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God, it's been hours since I finished and I am still wrecked. WRECKED. The ending went beyond tragic and into this horrifying emotional bleakness I can't even begin to fathom. It was so overwhelmingly hopeless -- usually with sad endings I'm able to think "if only they'd done X instead of Y" and I can imagine happy AUs in my head -- but here there was nothing to change. IRIS was always going to win.
From annebeans:
I cannot help but think and replay in my head what will happen after the last minute of the drama. Seung Hee waiting by that lighthouse, eager and happy and slowly getting puzzled and worried not seeing him. And calling his phone and nobody picking up, and growing more and more panicky. And then driving off, to look for him, and seeing his car on the road, and finding him there, dead, with a ring for her.
My God.
That is horrific.
Losing him a second time, knowing it was her defiance of IRIS that got him killed -- honestly, I would've preferred a double-death or even suicide. Anything rather than this hanging knowledge of what's waiting for her in the car. I can't even... it just makes me so depressed.
God, I keep scrolling up to his face and seeing the weariness there, the helplessness of only being able to watch her from a distance as he dies.
When you think about it, they pretty much never had a chance -- Seung Hee was the NSS founder's daughter, Hyun Joon's parents were nuclear physicists working on the wrong project at the wrong time -- their paths were inevitable from the moment they were born. They couldn't even have been pig farmers if they wanted, not with Baek San puppeting their strings. This is a whole new definition of doom. This is a whole new stratosphere.
Other thoughts on eps 16-20 (I'm trying to stay coherent but I reserve the right to burst into tears and start wailing "HYUN JOON!!!!" at random intervals):
Sa Woo managed to break my heart in the end. I started crying (and then never stopped) when he redeemed himself and tossed Hyun Joon that clip and smiled -- there was so much joy in it -- taking on the bad guys together like old times. I should've known as soon as they started smiling in a gunfight it would end in tears. ;________; It killed me how he finally took responsibility in the one moment it would've been okay not to. He'd always justified and rationalized and blamed others for his fall from grace, but it was his last moments, when he could've allowed himself the comfort of happy memories, that he finally owned up to what he'd done and how he'd hurt his best friends. It was the slow slide that really got me -- happy BFF funtimes, then the building resentment, remembering them kiss while he looked on, then flash after flash of all the horrible things he'd said and done. Choking on blood to get out "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry." Oh, Sa Woo.
Sun Hwa, as always, was pure class. I loveloveloved the goodbye between her and Hyun Joon in ep 17. I'm used to secondary women as ruthless harpies who don't care if the hero is crying blood by the time they get him (as long as they get him). I thought it was very refreshing and adult that Hyun Joon and Sun Hwa parted on good terms with mutual understanding. It seemed clear some part of Hyun Joon did love her (or at least could have) but they both understood that with Seung Hee back in the picture it would never happen, so Sun Hwa gracefully took her leave and Hyun Joon didn't try to insult her with empty platitudes or promises. You go, guys! Look at you acting all mature like real adults.
I know it's terrible of me but I kinda lol'ed at T.O.P killing tech girl. It was just another moment of IRIS realism, so rare in other dramas -- no, the handsome assassin isn't really in love with you, he's a sociopath who will snap your neck when you're of no further value.
One of the things that stuck with me is how Hyun Joon consistently refused to become a monster, yet it didn't actually help him sleep at night. There were so many solemn warnings about slippery slopes and gazing into the abyss and etc etc but Hyun Joon always rose above it and you'd think karma would cut him a break every once in awhile. CLEARLY THAT WAS TOO MUCH TO ASK. Even when he did everything right, it still hurt. Turning the other cheek only haunted him. Sparing Baek San's life was only fodder for future regrets. Even when the terrorists were dead and Seung Hee was alive and everything seemed to go back to normal, he was still PTSD'ing on a bustling street and clinging to Seung Hee like a lifeline -- it broke my heart when she disappeared for less than a day (a day!) and he called her over and over and when she finally reappeared he was almost shaking with relief. Even if Seung Hee soothed the nightmares, love alone couldn't fix him. He was so incredibly, incredibly messed up, and it was all the more heartbreaking because he stubbornly refused to become what everyone predicted. He was a good man, and it still wasn't enough in the end.
(I'm pretty confident he was only killed as a message to her. He'd been all up in IRIS's business and they never came after him, not even when he was plotting revenge on one of their own, not even when they knew he had access to their secrets, like their member list on the USB drive they sent TOP to retrieve. They had two years to go after him but didn't. He was only killed after Seung Hee refused to join/didn't follow orders. That screams message to me.)
I keep coming back to the inevitability of everything, how things were pretty much set in stone after IRIS moved on them. Because there was only ever two choices there. Refuse, and suffer the consequences, or be kept under IRIS' thumb and keep living the nightmare they were so desperate to escape. They should've just killed themselves, they were never going to have peace. I should stop watching so many samurai movies.
Musing on it... I keep saying "IRIS" like it's this faceless borg (I can't help it, it's just so much like the mob, THEY NEVER FORGET), but what if the sniper order came from Baek San?? He was only ever hospitalized, right? And Hyun Joon said himself that a man like that would never change, he should've killed him when he had the chance. What if Hyun Joon was prophecizing his own death? Maybe it's not the mysterious black cloaks of IRIS who wanted Seung Hee so badly, maybe it was just Baek San using them as justification. What if it was Baek San ordering a hit on his quasi-daughter's soon-to-be-fiancee??
I admit, when we first learned Seung Hee's connection to IRIS, I kinda snorted and thought "that's it?" I mean, Baek San paid for your college education so if he asked you to kill Hyun Joon you'd be in a real bind? Seriously? Buy him a fruit basket and move on.
Then I thought about Baek San's original order in ep four... how it would've gone to Seung Hee if Sa Woo hadn't taken it. Knowing what we do about the relationship between BS/SH/IRIS, if Sa Woo had been a loyal friend and refused... we might've been watching a much bloodier romance between Hyun Joon and Seung Hee.
Something pointed out by Mousie -- all these people died for the unification talks which may or may not come to anything. Even Hyun Joon didn't think they were worth it (if his conversation with the president is anything to go by). It reminds me of Capital Scandal, where you-know-who died to keep a secret that was made public in the very next episode. The futility and bitterness is just boggling. They didn't die for a noble cause and they won't be remembered except by those who knew them. It was just politics.
I want to believe Seung Hee will do what she did last time -- pick up the pieces of her life, rejoin NSS, and move on. I want to think if she can recover from his death once, she can do it again. Except I honestly don't believe it. Last time she had to be hospitalized. Last time she still had Sa Woo's shoulder to cry on and Baek San looking out for her. And last time she didn't think it was her fault. How do you recover from that?
I kinda wish the sequel would be about Seung Hee or Sun Hwa, or even both, getting mercilessly, passionately, implacably furious and bringing hell to IRIS's door. No redemption story or power of love or moral message about the real victims of revenge. Just one of them -- or both -- deciding to take IRIS the fuck down, and god forbid anyone standing in their way.
Wouldn't that be awesome?
I'm going to end this entry on that thought, rather than linger on Seung Hee waiting to find the car.
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