The Witch: Episodes 9-10 (Final)

by solstices

As our experiment winds down to its final stages, both our witch and her dedicated data analyst must make a leap of faith to test their theories. Just as the snow melts for spring to blossom, so does loneliness give way for loyalty to take root.

EPISODES 9-10

Alone once more, Mi-jung plugs in the USB that Dong-jin gave her. In it are photos of her old house, alongside a video message from her former classmate Da-eun, who apologizes for her part in perpetuating the rumors. She hopes that Mi-jung will reclaim her name rather than her label, and the sincere sentiment moves Mi-jung to tears.

Meanwhile, Joong-hyuk chases down the domestic violence stalker who nearly murdered YOON-AH. It ends in a successful arrest, but when the stalker sneers about Yoon-ah making a move on Joong-hyuk, our detective snaps and beats the stalker bloody. Joong-hyuk is clearly feeling disproportionate guilt that seems to go beyond his line of duty, and then the show starts hinting that his coworker has a crush on him. You don’t mean to say…

There’s no time to ruminate upon that, though, because Eun-shil barges into Joong-hyuk’s routine to ask about Dong-jin’s disappearance. The past few weeks of radio silence has her worried, and so Joong-hyuk and Eun-shil begin solving the puzzle Dong-jin deliberately left behind. (Their proximity flusters Eun-shil more than a couple times — despite all her complaints about Joong-hyuk’s rude gruffness, it seems she’s nursing a fledgling crush on him, hee.)

The sticky tabs point to Mi-jung; the “shine on you” writing on the window turns out to be Dong-jin’s blog username; and the password lies in Dong-jin’s first analysis report of the witch phenomenon. When Dong-jin’s phone alarm rings at 2:30 AM, Joong-hyuk follows Mi-jung out to her daily cat feeding routine. Approaching her to test Dong-jin’s theory, Joong-hyuk introduces himself and strikes up a long conversation about the stray cat. Then he walks away perfectly fine, confirming the last variable that Dong-jin couldn’t — since Joong-hyuk doesn’t have feelings for Mi-jung, the curse won’t apply to him.

Meanwhile, Eun-shil discovers one more post on Dong-jin’s blog — a record of all the incidents that have happened in Joong-hyuk’s proximity. Ohhhh. Joong-hyuk visits Yoon-ah in the hospital, who admits that Dong-jin told her about the conditions — but she also reassures Joong-hyuk that she doesn’t fulfil the criteria (i.e. she doesn’t like him romantically), so what happened to her isn’t his fault. To confirm that our reticent detective is indeed a witch, though, the coworker with a crush on him shows up to work with a sprained ankle. Aw, at least she’s optimistic about it.

Ultimately, Joong-hyuk knocks on Mi-jung’s door again, introducing himself as Dong-jin’s friend and conveying Dong-jin’s first statistics report to her — but he also admits that Dong-jin’s initial analysis was flawed. Revealing everything about Dong-jin’s recent research, and the lengths he went to in an attempt to liberate Mi-jung from her curse, Joong-hyuk tells her that Dong-jin disappeared after meeting her. Then he places the choice in Mi-jung’s hands — she can press charges and have him arrest Dong-jin for stalking, or seek Dong-jin out herself.

The next morning, Eun-shil confronts Joong-hyuk at work — now Mi-jung’s gone too! Cutting straight to the chase, Joong-hyuk bluntly asks Eun-shil if she likes him. They both know that he’s a witch, after all. In a college flashback, we see that Dong-jin had been trying to save both Joong-hyuk and Mi-jung from their self-imposed isolation. Back in the present, Eun-shil owns up to her feelings, while Joong-hyuk asks for more time — but he lets slip a tiny smile that has Eun-shil lighting up, aww. (The show speedran their romance, but they’re cute.)

At long last, Mi-jung travels to the quaint Austrian town she’s always dreamed of, and Dong-jin finds her on a lakeside bench. (Um, what happened to his encounter with the Truck of Doom?) Dong-jin conveys his late mother’s apology, and in turn, Mi-jung thanks him for drawing her out into the world and giving her the push she needed to finally make this trip.

Ten minutes pass, and Dong-jin abruptly confesses: “I love you, Park Mi-jung.” Thunderclouds roll in, looming ominously as Dong-jin leaves. But Mi-jung calls out to him. Admitting that she worried about him the entire trip, Mi-jung shares the realization she had — the boys who liked her suffered accidents after leaving her, but they were safe while in her vicinity. (Wait, I guessed right?!) Asking Dong-jin not to leave her side, Mi-jung confesses her own feelings to him. As if by magic, the storm clouds clear up, and Dong-jin steps closer to envelop Mi-jung in a tender embrace.

Back in Seoul, Eun-shil gets fed up with waiting for Joong-hyuk to figure out his heart (and fed up with keeping her distance while talking over the phone to circumvent the curse, LOL). Pouring her own out in a sudden love confession, Eun-shil boards a bus to test the variable of Joong-hyuk’s feelings. But just then, Joong-hyuk receives a message of advice from Dong-jin: “Don’t ever leave her side.” Breaking into a sprint, Joong-hyuk tells Eun-shil to get off the bus immediately — and they run towards each other in the middle of the road, for some reason. With that, both our witchy couples are together, ready to face whatever variables life brings.

As a whole, I think I liked the premise of The Witch more than its execution. Questionable methods aside, my curiosity was piqued by the finer details of the witch mystery, and I couldn’t help but grow invested in Dong-jin’s investigation. Watching him rule out variables and refine his hypotheses one by one was genuinely fun, and I actually wish the show leaned harder into the mystery aspect. It could have made for a fun parallel with Joong-hyuk, through the reversal of the witch filling the investigator’s shoes the second time round. Had the twist of Joong-hyuk being a witch unfolded earlier, perhaps around the halfway point, we could have explored more implications of living with such a curse (and loving someone with it) instead of circling around the same few melodramatic beats.

I think if the show had emphasized Dong-jin’s focus on the witch mystery across both case studies, and framed his determination as being spurred by how he can finally do something to help her in a way he couldn’t help Joong-hyuk, his fixation on Mi-jung might have come across as less obsessive. The eventual reveal did help to contextualize Dong-jin’s actions somewhat, but the final arc was too rushed to really balance out the earlier episodes.

I’ve said this countless times, but the show did itself a disservice with its lengthy repetitions of scenes we’ve already seen before, because it felt like it was dragging its feet to fill out its runtime. Admittedly, I haven’t read the webtoon, so I can’t gauge where the pacing issues arise from, but either way the drama could have better spent its time further developing Mi-jung, Joong-hyuk, and Eun-shil.

For one, Joong-hyuk could have been such an interesting foil to Mi-jung as her male counterpart — even with all the incidents surrounding him and the resulting ostracization, he had to deal with a lot less contempt than she did, and he’s been able to live a relatively normal life. It’s a shame we didn’t get more of Joong-hyuk’s perspective. As for Eun-shil, she was a very endearing peppy best friend, but I wish she played a bigger role in solving the mystery of Mi-jung’s curse — this is the only person who’s stayed by Mi-jung’s side all these years! Surely she has more to contribute.

Above all, I wish we spent more time with Mi-jung, who wound up more of a research subject than a main character since we mostly saw her through other people’s eyes and not her own. Sure, that could have been a deliberate storytelling decision, but even when Mi-jung supposedly reclaims her agency at the end, we had it told to us through a timeskip and a line of exposition. It essentially fast-forwards Mi-jung’s character growth, and undercuts the payoff.

I wonder if the narrative would have been more compelling had it been told through parallel journeys of Dong-jin and Eun-shil searching for a way to help their respective best friends connect with others again, and gradually falling in love with the opposite subject of research. Of course, that’d be a different story altogether, but I can’t help feeling that having underdeveloped romantic love as the be-all-end-all of the witches’ curse inadvertently diminishes the importance of their closest friends who stuck by their side through thick and thin.

Eun-shil was the one who helped Mi-jung live some semblance of a normal life amidst her self-isolation, not Dong-jin. The same goes for Dong-jin, who was Joong-hyuk’s sole social connection in college; Eun-shil only gatecrashed Joong-hyuk’s life in the last hour or two. If the ultimate solution had to be romantic love, then the narrative ought to put in the effort to convince us that our witches actually developed enough feelings to reciprocate, not just handwave the sudden lovelines away with a few lines of exposition and pretty scenery.

I also think the narrative might have worked better if its time was more evenly split, with half dedicated to Dong-jin’s research experiments and the other half dedicated to Mi-jung’s journey of self-discovery and mustering up her courage. Had we walked alongside Mi-jung, fully privy to her worry, gratitude, and eventual feelings towards Dong-jin, her final confession might have been a lot more cathartic and convincing. Ultimately, The Witch had an intriguing premise and atmospheric cinematography, but its languid pacing and repetitive flashbacks stretched itself out into a meandering narrative with a tad too much filler.

 
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