Ha, if I didn’t know any better, I would’ve thought that I was watching a trailer for a slasher film. The latest teaser for JTBC’s Age of Youth 2 has taken a turn and introduced a horror element to the show, in keeping with Korea’s tradition of telling scary stories in the summer (the logic is that the chills will chase away the heat). It’s not entirely unexpected, as the first season had an eerie mystery element to it, and it looks like the second season will follow suit. I was also happy to see Ryu Hwa-young (Father Is Strange) as Kang Unni again in the short clip, since I’m still sad that she won’t be returning for the second season.
The teaser begins with a house in the middle of the woods on a stormy night, where a hand slowly inserts a key into a door handle, and Jin-myung (Han Ye-ri) suddenly opens her eyes when Eun-jae (Ji-woo) calls her name. We are told that “women who will chill your innards are coming,” as the teaser backtracks to the girls setting out on a holiday. Their journey isn’t a smooth one though, as they nearly get into a car accident on the road. One of them notes shakily that they could’ve almost died, as another says offscreen that their mother told them this year was the first of three years of misfortune for them. Ominous.
The car makes its way through the woods to a bed and breakfast, and when Kang Unni knocks on the front door, we see a man pause while sharpening a knife. The girls are rightfully wary of the suspicious B&B owner, who sneaks glances at them having dinner and stands outside in the storm in a poncho and holding an axe(!!). I mean, I don’t think any of them will die or anything, but it doesn’t make it any less scary when the door to one of the girls’ rooms opens as they sleep, or when we hear them cry out each other’s names in distress. The teaser promises a beginning beyond our imaginations.
There’s also been some new stills and posters released for Age of Youth 2, which feature our new housemate Jo Eun, played by Choi Ara, and two of our new love interests, Kim Min-seok (Defendant) and Ahn Woo-yeon (Circle). I especially love the picture of our housemates all going to the public bathhouse together, including Park Eun-bin and Han Seung-yeon, because it was those slice-of-life bonding moments that I loved best about the first season.
Thankfully, there’s been a replacement found for Onew’s role as engineering student Kwon Ho-chang: It has been confirmed that rookie Lee Yoo-jin, best known for having taken part in Season 2 of Produce 101, will be joining the production by the middle of this week to take over as Ye-eun’s love interest. This means that he’ll start filming a couple of days before the first episode airs, which is a scary short amount of time, but I’m just glad they managed to find a replacement so soon. So far, it looks like he’s only done small supporting roles in shows like OCN’s Dr. Frost and MBC’s Goddess of Fire Jung-yi, though he was a lead in the web drama Sweet Youth. So I’m not sure what to expect in terms of acting ability, but hopefully, he’ll turn in a good performance.
We are less than a week away from Age of Youth 2, yay! The JTBC coming-of-age drama will air its first episode this Friday, on August 25.
