Strap in for a slick thriller helmed by Lee Bo-young as she works to uncover the mystery surrounding her husband’s sudden disappearance. We get off to a good start with tense, well-paced opening episodes with a strong heroine at the center. If you like a fierce Lee Bo-young, dramatic twists, evil conglomerates, an air of mystery, and a dash of action, this might just be for you.
EPISODES 1-2
This drama wastes no time getting started and covers a lot of ground in two episodes. With strong performances and a compelling mystery, it has the makings of a fun thriller so long as it doesn’t lose steam down the road. There’s a self-assuredness to the storytelling that bodes well and hopefully means the pace will stay brisk and tight.
We open on a tense scene in 1998 with a man and his teenage daughter running from creditors in the middle of the night. Thus begins their life on the run, which doesn’t last long. Hoping to free his daughter and escape his plight, the man decides to take his own life.
From there, we jump to 2024 where said daughter NA MOON-YOUNG (Lee Bo-young) is doing quite well for herself. She and her rich husband CHA SUNG-JAE (Lee Moo-saeng) are partners at a law firm gifted to them by Sung-jae’s father. They live a seemingly happy, well-curated life with their young daughter Bom.
One average morning, Sung-jae leaves for work… and never shows up. He’s completely unreachable, leaving Moon-young to rush to a vehicular homicide trial in his place. No one is happy with this last-minute switcheroo, especially the defendant KIM YOON-SUN (Kim Yoon-seo) who is frantic when she realizes Sung-jae isn’t coming. In fact, she’s so upset she runs, and the trial gets delayed.
It’s immediately clear something fishy is going on with this case. Yoon-sun’s employer, Geumshin Corporation’s CHIEF MA KANG (Heo Seo-joon), is strangely involved in the case. Chief Ma acts more like a gang boss than a suit, and he does not take well to Sung-jae’s disappearance; he assumes he ran and mutters menacingly about how he thought Sung-jae “understood him” after all this time working together.
Everyone is desperate to find Sung-jae, and the situation escalates quickly. The law office gets completely ransacked, Moon-young finds out both Sung-jae and the firm are billions of won in debt, and a terrified Yoon-sun seeks Moon-young out to beg her to save her. She claims Sung-jae told her to obey Chief Ma and take the blame for a vehicular manslaughter she didn’t commit. They even brought in a fake witness, delivery driver DO JIN-WOO (Lee Min-jae), to make things more convincing.
Moon-young is the only one who worries something happened to Sung-jae – even his mother assumes he just needed some time away. But then Moon-young’s worst nightmare comes true, and the police find Sung-jae’s body. In a flashback, we see him drive his car over a cliff, after which the car catches fire. The police rule it a suicide and close the case.
Seeing another loved one’s body in the morgue after a supposed suicide is too much for Moon-young, and she collapses. While she’s unconscious, her mother-in-law has Sung-jae cremated against her wishes – Moon-young wanted an autopsy because she can’t believe he chose to end his life. But after seeing the handwritten note and finding the stash of cash and life insurance policies he left for her, even Moon-young can’t deny it wasn’t foul play. Or at least, not directly.
Everyone else attributes his decision to the debt, but Moon-young is sure there’s more to the story. She refuses to let it go, even though everyone thinks she’s going overboard. Given Moon-young’s family history and trauma, it makes sense that she can’t accept her husband ended up just like her father – believing death was the only option out of financial ruin. It’s clear she’s going to see this through, no matter how bad the truth is.
Lee Bo-young is great here as the determined, grieving wife who will stop at nothing to find the truth. I’ve always particularly liked her in roles like this; she brings a winning combination of vulnerability and grit that makes it so easy to root for her. As the emotional center, she’s really carrying the show on her shoulders.
Moon-young gears up for her own investigation and starts with Geumshin. As if the company weren’t already suspicious enough, on the same day Sung-jae’s body is found, Yoon-sun dies in a car crash. Moon-young has no fear and marches into Chief Ma’s office to confront him about these supposed coincidences. He responds by viciously grabbing her by the throat and daring her to investigate her husband’s shady dealings, saying she’ll want to kill him herself once she sees his dirty laundry.
Well, that certainly left no doubt as to what type of person she’s dealing with. But if he thought that would intimidate her into stopping, no such luck. If anything, Moon-young is more determined now. She even whips out the whiteboard, complete with photos of suspicious persons and facts, so we know she means business.
First on her list is fake witness Jin-woo. He was seen outside Yoon-sun’s apartment after her death, and he was chasing her car when she crashed. While that’s mighty suspicious, he seems to be telling the truth that he had nothing to do with Yoon-sun or Sung-jae’s deaths. If anything, he seems to be in over his head with all this too. He later asks if Chief Ma had Sung-jae killed and gets beat up by Chief Ma’s enforcers. In turn, Chief Ma questions why he was hanging around Sung-jae and assumes the two were hiding something from him.
Even without knowing that Jin-woo and Chief Ma aren’t on good terms, Moon-young starts to think he could be an ally. She finds out that Sung-jae was Jin-woo’s attorney in a deadly assault case years ago. In the case file is a photo of a scholarship award ceremony by Chawoong Foundation (Sung-jae’s father’s organization), which shows Yoon-sun in attendance. She apparently worked at the foundation back then.
Now that she knows Sung-jae, Jin-woo, and Yoon-sun are much more connected than she thought, Moon-young makes Jin-woo an offer. She’ll pay him for any information he has. At this point, he’s her only remaining lead who can help make sense of all this.
On his way to meet her, Jin-woo gets run off the road by a man in the dark. The man then pulls a shotgun from his trunk and chases Jin-woo. That’s when Moon-young arrives on the scene and hides. She watches in shock as Jin-woo is shot in the side. The man lowers the gun… and it’s Sung-jae, looking grim. With that twist, you just know we’re in for some dramatics.
I knew it seemed too soon to solve the mystery of what happened to Sung-jae. His situation must’ve been bad enough to go all out in faking his death. Is he acting solo or is anyone else in on this plan? And why would he want to kill Jin-woo who seems to be on his side? Oh, and whose body did the family cremate?? There’s no shortage of questions, especially since it looks like Sung-jae has been keeping a whole lot hidden about his life. Clearly, he’s not the standup guy Moon-young thought he was, and something tells me she’s not the docile, stand-idly-by type.