Payback: Episodes 11-12 (Final)

10 February 13, 2023February 13, 2023

Payback: Episodes 11-12 (Final)

by SugarSnow

Making it to the finish line, we see our conflict come to a close. After an expected betrayal, our heroes set their final masterplan in motion to put all of the evil behind bars for good.

EPISODES 11-12

Running full speed into our last week, we’re brought back to the confrontation between Tae-choon and Yong as Ki-seok speaks at the press conference. Tae-choon, frustrated that Yong would even think to work with Ki-seok, lets Yong know that even though he is his uncle, he is still willing to arrest him if he has to. At the press conference, Ki-seok is put in a tight spot as one of the reporters ties him in with Myung considering he is his son-in-law, claiming he is at the storm’s epicenter. Ki-seok thinks quickly and says that he holds the evidence needed to put the bad people behind bars as it was given to him from Su-dong – lying through his teeth as he was given no such evidence from Su-dong.

Ki-seok lights the internet on fire after his appearance and statements made at the assemblyman’s press conference, gluing all eyes on him. The prosecution, spearheaded by Chief Prosecutor LEE YOUNG-JIN (Park Jung-pyo) attempts to indirectly attack him by going after his wife. The Chief Prosecutor was once Ki-seok’s right-hand man, but now he’s heartlessly willing to dispose of Ki-seok. Myung also attempts to close the door on Yong’s plan by sending men to follow him to hopefully find Su-dong. Yong has taken a significant upper hand in this fight and now everyone is looking to take them down from all sides.

At a meeting for all of the investors who lost money because of Myung, Yong introduces himself and successfully makes a good impression on the skeptical people there – one of them being the developer that Jun-kyung met with last week. He agrees to work with them as Hye-rin’s business model and Yong’s sincerity were able to turn him in favor of supporting the company.

Yong gathers Ki-seok and other prosecutors to get them to join his side, turning them into a special task force with Ki-seok as their leader. Now that he has a team and ground to stand on, Ki-seok’s first move is to arrest all of the top brass that are in cahoots with Myung. Su-dong shows up with Jun-kyung to turn himself in while also bringing documentation of bribes taken by a chief in the prosecution. After arresting the chief, Ki-seok takes over and is reinstated.

Ki-seok instantly goes to work on taking out Myung’s connections. Myung is arrested, and as the names that tie back to him grow in number, so do the charges against him. With the help of Yong, Assemblyman Sohn is able to pull away with a win in his district. After these big developments, the tide fully turns in Yong’s favor when he and Ki-seok find all of Myung’s borrowed name accounts, leaving him with nothing left. His money, which was once his power supply, has finally been stripped from him.

With everything going according to plan, and Ki-seok amassing power and influence rapidly, Yong knows to watch Ki-seok closely in preparation for his inevitable backstabbing. Yong gets a call from Jun-kyung telling him that Ki-seok is advancing as Han-na was falsely arrested. Right after Yong hangs up, Ki-seok struts into Yong’s penthouse with search and seizure papers. Thinking he’s got Yong beat with a checkmate, Ki-seok makes a cold remark about Hye-rin. Yong puts his hands on him and is pulled off by the other prosecutors. This moment marks when Yong begins to dismantle the world he just put back together for Ki-seok. Ki-seok just made the biggest mistake of his life.

After the slight altercation between the two, Yong and Ki-seok have a drink together – quite an unusual time and place for this, especially after the words that just came out of Ki-seok’s mouth. Ki-seok offers to open up Yong’s travel bans so he can just leave the country, and Yong brazenly tells him he doesn’t want to just settle and leave – he’s going to tear Ki-seok’s world down.

As the final chess match begins, we see Ki-seok confiscating evidence that can be used against Yong. This is evidence that ties back to Chief Prosecutor Lee and his participation in sneaking both Myung out of prison and Yong when he met with Myung. Tae-choon and Jun-kyung work together to get the evidence before Ki-seok can use his “chef” skills and tamper with the evidence for his benefit.

With Chief Prosecutor Lee set to testify soon and leaning in favor of Ki-seok, Yong begins to plant the seeds of doubt within him by using Su-dong in prison and meeting with him directly. He is ruled by fear of Ki-seok, so Yong knows he can use that to his advantage.

Now that Myung is hellbent on taking down Ki-seok after losing all of his money, he willingly meets up with Yong to testify against Ki-seok as Yong promised him money in return. Yong surprises Ki-seok when he shows up at his office, and then even more when Myung’s video is sent in. Yong, cunningly, used Myung to confess the details of the framing of Hye-rin. With this huge stone, Yong is able to kill two birds at once: Ki-seok and Chief Prosecutor Lee.

Fearful of Ki-seok, Lee then confesses to the crimes with the help of Yong’s persuasion tactics. At Yong’s penthouse, Myung is questioned about his involvement in CEO Oh’s death. Prosecutor Ham offers to give him a plea deal if he confesses to the crimes he committed, as well as Ki-seok’s involvement. He ends up doing so, which leads to his re-arrest and Ki-seok’s arrest by Tae-choon – legally, with no backdoor methods this time.

What a genius move by Yong to take what was once his biggest threat, and turn him into his biggest trump card against Ki-seok. We see that this was Yong’s big brain plan all along. Ever since he sat in his prison cell and schemed all night, his plan has been progressing accordingly.

After the smoke settles, we see all of our characters getting back to their normal lives. Hye-rin’s company is revived, Jun-kyung goes back to being a prosecutor, and Yong heads back to Mongolia. After a long-fought battle, our story is finished. Money is at the root of everything in Payback, but in the end, it wasn’t Yong’s money that won the battle, it was Tae-choon’s determination and mindset to tie the knot with the law and true justice.

Many twists and turns occurred throughout, but good beat evil in the end. I really liked Yong and the casual confidence that radiated around him everywhere he went. I also liked Tae-choon’s resilient nature and his willingness to stick to his morals. His relationship with Sang-il was also nice to see. Both Myung and Ki-seok were fantastic villains in my opinion, and they were both very different from each other, which I liked. Sadly, though, some of the characters fall flat for me… *cough, cough* Jun-kyung.

This drama wasn’t meant to be super character-centric, as the fast-moving plot was its focus, but I can’t help but feel let down with Jun-kyung. There were no real developments with her character at all. She had a few good moments, but they were outshined heavily by other character moments in the drama. With that said, after swimming through all the stock market lingo and complicated financial moves, Payback was a solid revenge story that was engaging more often than not.

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1 Unaspirated

February 13, 2023 at 10:28 AM

Yong is such a fun character. I had a great time watching this drama, and I think it was largely due to my absolute enjoyment every time he was on my screen. I loved his cocky, confident attitude toward just about everything, and I loved his sincere relationships with other people. They are what ultimately made him different from Myung, and so much better.

I enjoyed watching the scheme play out, and it was satisfying to watch all the baddies go down, but I didn’t ever have any doubts that Yong was in control, or that he hadn’t already thought of everything that could go wrong. On the one hand, this made for some low-stress watching! But on the other, I was expecting our team to struggle at least a little bit. Still, I love competent good guys, so I don’t want to complain too much! I honestly didn’t even mind Jun-kyung as a character, and it was nice to see her loosened up a little bit in her prosecutor job with Tae-chun at the end.

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2 Eazal

February 13, 2023 at 11:00 AM

What can I say. I really enjoyed this drama, which is a lot considering how little I like revenge dramas, but LSK as Yong helped a lot, and what a nice discovery Park Hoon was (yes, I have seen him before but I had never noticed him).

I loved the fast pacing and the fact that it took more than half of the drama for the good guys to find the correct path. I mean, we all knew who was going to win the game, but the twists were on point and it was never a piece of cake.

Regarding characters, I agree that Jun Kyung was flat. She added very little to the drama, imo. HanNa made much more sense and was better built as a character, I always liked her scenes and believed her every time: being cheeky around Yong, professional in her work, or truly scared when she was being interrogated. The scene where she told JunKyung how she was indebted to Yong showed to me the difference between the characters: HanNa has always been there to help and follow Yong, while Junkyung always gave to me that halo of someone who thinks the world owes them.

I never felt the connection with TaeChun, honestly. Probably because of the actor. I never liked the character, tbh. Although I give him the fact that he chose the legal way instead of the easy way. As someone working in the field, I know how difficult it can be.

But above all this drama was about Yong and the two magnificent villains we had: Myung and KiSeok. Wow, I enjoyed every time they were beaten and also every time they would raise again, because it would mean more fun.

I can only recommend this drama to everyone who wants to spend a good time.

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3 Kafiyah Bello

February 13, 2023 at 11:20 AM

This was fun, but they did MCW dirty, They did not such a high caliber actress to play such a bland and listless role. Yong though was great.

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4 hacja

February 13, 2023 at 11:50 AM

Thanks, @sugarsnow for a recap that accurately captures the strengths and weaknesses of this show. Like @jls943, I think what made this revenge drama more enjoyable than many was the appealing character of Yong and his combination of fighting skills with math ability and financial acumen.

But the ending fell flat for me, not because it wasn't clever in its use of the prisoner's dilemma, but because everyone going back to where they were before the villains' nefarious machinations threatened to destroy their lives left me wonder what the point was--that you're making a big mistake if your criminal activities rouse a billionaire genius with a strong ethical streak from the steppes of Mongolia?

I know most would not agree with me, but I actually think both Jun-kyung's closed off character, and the drama itself, would have benefitted from a romance with Yong, which would have still returned her to the prosecutor's office, but which would have had her on vacation at the end galloping a horse through the Mongolian plains with Yong--disrupting the macho man on the steed imagery. I am not at all arguing that the message should have been that she needed a man to be happy. But by the same token, there was a bit too much of Yong as a noble savior in the drama. For him to show some emotional vulnerability as well, would have made him a little less of the heroic fighter for justice riding in from his yurt, and amplified the idea that what set him apart from Myung was his love for others more than money.

Of course my response could simply reflect my one dimensional response to shows--I always want part of the story to be a happy ending romance, regardless of the genre!

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missvictrix

February 13, 2023 at 12:05 PM

@hacja I completely agree! I think the challenge of a plot that relies on constant reversals is that it's hard to make your endpoint feel "final" enough. So I just chose to believe that the battle ended, instead of actually knowing that it did.

And as for Jun-kyung -- I think a romance would have helped too, because the drama neglected to attend to its emotional core 90% of the time. The strongest emotion of the drama was Yong and JK's shared love for JK's mother, and nothing wrong with that, but it just frustrates me as a writer when there's so much possibility for character growth, and rich interactions, but it's not dug into at all. Like you say, a thread of romance would have added a bit more soul. And revenge NEEDS soul!

Complaints aside I did find this fun, and I was glad to see all those Mongolia plains again.

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MapleSilver

February 13, 2023 at 1:04 PM

"Revenge NEEDS soul!" So well put. And it's not like the writer didn't think viewers would raise this issue because both Hwang and Jinho did ask the question for us, "What is really going on between you two?"

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MapleSilver

February 13, 2023 at 1:01 PM

I so agree with you. I enjoyed the drama a lot, but overall I felt detached emotionally and couldn't really pinpoint why. What you said may be the missing piece that would have made the drama a little more satisfying emotionally. Oh, well. At least LSK's fighting scenes sort of made up for the missing romance. Can he go for something with an obvious love line in his next drama, please?

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5 Bunny Sonaki

February 13, 2023 at 10:36 PM

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6 Bunny Sonaki

February 13, 2023 at 10:43 PM

Toward the end, the drama began to fall flat for me. Perhaps as @missvictrix says it is because even revenge needs souls and this one lacked on that aspect. I loved how Ying remained grateful to Jun-kyung's mother till the end but perhaps if they showed us more of Yong and Jun-kyung's dynamics together, that whole arc would be portrayed better.

I loved the dilemma between breaking the law to go after baddies or sticking to the hard but legal way to the end but it got wrapped pretty quickly. I thought Tae-chun would be put in a position where he has to go after Yong. Being torn between following the law and the love he has for his father-figure uncle isn't something that was portrayed clearly.

Tae-chun helped Yong get Ki-seok without realizing it and the whole hard righteous way vs easier illegal way got closed and even after admitting to what she did before, Jun-kyung returned so easily to the prosecution. A lot didn't make sense for me in the finale and things went pretty much quickly.

Still, it was a good watch. I am not a revenge drama fan myself but I enjoyed this one. Hoping to see Park Hoon in a lead role soon in a completely different role from what we saw before.

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7 Islander north

February 14, 2023 at 8:27 AM

I'm not much of a schemer, so the twist and turns and setups and paybacks were great fun for me. Never sure who would stray from the straight and narrow and who would fold. What a great cast, very impressive! Think this is my favorite Lee Sun-kyun drama! My favorite recent dramas are Payback and Big Bet (hopefully, season 2 will be as good!).