It’s here, but also gone. Joseon Exorcist premiered this week as an ambitious saguek embedding evil and gory spirits into a fictional retelling of history. We meet the royal family cursed with the presence of evil spirits threatening to destroy Joseon, and we’re also introduced to characters unfamiliar to history — exorcists and of course, the demons. While the inaccuracies in a historical fiction are a given, the liberties taken with this version seemed to have landed poorly, to put it mildly.
Though the show is now cancelled, we’re still recapping the first episode as a nod to sageuks, in hopes that the sageuk trend will stay strong and make their long-awaited comeback. Sorry to see you go so soon.
EPISODE 1
Entering an ominous castle, King TAEJONG ( Kam Woo-sung) leads his troops through a crowd of entranced commoners. The commoners suddenly break out of the trance and contort into zombie-like demons. King Taejong orders his men to slay the demons, and a Spanish priest among his troops exorcises them.
After the bloody battle, the troops move the demon corpses, covered in their blue blood. The human survivors come out of hiding and bow down to King Taejong in gratitude. Among the crowd, King Taejong spots his dead father, dressed in white. His father calls out to him as Bang-won (King Taejong’s birth name), and despite his advisor’s warning about the hallucination, the king insists on the presence of his father.
The late King Taejo reaches out his bloody hand and tells his son that this is the blood of his younger brother, Yi Bang-seok (known to be King Taejo’s favored son). The late king laughs hysterically, and King Taejong curses the demon for scorning his father. He slays what he thinks is a demon, but the red blood on his sword indicates that he’s just killed an innocent man.
The hallucination of the late king returns, blaming King Taejong for the death of his younger brother. King Taejong continues his killing spree, and the priests recites “Our Father” as a plea. After beheading innocent civilians that he mistakes for his father, King Taejong asserts that he killed the “saengshi” (zombie-like demons) to save Joseon.
The guards follow orders, and after sounds of fighting, one guard reappears grasping his bloody neck. Behind the dying guard, a demon emerges and ruthlessly stomps on the guard’s head. Prince Kang-nyeong stands frozen in fear as the demon slays the guards and crushes the skulls of his servants.
His eunuchs, the last line of defense, sacrifice themselves, and the demon literally sucks the life out of one of them. Prince Kang-nyeong finally comes to his senses and runs for his life. He trips and crawls back in fear as the demon quickly approaches him.
Back at the palace, King Taejong shoots arrows at the saengshi approaching his youngest son, Prince Kangnyeong. The saengshi dies and collapses onto the prince, and with its last bit of life, the saengshi scratches the prince’s hand. King Taejong rushes to Kangnyeong and looks grim when he discovers the scratch. He orders his guard to make sure this incident remains secret.
Prince Yangnyeong looks further intrigued by the ministers’ talk about the saengshi and learns that his younger brother, Prince Chungnyeong, was sent on a mission to uncover more about the mysterious saengshi. A disturbance brings Prince Chungnyeong outside the gate, where he finds palanquin bearers struggling to lift the heavy palanquin and claiming that it keeps getting heavier.
Queen Won-gyeong blocks King Taejong from beheading their youngest son, insisting that Kangnyeong is not a saengshi. Taejong orders his son to show the scratches on his hand, and Kangnyeong claims that they were from his hawk. The queen begs the king to save Kangnyeong, at least until Chungnyeong returns with the exorcists, and King Taejong finally yields.
Prince Yangnyeong greets his father, and King Taejong smells the alcohol on him. Disapproving of his son, King Taejong calls Yangnyeong pathetic for spending his time drinking rather than protecting the fortress. He reveals that the saengshi soldier that attacked Kangnyeong entered the palace through the gate Yangnyeong was supposed to be guarding.
Yangnyeong blames King Taejong for keeping him in the dark about saengshi and says that he’s entitled to hear this information first as the heir to the throne. He’s clearly bitter that his younger brother received this security information before him, but King Taejong responds that he’s entitled to choose who he shares this information with.
After his father leaves, an angry Yangnyeong orders his guard to track down who opened the gate to the saengshi soldier. He vows to punish all the soldiers who tarnished his reputation.
Chungnyeong lightly considers learning how to enjoy a gisaeng house experience, since he won’t be inheriting the throne anyway. He jokingly asks Ji-gyeom to teach him how to play at a gisaeng house, but it’s both of their first times there.
Outside, Chungnyeong recalls receiving the order from his father to escort the exorcists. Covered in blue blood, they had just battled the saengshi, and King Taejong was depending on the exorcists to provide answers to this inhuman condition.
Marco stuffs his face with all of the food and then asks for the head gisaeng. Chungnyeong nods to his soldier to follow this request, but when the soldier enters the gisaeng room, he finds them all unconscious. He hears a struggle behind a curtain and unveils those behind it.
At the palace, a shaman, MOO-HWA (Jung Hye-sung) conducts a ritual for Prince Kangnyeong, and we see flashes of a dark prince, almost like an alter ego. At the end of the ritual, Moo-hwa holds the princes face and asks, “Who is it?”
While Marco waits for the head gisaeng to arrive, Chungnyeong learns more about the potential source of the demonic plague. The exorcist priest presumes that the spirits from the West have caused the demon transformations, and Chungnyeong looks hopeful about finding a cure to the infected village.
Prince Yangnyeong visits his youngest brother inside the ice chest and looks alarmed by the treatment. Kangnyeong whimpers that he’s scared, and Yangnyeong promises to save him. He urgently leaves at the news about an incident at the gate he guards, and the doors close on the ice chest containing Kangnyeong.
The priest performs an exorcism on Chungnyeong’s solider, who’s still alive and transforming into a demon. Strapped to the table, the solider contorts at the priest’s anointment and prayers. When demanded to reveal himself, the spirit speaks through the soldier, “We are one but ten, one hundred but one thousand.” The priest demands a name, and the spirit responds, “We are the soldiers of Azazel.”
When Yangnyeong opens the gate to his post, he finds the aftermath of a massacre. He looks frightened by the piles of corpses and cautiously approaches a snarling sound. He finds the hunchbacked servant sucking the blood out of a recently killed human. Yangnyeong slays the demon, which leaves a stain of blue blood on his sword.
Then, Yangnyeong notices that the palanquin is empty, where the suspicious woman had been hidden. He looks ominously at the open gate, and his worst fears come true. We see the palanquin woman feed on a noble and emerge from the shadows.
The exorcism ends with a terrifying burst of wind that blows into the room, and the exorcised soldier goes limp. Chungnyeong asks the priest who Azazel is and learns that Azazel is a Western spirit. He wonders how this spirit infiltrated Joseon, and the priest says that this is question for his grandfather and his father, the king.
King Taejong leads his troops to defend Joseon while his sons, Prince Yangnyeong and Prince Chungnyeong, start to discover the truth behind this plague.