It’s the penultimate week, and we’re down to the wire. Between family drama and murder mystery solving, our time traveling leads have a lot on their plates. Knowing they don’t have much time to lose, our reporter decides to play offense this time. Ready or not, they finally get some answers and face a startling truth.
EPISODES 13-14
After Soon-ae’s attack and Hae-joon’s arrest, Yoon-young isn’t about to sit around and do nothing. She knows Mi-sook saw the killer, so she confronts her and demands she tell the truth. That works about as well as you’d expect, and Mi-sook refuses to admit she lied.
Luckily, Soon-ae isn’t badly hurt and wakes up soon enough. She tells the cops Hae-joon saved her and is most definitely not her attacker, so they’re forced to release him. The cops have now “caught” the wrong guy three times and have no leads on the real culprit. More concerned with their image than protecting people, they try to downplay the case. Even after the killer secretly leaves another threatening matchbox in Soon-ae’s hospital room, the cops don’t provide any protection for her. They just tell her family to keep quiet with some lame excuses about protocol and their investigation.
That means it’s up to Hae-joon and Yoon-young, like always, to try to keep everyone safe. But although Hae-joon has been cleared of the murder and attempted murder, he’s got another problem. Dong-shik dug into his background and discovered that all his official records are fake. In fact, there’s no proof that Hae-joon even exists. Now, Dong-shik thinks he’s a spy, which could be worse for him than being a murderer in this period. Hae-joon has no choice but to tell him the unbelievable truth.
He has Dong-shik call in Principal Yoon and then takes them to his murderer investigation room and reveals everything – the time traveling, as well as his and Yoon-young’s true identities. Despite the police case files and future newspaper articles, they think he’s crazy. Until Principal Yoon spots the watch Hae-joon is wearing. He bought that same watch the day before and got it engraved to give to his future grandson. Principal Yoon is now sure Hae-joon is telling the truth, but Dong-shik takes a little more convincing.
After running a DNA test and sticking close to Hae-joon (who has fun freaking Dong-shik out by predicting all sorts of things like the results of baseball games and upcoming news items), Dong-shik finally accepts that he and Yoon-young are from the future. Even stranger for him is that Yoon-young is Hae-seob’s daughter, making them relatives. He’s bummed that she doesn’t know him in the future, having expected that he and Hae-soeb would stay close.
Principal Yoon is delighted that he and Hae-joon are family and takes him out for drinks, insisting he call him Grandfather. Hae-joon is awkward with him, not knowing what to do with Principal Yoon’s excitement and adoration. Principal Yoon senses Hae-joon’s distance and is sad to realize he must not have treated his grandson right in the future.
Speaking of awkward family encounters, Hae-joon spots his mom Chung-ah preparing to leave town. She throws away everything except for a box of baby stuff she clutches tightly. Hae-joon tries to just walk away, but Chung-ah asks him to walk her to the bus station that night.
As always, she’s friendly with him despite his sullenness and snappish responses. And oh, if looks could kill when Chung-ah casually says his mother must not be happy with him constantly risking himself to save other people. He does ask about the baby stuff and is taken off guard by her admission that she’s been collecting items for her precious son she’s already named Hae-joon. She’s been so excited to meet him, but now she has doubts.
Unlike what Hae-joon’s been told, she comes across less like someone who willingly abandons everything for selfish reasons and more like someone who’s running from something or someone. Given all the oddness surrounding Hae-joon’s family situation, it feels like there are lies afoot. What if Chung-ah was forced to leave, or worse, was killed after Hae-joon was born? The one man who hasn’t been investigated in all this murder business is Yeon-woo, and the timing of his arrival has always been suspicious. Serial killer or not, there’s definitely some shadiness going on with this family.
Despite his distraction over family matters, Hae-joon hatches a plan to go on the offensive. Since the cops are no help, Hae-joon decides to play to his strengths and goes to the press. Soon-ae’s dad is hesitant at first, but Soon-ae and her mom both support Hae-joon’s plan to go public with the case.
Soon-ae is interviewed by Seoul reporters, and a major segment is aired about the case and the police’s incompetence so far. It works to get the cops to protect Soon-ae, but they’re desperate to close a case and are prepared to pin the earlier murders on Min-soo and act like Soon-ae’s case is separate.
At least Hae-joon and Yoon-young now have Dong-shik on their side, and he is all in. He secures Hae-joon the matchbox from evidence to air on TV and lets Hae-joon meet with Min-soo in jail. With Min-soo’s help, they confirm his alibi, and Hae-joon takes taxi driver statements and medical records to the press as proof. This news segment finally forces the cops to release Min-soo and started searching for the actual killer.
While Min-soo’s release is good for the case, it’s terrifying for Mi-sook who prepares for the worst. Yoon-young spots her anxiously trailing behind her brother, and despite her own fear and trauma, approaches the siblings. She makes up an excuse to get Mi-sook away from Min-soo, at least for the moment. Yoon-young may hate Mi-sook, but she’s too empathetic to remain unaffected when Mi-sook breaks down sobbing. The girl may be terrible, but no one deserves to be abused and live in fear.
And then it’s time for a beach trip break! Not even time crunches to catch serial killers can get in the way of the all-powerful romantic trip to the ocean. Hae-joon whisks Yoon-young away for the day where they eat, walk along the beach, and chat about nothing. But she knows something is up. Hae-joon admits that he’s got a risky plan he can’t tell her about, but he promises to stay safe. (Something tells me things will go awry.)
His plan? Going on national news as a witness to Soon-ae’s attack and telling the world he saw the killer’s face. He and Dong-shik lie in wait that night, hoping their plan to lure the killer works. What they’re not expecting is to see Chung-ah walk through Hae-joon’s gate. She’s on the verge of tears, admonishing Hae-joon for endangering himself with his bold lie and tries to get him to leave immediately.
The pieces start to fall into place, but Hae-joon needs to hear it directly. Chung-ah says everything is hers – the red yarn rope used on the victims, the matchboxes. She cries that she was so excited to meet her baby, but now she’s horrified at the thought of him being “that person’s” son. Hae-joon stands in shock, his world crashing down, as he confirms that she’s talking about his father Yeon-woo.
He barely has time to process that before Yeon-woo arrives but is tipped off by noise from Dong-shik and takes off. And then we get the worst case scenario: the time-traveling car is missing. Hae-joon chases after his father, throwing himself in front of the car. He gets hit (not hard) and stares in fear at his father’s face bearing no trace of his usual, easy smile.
And with that, we head into the finale week. We finally know who the killer is, which is no surprise at this point. This drama has always centered around family, so it makes sense that the two people who become entangled in this case are family to the killer and victim respectively. Is that why Principal Yoon is so cold to Hae-joon in the future? Does he know what Yeon-woo has done and worry that Hae-joon takes after him? I guess it’s a relief that Yeon-woo didn’t raise Hae-joon himself and was only minimally involved in his life.
All that’s left now is to catch Yeon-woo, which is easier said than done. I’m not sure if Yeon-woo got the time machine part of the car working again (or even knows about it), but if so, they’ve just given a serial killer free rein to go on a multi-era killing spree. So that’s not great.
The remaining question is whether Yeon-woo is the one to kill Hae-joon in the future. Hae-joon didn’t see who killed him; he assumed from the matchbox that it was the serial killer, but Hae-joon often carries one of those around in 1987 with him, so it’s possible he just happened to have one on him at the time. Not that I would put murdering his son to avoid getting caught past someone like Yeon-woo. He hasn’t harmed him so far – Hae-joon even seems to have a decent relationship with his father – but that might just be because Hae-joon hasn’t gotten in his way thus far. While it’s possible Yeon-woo hasn’t realized Hae-joon is his son, if he figured out the time machine, it’s likely he put two and two together. Let’s hope he has some semblance of parental love or attachment that Hae-joon can use because he needs all the help he can get.