We had no idea what we were in for when we saw Revenant and how intense things would get within two episodes. As if the first episode wasn’t enough to take in, the second one is especially fun and high on thrills, making it the perfect horror fantasy for our summer weekends. Apart from San-Yeong’s story, which is the main plot of the series, the first episode ended on a chilling cliffhanger. She is able to see the ghost of the young boy who died jumping off his school building. San-Yeong is under the assumption that he is an evil spirit too, or what we can call a vengeful spirit, but we will find out in episode 2 if he really is evil or if he has some unfinished business left in the human realm. With one foot in the door, let’s see what San-Yeong is able to figure out and if she begins to believe Professor Hae-Sang.
Spoilers Ahead
What Happens In Episode 2?
While San-Yeong is with one of the boys, who is desperate for her to save him, Hae-Sang visits the house of the dead boy, Hyun-Woo. He unlocks the door, and just as he’s about to enter the house, Hyun-Woo’s parents show up, asking why he would try entering somebody else’s house. He gets out of their hair after asking about Hyun-Woo and heads to the back of the house. There, using the same method the kids had the previous night: he shines his camera flash inside the half basement room, through the grilled window and uses his camera to scan the room. He finds a young girl crying in the corner and tries to console her. Before Hae-Sang can get his hand out of the window, he notices the door to the room cracked open and Hyun-Woo’s mother standing there. He doesn’t realize what is happening and gets hit in the head by Hyun-Woo’s father. He’s taken unconscious to the same room, and his hands are tied up. When he’s conscious again, he notices some soju bottles in the room and uses the broken glass to get rid of the ropes. He manages to bust open the window by using a rock he grabbed by reaching past the grill so the child can escape, but the sound alerts the parents, who try to bust open the room door. Hae-Sang holds the door shut while he attempts to tell the girl that her brother told him to help her. Finally, she understands him, but the window is too high for her. Hae-Sang pushes down some shelves for her to climb over, but she’s still too small to get out.
In the meantime, San-Yeong takes the boy and runs out onto the street, where she thinks it might be safe. She finds reflective surfaces in order to see Hyun-Woo’s ghost and if he’s trying to attack the live boy she’s with. Soon, she realizes that Hyun-Woo is pointing toward something, and as she follows his direction, she’s pointed toward the house where Hae-Sang is. She reaches in the nick of time and is able to grab the kid from the window. Hae-Sang admits then that he can’t see Hyun-Woo’s spirit anymore because all he wanted was to save his sister, and that’s why he took his own life, in the hope that something would be done about her. We can understand that Hae-Sang wants to know why his mother died, but it is unclear why he’s so desperate to figure out the story of the evil spirit for those close to him. His assistant points out that it can be more painful and dangerous for Hae-Sang to dig deeper, but Hae-Sang doesn’t plan on backing away. On the other hand, Hong-Sae, the detective on the suicide case of the voice phishing culprit, happens to know San-Yeong personally. She hadn’t remembered him, but he remembered her very clearly, and it looked like there was a one-sided romance playing out there. This is probably why Hong-Sae is determined not to get San-Yeong into trouble.
At one of her part-time jobs, San-Yeong faces a young girl who won’t stop crying because she can’t find one of her dolls. San-Yoeng is working there as a part of the mover’s team, and by the end of her shift, the kid still hadn’t found the doll, so she never stopped creating a fuss. When San-Yeong returns home, there’s something eerie about her. She had found the doll and taken it with her while leaving to scratch out its face as a lesson for the girl. We hear San-Yeong speak in a strange tone about how the girl’s parents should not have spoiled her. Suddenly, San-Yeong wakes up from her daze, and we can assume that it was the evil spirit that had taken over her. At the same time, Hae-Sang visits San-Yeong’s mother and asks her if San-Yeong has touched an old artifact or anything of the sort recently. She tells him about the red hair accessory given to San-Yeong by her grandmother. Elsewhere, San-Yeong finds herself changing in the mirror. Or rather, she notices her shadow doesn’t look like her; it’s that of a woman or girl with her hair flying everywhere. This scene in Revenant is an indication of San-Yeong realizing that she’s actually possessed, even though she believes humans are scarier than ghosts. This conclusion was especially clear to her when she saw how Hyun-Woo’s parents had treated their own daughter. Still, now she fears for the people close to her, so she is determined to get rid of the evil spirit.
Hae-Sang finds his way to San-Yoeng’s grandmother’s house and asks her about the hair accessory. Before she can say anything to him, somebody knocks at the door. We know that San-Yeong is on her way to see her grandmother because earlier, she had a terrifying vision about her. Unfortunately, the vision comes true, and San-Yeong’s grandmother is made to hang herself, too, with Hae-Sang in the house. He’s unable to save her, and there’s a fire too, which destroys the book Gang-Mo had saved regarding the hair accessory. San-Yeong arrives and calls the emergency services, but it’s all too late. Detectives arrive, and Hae-Sang specifically calls for Detective Seo Mun-Chun, his friend, as we saw in the previous episode. He is sure that it is San-Yeong who has somehow killed both her father and her grandmother for the inheritance after everything she and her mother have been through. Hae-Sang attempts to assure him that that’s not the case but to no avail. What we can’t understand is why the evil spirit would kill San-Yeong’s grandmother when she didn’t resent her or have any kind of negative feelings towards her. Maybe because the evil spirit is stronger, it doesn’t matter anymore.
San-Yeong feels guilty about her grandmother and begins to fear that everyone she knows will die soon. She decides to take her own life, thinking it will destroy the evil spirit too. She stands in the middle of the street, but all the cars end up avoiding her and yelling profanities at her. Ultimately, Hae-Sang is able to save her and tell her that this is not her fault. In a vulnerable moment, she admits to him that she’s always wanted to run away all her life, but she doesn’t want to die.
What Happened To Hae-Sang In 1995?
The Revenant shows us the dark side of Korea and points out that the suicide rate there is the highest in the OECD countries. This may be why it’s such a common topic in Korean dramas. Detective Seo tells Hong-Sae that there have been multiple cases since 1995 that have similar details, such as those that they’ve seen recently. Hong-Sae doesn’t love the idea of checking these cases again, but when he sees the worry in Detective Seo’s face, mixed with the fact that his first case was something similar, he decides to help him out.
What Happened In 1995?
Hae-Sang was a young boy from a rich family. We notice a little sadness in Hae-Sang’s mother’s eyes when she’s watching him play with his father, and soon after, his father dies. At the funeral, Hae-Sang falls terribly ill, and his mother takes him away and drives for days. Hae-Sang finds the hair accessory in a box in the back of the car when his mother is digging somewhere to bury something ancient-looking. Finally, they arrive at a motel-like place, and Hae-Sang notices his mother has disappeared. He thinks she’s outside and opens the door, allowing the evil spirit in. He sees the shadow, and a female voice thanks him for opening the door. He watches in horror as his mother ties a rope into a noose and floats to the top of the room, hanging herself while screaming for him not to look. At the final moment, she throws the red hair accessory onto the floor and lights it on fire.
Hae-Sang remembers that it had disappeared at the time, and now it was found at San-Yeong’s father’s house. Luckily, San-Yeong had seen the book in her vision too, and she drew out what she had seen to show Hae-Sang. There’s an old name for a town—Jangjin-ri—that they are unable to find on any of the maps, but since Hae-Sang is a professor of folklore, he has books that can help them. San-Yeong is able to find the place, and they make plans to go there. Additionally, Hae-Sang tells San-Yeong that the shadow has grown larger because it’s killing more people.
The episode ends with a flashback to 1958 Jangjin-ri, where many young girls are gathered to be handed over the special hair accessory. We don’t see the choosing process, but a little while later, a girl hides under a blanket, holding the hair accessory in her hand. She’s offered a plate of raw meat by the rich woman who picked her out, and when she attempts to take it out of hunger, the rich woman stabs her with a knife. We can assume this is a slaughtering ritual that the rich woman may have been carrying out for youthfulness or power or something along those lines. Things are getting very interesting, and we can’t wait to see the next episode of Revenant.
