasting happiness has its limits.

 
EPISODES 4-6 WEECAP

Designing death with memories comes with some tantalizing possibilities in this futuristic society. For many, it means never having to say goodbye, fulfilling long-awaited wishes, and getting a chance to experience happiness for the first time. However, as our protagonist soon learns, everything comes with a price.

After a distressing encounter with Yi-hu, Jae-hyun stumbles outside and finds Peach crying on the floor. The young woman tells him that her dad invited her to live with him in Yonder, and bells start ringing for Jae-hyun. He warns her to stay away, but in the end, his pleas mean little to Peach who longs for nothing more than the loving embrace of her fictional dad.

As Jae-hyun’s investigation continues, Dr. K contacts his company and agrees to an interview. The two meet in a virtual space, and Jae-hyun wastes no time in accusing By N By as a pseudoreligion. Dr. K smirks at the epithet and tells Jae-hyun that the pinnacle of science is the invention of heaven. Without answering any of his questions, Dr. K disappears with a laugh plastered on his face, and the interview goes viral. The idea of designing your own death intrigues the masses, and not long after, a string of suicides dominates the airwaves.

With each passing day, Jae-hyun finds himself fixated on the world of Yonder and begins to waver on his stance. Returning to By N By to see Yi-hu again, he confesses to his wife that he is afraid of forgetting her, and she comforts him since she will remember everything. The scene flashes back to a memory of the couple in the woods, and we learn that Yi-hu was always aware of her early demise.

When Jae-hyun realized that Yi-hu’s pessimistic outlook was not an unfounded fear, he responded by screaming into the air. With each shout, he recited a poem by Baek Seok and proposed to Yi-hu. The scene returns to the present, but this time, the camera focuses on Yi-hu, and Jae-hyun is depicted as the digital copy. He asks her where Yonder is, and Yi-hu tells him that it is the place she is and he is not.

Once Jae-hyun opens his eyes back in the real world, Siren hands him a case of VRophin — the technology that downloads your memories to Yonder — and that night, he lies in bed and puts on the sticker. With a smile, Jae-hyun closes his eyes, and from her empty black lair, Siren sees that he has joined.

Jae-hyun wakes in a stark white place, and the first thing he sees is Siren staring back at him. She guides him to Yonder in her red car, and once they reach the bright light at the end of the tunnel, Jae-hyun wakes up again, alone on a beach. Walking a few steps, he spots his house and greets Yi-hu. She welcomes him with tears in her eyes and pulls him inside to show him something special. As he walks through the doors, he notices the changes she made, but the biggest surprise is their unborn child, alive and healthy in the middle of the room.

Accepting this new life, Jae-hyun enjoys every picturesque moment with his family with no worries or stress. He even meets with Peach and the others on one of his daily strolls and joins their party for a night. However, seeing the perfect moment in front of his eyes, Jae-hyun’s smile fades as one member tells him that every day is the same… the same people, the same conversations, the same laughs. With paradise before him, Jae-hyun types, “Death is unfamiliar, awkward, and uncomfortable. We had everything before us, but in one sense, we had nothing.”

The cracks start to show in their happy world, but the first to falter is not Jae-hyun but Yi-hu. Noticing their child’s lack of growth, Yi-hu panics and eventually admits herself to the hospital. When Jae-hyun goes to retrieve his wife, he runs into Dr. K, but rather than the suave spokesperson, this man is unassuming and disheveled.

Jae-hyun asks Dr. K about his child, so he explains how for something to be everlasting, there can be no change. He tells Jae-hyun that Yonder is everyone’s heaven, but Jae-hyun pushes back that this is nothing more than isolation. Dr. K refuses to call his dream a failure, and Jae-hyun finally realizes that Yonder was never meant for everyone. This place was always for Dr. K’s daughter, and the others were added to expand her world.

Reunited with Yi-hu, Jae-hyun takes her outside, and they share a tender moment. She tells him that she came to Yonder in order to remember her precious memories, and while Jae-hyun agrees that the past is important, he says that he cherishes the present more because he can forget. They acknowledge the happiness they felt here, but once the illusion is broken, they cannot to return to their idyllic lie.

Yi-hu brandishes a vial she received from the hospital that will return her to the dark place, and she shares her final goodbyes with Jae-hyun. They drink the vial together and stare up into the sky with tears in their eyes and a smile on their face. As Jae-hyun leaves Yi-hu for the last time, he wakes up in his bed back in the real world.

During his absence, the world continued to debate the ethics of Yonder and its consequences, and as someone who has “returned” from heaven, Jae-hyun knows what he must do. He heads over to By N By and confronts Siren — the wife of Dr. K and the mother of the young daughter who passed too soon. He urges her to stop since heaven cannot last on memories alone, but Siren cannot destroy the place her husband and child exist.

Jae-hyun repeats a message Yi-hu once told him, and tells Siren that some doors cannot be closed by ourselves. He hopes that one day someone will appear who can close it for her, and he walks away. As Jae-hyun recalls memories of Yi-hu, he narrates, “The reason why beautiful memories are precious is because that moment can never return.”

As the screen fades to black, I’m left feeling conflicted. On one hand, I enjoyed the show for what it was, and thought there were some incredible moments. Everything with Siren was fantastic (partly due to Lee Jung-eun), and the world of Yonder was intriguing. The use of color, especially for the in-betweens, was amazing, and I loved the saturated tones and contrasts. The entire sequence of entering Yonder showed the potential the show had, and for the most part, things were great when the focus was on the otherworldly rather than the “present.”

However, everything outside of Yonder and Yi-hu came across as mundane and distant. While this is probably a deliberate choice by the showrunners to distinguish between the real world and Yonder, the effect needed to be sharper to have a bigger impact. While I was somewhat invested in the lives linked to the other place — Peach, Dr. K, Siren — I cannot say the same for those in, what essentially became, the subplot. For example, in this recap, I never mentioned Jo Eun (the employee from the Korea National Institute of Health) who helps Jae-hyun investigate By N By even though she is arguably very important to the plot. Though I wanted to weave her into the summary, her character never really became relevant to the overall tone of the show nor its message. Like Hacker Park, she was there to supplement actions (e.g., find the sticker) to streamline the story instead of actually given any importance. In a show that hinges on tone, Jae-hyun’s “investigation” was a poor attempt to bridge two plots that never quite landed with me, and little things like this is what made the ending, in particular, feel lackluster.

While I think Yonder gives its viewers a lot to reflect on, the show never fully capitalized on all its potent questions about life and death. There were so many hints to greater mysterious (Is Dr. K an avatar of Siren instead of a reflection of Dr. Jang? Are the other occupants of Yonder aware of the lack of time? Are the others stuck in some sort of pattern like NPCs in a video game? Who truly has agency in Yonder — the memory holders or the ultimate creator?). Yet the show barely scratches the surface, and instead of feeling open-ended, I get a sense of incompleteness, as if there should be a few more hours to the show.

This leads to my biggest conundrum with Yonder. From the beginning, the show felt more like a movie than a drama, but that in and of itself is not a compliment. While there are technical differences between the two formats, what differentiates them could be a wholly subjective matter. For me, Korean dramas offer the possibility of character exploration across a wider cast for a longer period of time. As a result, the way creators handle story beats and character development is different in TV than in movies. There’s more time and room to breath in dramas, yet Yonder fails to utilize the strengths of its medium. Rather, it felt like a weird straight-to-TV Lee Jun-ik movie instead of his first foray into dramaland, and though I enjoyed the ride, it could have been something greater.

For fear of coming across as a disappointed fan, I want to make it clear that I liked the show and would recommend it to anyone interested in the subject matter. As I mentioned before, Siren was my favorite character — they really should have given her more to do but I digress — and I cannot stress enough how much I loved the scene where Jae-hyun goes into Yonder. The vibrant red car, the allusion of the “siren” leading him to his death, the winding road, the inky blackness of the tunnel — all of it was breathtaking. The portrayal of Siren calmly taking Jae-hyun to the end and the stunning styling of Lee Jung-eun straddling the line between a dangerous femme fatale and a cold, all-knowing overseer absent of desires were perfect. Also, the way the camera pans over and lingers on Jae-hyun’s face as the sun lights up his dour expression and stays there for a moment before cutting to the ocean coupled with the OST? Brilliant. Had the show maintained this level of caliber throughout its run, I would have shouted on top of the mountains that Lee Jun-ik had created one of the best shows this year, but alas, Yonder didn’t quite live up to the hopes I had. Even so, it was a contemplative drama with some beautifully shot scenes, and I don’t regret spending a few weekends watching it.

 
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