Blood Free: Episodes 9-10 (Final)

by solstices

Drawing the curtain on its bloodstained tale of humanity and ethics, Blood Free lays bare the morality and depravity of human nature, illuminating the lengths that humankind will go to in order to sate the hunger for survival. Raw desperation drives our characters forward, maintaining the nail-biting suspense right up to its thought-provoking conclusion.

 
EPISODES 9-10

At long last, the truth of the military zone attack is brought to light. Chae-woon’s transparent sincerity moves Geun’s ex-wife LEE JUNG-YEON (Nam Ki-ae), and after a brief call to Jae, she admits everything she knows. While snooping through Geun’s phone for evidence of his affairs, she’d discovered TATP — an explosive — in his search history. Two months later, that same explosive was used in the bombing, and Jung-yeon divorced Geun in horror and guilt. She’d also confided in Jae, but her son hadn’t believed her — or so he claimed.

When Moon-kyu finds out, he collapses from the shock. In a painkiller-induced delirium, he speaks to Jae as if he’s Chae-woon. “Cover it up,” Moon-kyu urges. “The more you dig, the more cans of worms you uncover.” He’d rather lay his vengeance down, for Jung-yeon and Jae’s sake. Jae’s face crumples, briefly but painfully, and he brushes tears away as he leaves — a rare moment of human vulnerability from our master manipulator.

Now that he finally has the full story, Chae-woon visits Kir again with the truth. When Chae-woon reveals the mastermind as DORSON’s chairman Geun, Kir confesses that he’d accidentally let slip the barracks’ location to his cousin, who had then orchestrated the attack and blackmailed him into becoming the scapegoat.

As for Hae-deun, her underwater diving hobby has paid off; she acts unconscious and holds her breath for minutes on end, tricking Hui into panicking and releasing her restraints. The moment she’s free, she takes Sae-ip hostage with the broken spoon, forcing her to drive away. However, the escape is short-lived. Sae-ip throws herself out of the moving car, leaving Hae-deun to crash into the closed BF gates.

With hordes of reporters swarming the main BF building, the reticent San steels his nerves to address them. Though he confirms that BF has indeed successfully cultured human organs, he remains adamant that they will not perform the transplant surgeries on Ja-yoo.

Upstairs, San meets Ja-yoo and Chae-woon to consolidate their information and ponder over Jae’s true motive. He hadn’t instructed his mother to keep mum, or blocked Chae-woon’s movements, or sought to eliminate him despite having ample opportunity to. It’s almost as if Jae wants his father’s sins to be revealed to the world.

Then San receives the news of Hae-deun’s hospitalization, leaving Kir as the only avenue they can currently pursue. Ja-yoo instructs Chae-woon to fly to Dubai and retrieve Kir’s cousin, assuring him that she’ll look after Man-shik the cat in his absence. Brewing tea for her since she’s been drinking too much coffee, Chae-woon entreats Ja-yoo to promise that she won’t undergo the surgery until he returns, only leaving when she finally acquiesces.

Through a visit to the overpass man’s bereaved sister (not widow, I stand corrected), San has figured out Sang-min’s cover identity as their village pastor. A forensic investigation of his house reveals his true identity to be JI SOON-WON, and Ja-yoo sends him a voice message requesting to meet. She’s realized that even DORSON doesn’t know where Soon-won has fled to, and they’ll chase him to the ends of the earth in order to eliminate the loose end.

Sustaining serious injuries after dispatching the men sent to take him out, Soon-won caves and calls Ja-yoo back — she’s his last shot at survival. When Ja-yoo reaches the meeting location, Soon-won is already bleeding out in his car. “Take me to BF. Save me,” Soon-won urges, and Ja-yoo has her security team haul him into her car. Just then, the DORSON men arrive with the orders to stop them at any cost, and their car slams into Ja-yoo’s, sending them over the edge of the rooftop. By the time an anguished San catches up, all he’s met with is the wreckage below.

Ever since Ja-yoo’s nationwide announcement, she’s been gathering the most renowned doctors in the country and instructing them to improve BF’s AI surgery system through inputting their medical expertise. In the wake of the rooftop fall, Ja-yoo’s plan is set in motion far sooner than intended, and the surgeons set to work transplanting cultured organs into her battered body.

Surmising that Soon-won is being operated on right that moment, and that Chae-woon is overseas, Jae commences a search and seizure of BF using their illegal human experimentation as a pretext. San orders the AI Jang Young-shil to lock down the basement, but the main gate opens and the AI system — including the surgery assistance — goes dark. Jae has employed a team of hackers to infiltrate BF’s internal system, and with all of BF’s technologically-reliant defenses down, a team of gunmen break in the old-fashioned way with their grappling hooks.

Thankfully, Chae-woon returns just in time, having successfully tracked down Kir’s cousin. While the gunmen ransack the HQ office, Chae-woon launches a counterattack — until a terrified Hui is taken hostage. The gunmen herd them into the surgery room, where they demand to be shown the cultured organs. Then Soon-won springs a sneak attack on one gunman as his final swan song, which provides just enough distraction for Chae-woon to turn the tables. After the fight finally draws to a close, Chae-woon collapses to the floor, bleeding severely from his numerous wounds.

Accepting a news interview after the dust settles, Jae staunchly defends his father and discredits BF by insinuating they’re manipulating the press with unfounded rumors — until the news anchor reveals a recording of a phone call between Hae-deun and Geun. BF had forged Hae-deun’s voice using the verbal commands she’d given AI Jang Young-shil, and Geun had fallen for it hook, line, and sinker.

In an attempt at damage control, Jae hangs his father out to dry and resigns from his position, penning an apology letter that paints himself in a sympathetic light. Then he takes over as DORSON’s chairman, the seat that his father had intended to cling onto for life; now that Geun is imprisoned, the position is Jae’s to keep. Jae can always run for Prime Minister again next term, after all. The moment he’d found out about Geun’s act of terrorism, he’d known it would be a ticking time bomb that could cost him his entire career and reputation — and so Jae bided his time, moving puppets and chess pieces into place, until he could cut his father off with minimal repercussions to himself.

All that’s left is to tie up loose ends, and the BF security team collects Man-shik the cat from Chae-woon’s apartment. Elsewhere, the hackers’ base has been gassed, and the cleanup team — presumably sent by Jae — sits down to run lines of code in front of a row of occupied cryogenic pods. Jae has finally acquired BF’s core research data through the search and seizure, but despite achieving his goal, an almost mournful look crosses over his face upon hearing that Ja-yoo is allegedly dead.

When questioned by the prosecution, San claims that all of BF and the surgeons fought back against the gunmen, slaughtering them in self-defense. We see the fight play out — San narrowly avoids being killed by a gunman, but the resulting blood spatter lands across Ja-yoo’s open surgery wounds, contaminating them. There’s an irony here, of Ja-yoo trying to avoid the “hole in her head” of degenerative disease, and presumably succumbing to the holes in her body that were carved open for that exact purpose. We also see Chae-woon’s body dragged away by two people in surgical gowns, though we aren’t shown what happens to him.

Some time later, BF’s facilities have been restored. Though the compound remains desolately empty, we hear Ja-yoo’s voice asking: “Jang Young-shil, where am I?” Lying on what looks like a medical bed, with a faint five o’clock shadow indicating he’s been unconscious for a while, Chae-woon opens his eyes.

With that, Blood Free ends on the many questions its cliffhanger raises — though if one peers closer, it may already have hinted at the answers. The scene of Ja-yoo imagining her dead sister suspended in a culture fluid tank could well have been foreshadowing her own eventual fate. Ja-yoo deeply regrets not preserving her sister’s body to repair it with BF’s technology, so perhaps the same mistake will not be made twice. This possibility is also reflected in the symbolism of the tea scene, with Ja-yoo gazing at the flower submerged in water. Just as flowers wither and bloom again, perhaps Ja-yoo will be given a second chance at life, reborn through the culture fluid she created.

Ja-yoo directing her question to Jang Young-shil implies that she still has her memories and mental faculties intact; she is able to remember, understand, and question her world, even if she cannot recognize it. Or perhaps it is not that she does not know where she is, but that she cannot see it at all without a functioning body? I wonder if the secret bunker Ja-yoo’s supposedly been building is a Chekhov’s gun that will resurface in a potential second season — perhaps it might explain her survival — or if Ja-yoo’s fate will be left up in the air as a thought experiment. Capable of independent cognitive thought, it seems Ja-yoo has retained her consciousness, but can she still claim to be herself if her brain has been disembodied?

Blood Free’s foray into human experimentation feels reminiscent of the Ship of Theseus paradox — when parts of a ship are replaced, at what point does it cease to be the original ship? What can be lost before one is no longer what one once was? Chae-woon had his bodily autonomy overridden and synthetic parts implanted in him; Soon-won overwrote his identity with an alternate one; Hae-deun has no recollection of her memories. At what point does one lose one’s sense of self? At what point is one left bereft of one’s humanity?

Then there’s Hui, who hasn’t had his mind or body tampered with in any way, but has forsaken his morals in the name of his goals; his callous pragmatism is often foiled by San’s quiet compassion. When I first started this show, I hadn’t expected San to be our moral compass, but he’s served as a much-needed voice of reason time and time again.

It’s for this reason that I find the final scene between Hae-deun and San so riveting, bolstered by compellingly nuanced performances from Park Ji-yeon and Lee Moo-saeng. San, who had ultimately been complicit in Hae-deun’s psychological torture despite his initial protests, wishes her a fresh start with her newfound clean slate — while Hae-deun can only eke out a faltering smile amidst brimming tears, left unmoored and adrift without her memories.

Once again, Lee Soo-yeon has written a script as divisive and fascinating as Grid — as a narrative, Blood Free leaves off on hanging threads that may dampen the viewing experience, but as a philosophical piece of social commentary, it hits the mark and then some.

At the core of this drama is the question of sustainability — not necessarily how to achieve it, but rather what cannot be sacrificed in the pursuit of it. The concept of sustainability is formed through three pillars: social, environmental, and economic. Often, the latter two aspects are focused on, but Blood Free calls our attention to the former, urging us to consider the human lives that are shafted or exploited or trampled upon. Any eco-friendly label inherently necessitates ethical methods; one cannot sustain a world through the suffering of its inhabitants.

Amidst Blood Free’s many memorable moments, the scene that perhaps encapsulates its central theme best is the one of Sae-ip strangling a gunman with a cultured intestine. The synthetic organs as a literal noose around the neck, and humankind’s desire to prolong life ironically stifling it. This desperation to stay alive is what pushes us past our limits, whether physical or moral. It’s what gave Soon-won that last spurt of strength before he faded out, and what fuelled the greed that toppled Geun, and what spurred the surgeons to take up scalpels not to heal but to kill. Ultimately, we are all trying to survive, and that instinct itself cannot be faulted — but we must do so with a self-awareness of our actions and a firm grasp on our conscience, lest we lose sight of what makes us human.

 
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