Gyeongseong Creature 2: Episode 1 (First Impressions)

by starrygazer

Gyeongseong Creature 2 starts out with a grisly murder case which is set 79 years after Season 1. So far, the second season already has some full circle moments linking us to our leading couple’s past, and some down right creepy and surreal moments in their present. Will our leading couple survive this time around, or is this murder just the beginning of the trouble to come their way?

Editor’s note: This is an Episode 1 review only. For a place to chat about the entire drama, visit the Drama Hangout.
 
EPISODE 1

In modern-day Seoul, our heroine YOON CHAE-OK (Han So-hee) is still working as a sleuth finding missing people. Chae-ok receives jobs through friend/acquaintance MADAM NA (Kim Hye-hwa), who is working at a jazz bar. Madam Na is Chae-ok’s barrier between her and the world. Chae-ok seems to want to stay hidden – and who can blame her. Madam Na contacts Chae-ok (codename: Silverbill) to find a client’s son who has been missing for ten days. Chae-ok accepts the job, but has some surprises waiting for her when she arrives at the motel where the son has been hiding out.

Meanwhile, our hero JANG HO-JAE (Park Seo-joon) is in a similar line of work as a private investigator for his friend’s business. But there’s one small problem: Ho-jae has no memories. You see, there was a brutal attack on Ho-jae that took place a year prior. Ho-jae was ran over, overwhelmed by the sheer volume of assailants, stabbed multiple times, sent flying off a bridge, and told by a very creepy dude to “forget everything.” It looks like his memory was wiped after this (or because of this), and can I just ask how the hell is Ho-jae still breathing after all of that?

KWON YONG-GIL (Heo Joon-seok) is Ho-jae’s friend and I suspect he is keeping Ho-jae in the dark about his past. This seems even more likely when Yong-gil looks at his grandfather’s picture and asks why he asked him for this favor. (Presumably, the favor is looking after Ho-jae, because his grandfather loved him.) Now, Yong-gil’s grandfather was Master Jang’s (Park Seo-joon’s character in Season 1) good friend KWON JOON-TAEK (Wie Ha-joon) in the first season, leading me to believe that his family have been looking after Master Jang ever since. (And is Ho-jae’s real identity Master Jang?)

Outside a motel at night, Ho-jae and Yong-gil arrive to get pictures of someone cheating on their spouse (the business isn’t doing well and this is how they’re making money right now). Ho-jae goes up to the room alone with Yong-gil as back-up waiting outside. What Ho-jae was not expecting was to be in the wrong room, have his ass handed to him by a cloaked figure, and find a very dead body in the bathroom. The poor dead guy was Chae-ok’s missing person. He was an employee of Jeonseung Biotech and had a sketchpad full of drawings of a familiar monster. The cloaked figure who attacked Ho-jae was Chae-ok, and Ho-jae did manage to get footage of her with his spy glasses. (Are these on wholesale in South Korea? I’ve never seen a pair in real life but they’re in a lot of dramas!)

When Yong-gil arrives in the hotel room after seeing the scuffle from the spy glasses live stream, Ho-jae is alone and the body is in the bathroom. Not unsurprisingly, both Yong-gil and Ho-jae end up in the police station. It appears they know the captain, and the captain suggests they find the cloaked figure if Ho-jae doesn’t want to be arrested for murder — because this does look pretty bad for him. One of the detectives asks the captain if it’s wise to ask civilians to find a potential serial killer, and he tells her that Ho-jae has helped him before and he’s very good at his job. Interesting… How much history do they have?

Madam Na is surprised when Chae-ok agrees to find the dead guy’s killer, since it’s not a job she would normally take on. But Chae-ok has questions after seeing that sketchpad and her little run-in with Ho-jae. So it would seem our leading couple now have a common goal: find the killer. Ho-jae distributes a picture from the footage of the cloaked figure to all of his informants to try and find her (Chae-ok), thinking that she is the killer. When Ho-jae gets a report that the girl in the picture frequents a rooftop, he goes straight over. He sees Chae-ok, and she walks past him, so he follows her.

Sensing someone behind her, Chae-ok goes down a few alleys and lies in wait. When Ho-jae stops because he has lost sight of Chae-ok, she appears behind him and holds a piece of wood to his back. It’s funny how this is a full circle moment to the first episode in Season 1 where the shoe was on the other foot, and Master Jang was holding a gun to Chae-ok’s back after she had been following him.

Our heroes establish that neither of them are the real killer, followed by Chae-ok handing Ho-jae his ass again haha. But once Chae-ok gets a good look at Ho-jae, her eyes fill with tears and she hugs him tightly. The look of sheer bewilderment on Ho-jae’s face did make me giggle. He has no idea why she just kicked his ass then hugged him — talk about mixed signals. But when Chae-ok calls him “Master Jang” a high-pitched sound goes off in Ho-jae’s head. Are his memories trying to force their way out?

In a voiceover we hear Chae-ok say “very soon the cherry blossoms will bloom” which connects us to her last words in Season 1 — “the cherry blossoms lost their flowers,” which signified the end of her and Master Jang’s connection. (ICYMI, the deal was for them to part ways when the cherry blossom trees lost their flowers, although they did part through her death which was unexpected.) So, for Chae-ok to say the cherry blossoms will bloom in this season gives me a modicum of hope for our leading couple.

Meanwhile, our resident murderer (who kills using his tentacles at will – FYI) is ransacking Chae-ok’s hideout and finds the sketchpad she took from the dead guy’s motel room. This does not bode well. It is made apparent that experiments are still happening with the Najin (the parasite that creates the monsters). Also, the place the experiments are happening looks very similar to Onseong hospital from Season 1, creepy lift to the basement and spherical hole in the floor included. Did Ho-jae have a parasite that was removed? Is that why he can’t remember anything? And is that why Ho-jae has that scar on the back of his neck?

Chae-ok obviously has her mother’s parasite, which her mother gave up to save Chae-ok in Season 1’s finale. This explains why Chae-ok is so strong and interested in the monster drawings. She was living quietly thinking this was all over, and now it seems she was wrong. Has anything actually changed over the last 79 years? Or is Jeonseung Biotech just an extension of Onseong Hospital? All these questions and connections are definitely enough to pique my interest. Now please excuse me whilst I go and binge the rest of the season.

 
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