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The Heavenly Idol: Episodes 11-12 (Final)

The good news is: we’ve come to the end of our heavenly tale. The bad news is: to get to the end, we continue in our loop of confusion, plot twists, and conflicting information. There’s also a little bit of betrayal from the deities and their devotees, but yunno, nothing too serious.

 
EPISODES 11-12

The Heavenly Idol: Episodes 11-12 (Final)

Sigh. Where do I even begin? What started out as a really fun and lovely story slowly degenerated into such ridiculousness, that it’s hard to tell if this was the drama’s real destination from the get go or it lost its navigation midway and just decided to wing the rest of the journey.

As we approach the end of this very bumpy ride, Wild Animal is officially invited to the Korea Music Awards — their first ever invitation to an award show. Rembrary is also nominated in the Best Rookie category at a drama award scheduled for the same day. But since Rembrary is fully committed to Wild Animal, Dal has to turn down his appearance at the drama award show.

Naturally, Wild Animal is excited to be in attendance at the music award show, but their excitement fades with each category they lose out on. Jung-seo is a nervous wreck, and he has to step out mid-show to breathe — and then get chased by the devotees of the religious group because he reported them to the police for cult activities after they tried to scout him and drag Rembrary into the group as well. Phew! I really thought he had betrayed Rembrary by selling him out.

The Heavenly Idol: Episodes 11-12 (Final)

Wild Animal eventually wins the “Discovery of the Year award” (which is probably tongue in cheek for all the funny/nonsensical categories in these music award shows, lol) and their win stems from a practice video Jung-seo uploaded earlier in the year which got Wild Animal noticed. It’s such a full circle moment for Jung-seo, who has been plagued with self-deprecating thoughts about not doing enough as Wild Animal’s leader. The euphoric moment is made even better when he gets an “I’m proud of you” text from his mom in the hospital, and an assurance that she’s all better now thanks to Rembrary’s visit. Of course, he visited Mom!

But when Wild Animal goes on stage to perform, The Evil One arrives at the venue as a literal show stopper. It’s a show off of powers between Rembrary and Evil from the stage to outside the hall to the stairs, and Rembrary is stabbed — just as he’s announced as the Best Rookie over at the drama awards. Thus, the vow of confusion is fulfilled and Yeon-woo returns to his body as an award winner, while Rembrary goes back to meet The Other World in disarray no thanks to Yeon-woo’s antics over there. Ugh! Just when I think I can’t dislike Yeon-woo any further.

The Heavenly Idol: Episodes 11-12 (Final)

*Deep breath and exhale* Now, this is where the already confusing story takes an even more confusing and eye roll-inducing turn. Rembrary heads to Lord Redrin’s shine to seek her guidance, and she appears to him looking all bruised and tattered. She claims that the Master of her earthly devotees (the religious cult) stole her powers and severed ties with her, and the only way to defeat The Evil One is for her to kill Rembrary and harness the divine powers she bestowed upon him. Oh! She’s such a fraud.

Rembrary almost buys her story, until she slips up and he catches her in her lie. For someone who really trusted Redrin enough to willingly give his life for her, this is the ultimate betrayal, and Rembrary is furious. “The one who killed my family and friends was you! The deity I served my whole life!” he rages. Rembrary moves to destroy Redrin’s statue and obliterate her as well, but she manages to escape to the earthly realm.

Back on earth, the religious cult begins to massively recruit people and collect their souls under the guise of being a volunteer organization. Unfortunately, even reapers cannot fight the cult, and Rembrary is the only one who can. A fearless Dal then goes with Gam-jae to the Afterlife to request passage into The Other World in order to bring Rembrary back. And since everyone and their mothers have begun to cross realms now, what is one more realm for Dal? She’s granted her request to pop into The Other World, and she brings Rembrary back to the Afterlife.

In the Afterlife, Rembrary learns that Redrin created him using a part of her soul which is why he possesses a deity’s powers. And to destroy Redrin, the powers have to be separated from him and destroyed since they’re connected to her. There’s one slight problem, though — once the powers are destroyed, the people who have been supportive of him will no longer love or trust him. But the drama seems to have forgotten that just last week they said Rembrary did not get his powers from Redrin. *Rolls eyes*

The Heavenly Idol: Episodes 11-12 (Final)

At the moment I’m barely hanging on, and the first — and only — laugh the drama gave me this week is from when Rembrary confronted Yeon-woo at Wild Animal’s dorm, leaving the rest of the members reeling from the doppelgänger situation. But the ridiculousness soon returns when Yeon-woo changes forms to become an ahjussi, and that’s how we learn that “Yeon-woo” is actually a heavenly ahjussi who came to the earth five years ago to join Wild Animal.

Apparently, Ahjussi was envious of the pontifex’s face, capabilities, and powers, and wanted to be like him. So he struck a deal with Lord Redrin to become Rembrary’s alter ego on earth. Redrin promised to give Ahjussi divine powers if he made people on earth hate him, and it makes sense now as to why Yeon-woo was such an ass all along. No wonder when he gave Dal the signed CD back then, he told her that his calling is to heal people. Dude was just cosplaying Rembrary. Pfft.

And considering how Rembrary lost his powers when everyone hated him during the candy scandal last week, it’s safe to assume that Redrin intended for people to hate the alter ego and thus weaken Rembrary’s powers during his inevitable soul swap with Yeon-woo. But what I don’t understand is…why create Rembrary in the first place? What kind of sadistic being creates a person with a part of herself only to want to kill the person?

It turns out that Redrin feeds off on souls to get her powers, hence the religious cult and the humans signing away their souls to her with the help of the Afterlife’s stolen relic. Since Redrin’s source of power has now been exposed, Dal makes a vow to give up her soul in return for the destruction of the relic. And with the destruction of the relic, all the contracts ever signed with it are no longer binding. The souls get released, and Redrin loses her powers.

But giving up is not part of Redrin’s vocabulary, so she kills the Master and The Evil One as well to boost her powers for a final showdown with Rembrary — which she loses even after harnessing Rembrary’s powers, because, plot twist: Redrin isn’t even a real deity. She used to be… wait for it… the spirit of seaweed living in the ocean. Apparently, she once helped a human being, and the person worshipped her for it. So she began obsessing over becoming a perfect deity. Shoot me now! Redrin is a sea-freaking-weed!? I swear, you cannot make this stuff up.

The Heavenly Idol: Episodes 11-12 (Final)

At this point, I just want Gam-jae to wipe my memories of this drama — grim reaper style — but that’s obviously not going to happen. Besides, the reapers are too busy locking Redrin up in purgatory and erasing Dal’s memories of Rembrary no thanks to her vow of destruction.

In the end, Rembrary gets to keep living as Yeon-woo to help the Afterlife get rid of the remnants of black magic in the world. Wild Animal becomes so popular that they barely have time to rest, Sun-ja and Woo-shil (who used to date) rekindle their romance, and best of all, Gam-jae stops wearing black — becomes even hotter — and retains his job as Wild Animal’s roadie! Rembrary does need a hand with the black magic mission. Heh. Finally, Dal regains her memories of Rembrary, and all’s well that ends well.

Honestly, this show did the most for a 12-episode drama, and I’m disappointed at what could have been. I signed up for heavenly hijinks ft. grandpa Rembrary and the Wild Animals, and the drama was so much better when the focus was on Rembrary’s fish-out-of-water antics, and the occasional backhanded and fun criticism of the idol lifestyle. But the drama just had to go on and be everything everywhere all at once. Guess who’s not winning any Oscars? This show!

For an idol drama, there were no memorable songs, and as someone who’s a fan of drama OSTs, it was a let down. But the drama did provide me with a female lead that I actually liked. A lot. A poor and helpless female lead, Dal was not. Sure, she had her moments of weakness, but overall, she was such a badass. Whether it was Dal as a fangirl or as a manager, a girlfriend and even just as Dal as a person, she came through for Rembrary multiple times over the course of the show, and it was a really refreshing role reversal to see a female lead coming to the male lead’s rescue. My girl even got a scouting offer from the grim reaper, and it cannot get any more badass than that!

 
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@unit, thank you for this round up of the ridiculous. I am so sorry while we were all supporting our sister @daebakgrits in the Kokudu weecap camp it sounds like you were drowning too but we thought you were waving 🥺 because this drama seemed to be doing a much better job. Medals need to be handed all round but at least you got the consolation prize of a well written strong female lead.

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Thanks @unit for a recap that had a lot more laughs than this show did! I just wonder why they had so little music industry fun in this fantasy-- even something as simple as Rembrary trying to dance, or actually a legitimate Wild Animals song? Might as well have placed it in a prosecutor's office, or maybe in a taxi cab company, where there were a lot of ghosts rather than goblins hanging around.

I was thinking about the one logically consistent concept in this drama: that gods got their power from people worshipping them. That was apparently how the sea weed god got her power initially, because, after all, who doesn't occasionally feel reverence toward kelp? It has a wonderful rubbery texture!

But back to this concept of religion--is this some sort of backhanded slap at all faiths? Why did they put the final showdown in a Catholic church? Were the writers suggesting that Catholicism was legitimate as Rembrary's faith was not? OR were they saying that Catholicism is no better than worshipping sea weed? Maybe I have to give this show more credit than I am now, as being a very controversial statement of radical atheism!

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Your last paragraph on how the show was secretly an affirmative statement on radical atheism has actually made me unironically appreciative of the final product - even if it was probably completely unintended lol.

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Thank you so much for the recap! I completely agree with everything you wrote and am so relieved that I'm not alone in thinking: what?! But Dal was a great female lead so there was that. And also the change in Rembrary's power was totally perplexing- and then there was the shift back when Redlin lost all her power because she had killed the people who believed in her. I was also completely mystified by Redlin being a seaweed spirit and I'm not sure what the point of that was.

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Thanks for the recap! For me, Dal was the only good thing in this series as well. Otherwise… a waste of time unfortunately. Onwards toward better series!

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Blimey! The whole finale feels like a last minute scribble by ambitious students who initially wanted to hand in a exquisite report, but got tired at the end and submitted something with little sense. This is the first drama that I dropped 3 episodes before finale and I do not regret it one bit. @unit thanks for putting in lots of effort to help us, beanies, understand the events that transpired in the last two episodes because I feel like watching it would have made me lose brain function.

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It's always weird and funny to me when the last shot of the finale is the characters smiling and laughing at the camera. Maybe it's one of my black heart moments but it's not cute & cheerful to me, just weird and distracting because I'm thinking "why is this a thing". The other show that I remember doing this was Extraordinary Attorney Woo.

The sequence at the wild animals' dorm is the most hilarious to me of the entire series. It's so chaotic and unexpected; it felt weirdly appropriate/fitting with how the show started out. And another moment that made me laugh is how he kept calling Dal "nuna" and she was like "who are you calling nuna?! I can't even report him for fraud" haha. Talk about seeing behind the curtain & never meeting your heroes haha

It's also funny to me that he said he wanted to become an actor because actors seem to get hated by alot of people but he could only end up an idol/fail idol haha. I honestly don't know which occupation would get more hate but it's funny he said his face was the hinderance from getting either thing haha.

I only saw the actor who plays Audor ("real" Yeon Woo) in Blind so it was funnier seeing such a scary guy being comedic and submissive to Rembrary.

I didn't understand the rest of the story or mythology. I didn't understand why Redlin wanted to be worshipped but had the believers killed and terrorized. I didn't understand why they wanted Rembrary to kill himself. I didn't understand why Redlin turned on her own followers. I didn't understand why she made it seem like a hardship to be a god when she's the one who was making herself into one. Don't understand why she created or gave a piece of her divine powers to Rembrary. I *think* they said she had done it numerous times before but the priests all fell short and then came Rembrary who was perfect but it's all still weird & confusing.

Jung Seo surprised me because I did think he betrayed Rembrary (I stumbled in the show's trap haha) but I like that he was just a genuinely good guy and his first instinct was to try to save Rembrary by providing a distraction. That was such a big brother move, even if it looked ridiculous.

The resolution with the Evil Boys was weak to me and the conclusion Redlin and her followers was fairly weak to me.
I thought Rembrary won and was able to keep powers (even after Redlin extracted it twice) because he still had someone who believed and trustes him vs Redlin whose believers were dead or no longer believed in her. That's what I thought to the seaweed priestess/spirit thing was so bizarre haha. All it did was make me think of the little mermaid.

Also I kept thinking Redlin looks like the flight attendant from The Glory.

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Oh yes. Dal meeting Audor and him calling her Noona was hilarious.
And yes, I didn't like that ending with them just staring at each other. I mean, at least they found each other again. But I wanted a hug or a kiss.

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Redrin IS the flight attendant from The Glory, they are the same person: Cha joo young.

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I think Redlin actually got most of her powers from the dead souls, which would explain why she teamed up with the Evil One to keep taking all the followers down every few generations. She created the High Priests to have one person to faithfully believe she was a god and recruit followers based on their devotion to her. However, the High Priests kept becoming more powerful than her (more love from followers, letting power go to their head, and such), so she'd kill off everyone and start over. At least that's how I made sense of it.

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I kinda wish the subtitles had used Mawang instead of Devil or Evil One (when that was being said). Even if that is the translation or what it means, Mawang actually sounds like a name or title.

Like translations will use the characters' names even though oppa, unnie, nuna, or hyung is being said.

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Every time I see a finale where it ends with the leads smiling at the camera, I can’t help but feel that it’s a clever way of working through the lead actors not being able to be on set together at the same time. That’s probably not the case here, but I can’t help the feeling.

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Or not being able to do the more intimate ending for some reason, like in Live Up To Your Name where FL's actress caught a nasty cold and thus show had to write out the final kiss between OTP.

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That’s good to know insider info on Live up to your name as we wondered what happened with that ending.

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I remember being very disappointed myself before reading about this behind the scene mishap.

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So because of that nasty cold we couldn't watch our much awaited final kiss! I had no idea.
That ending was so weird (I adore that drama, anyways).

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Unit, thank you for recapping.
Well, ogres, devils, evil ones, reaper, true believers, evil idols, high priests, gods. Whew.

The whole evil part of the show was a mess. They should have kept it simple. They did keep it short at 12 Eps .
Go Bo-gyeol was the only highlight for me.

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Did this show make sense? No. did I still love it. Yes. I have no complaints. Let's watch it again.

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What a holy mess!

Echoing everyone else, I barely liked the final week aside of epic slipper beatdown, Yeon Woo's and Redrin's real identities, Dal finally meeting Rembrary in his own flesh and total happy end for all the good guys. Oh, and someone on production team REALLY is my fellow fandom believer, because my faves name was slipped in during award ceremony (with 1 letter change lol), how cool is that? Thanks for free promo, whoever it was! Other than that, I'm afraid, nothing made sense - or even tried to.

Redrin actually is one of less confusing cases - I think it makes more sense for native speakers, but apparently deity powers she gave Rembrary weren't her own (cause she wasn't originally a deity), but result of that clearly blind person's worship, and are functionally different from whatever divine-like powers she amassed from centuries of soul stealing. So she unknowingly gave her biggest asset to someone else - and when it became obvious, had to concoct the murder/suicide plan because it was the only way she could've get it back from him. Looks like Rembrary being BORN with powers made them truly belong to him - unlike with Redrin, who got them by mistake and kept with the help of black magic. So as long as he has believers to fuel the powers, he is, technically, a true deity. Hey, maybe it's even hereditary and their future kids with Dal will get it! Imagine a whole clan of spellsingers and healers! Pity that we'll never see it.

Must say, as much I didn't like Devil/Mawang, his ending was pretty sad. As someone on MDL pointed out, simp to the very end lol. I half wished he'd kill Redrin himself and then just left to atone for his many sins committed in the name of toxic love... Well, apparently not. Also Wild Animal's sudden rise didn't exactly feel earned - they never looked one bit professional or having any teamwork on stage, even after the "we're actually super close" revelation. So I'm glad for them... but I'm also not. And what happened to Evil Boys? Did they stay popular on their own accord? I hope they did. At least show kept Reaper, he'll turn those lazy asses into a decent group for sure)))

Romance ended on a pretty low note - not even a hug, seriously, show? I expected better from our ex-Pontifex with all his suave unholiness. Smiles also looked forced. Good luck with secret dating as a top idol though, this is gonna be challenge worse than all before that)))

KMK was great all the way, looking forward to his return from military. Serve well, dude! I think I'm also start paying attention to Go Bokyul and guy who played Reaper, he was hysterically on point every single time^^

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Dropped the show, kept the Recaps which as always, were brilliant!

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“Apparently, she once helped a human being, and the person worshipped her for it. So she began obsessing over becoming a perfect deity. Shoot me now! Redrin is a sea-freaking-weed!? I swear, you cannot make this stuff up”. I laughed so hard at this. Thanks@unit.

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Plankton from SpongeBob SquarePants came to mind when they revealed she was a sea weed.

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Honestly an all-powerful seaweed god is totally plausible given how goofy and off-the-rails unhinged the rest of the worldbuilding of this universe was.

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And, probably would have been a far more useful god as was at least edible!

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I liked this show for all its fun moments. It was really its best with over-the-top characters, cheesy scenarios, and low-budget special effects. I just knew this was going to end up a campy classic, but then... sigh. The main problem is that the drama started to take itself too seriously and make sense of an already thinly plotted storyline. I don't know why so many fantasy dramas can't stick with the rules of the world they created; so many change the magic rules during the finale to shoehorn an ending nobody asked for.

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Maybe the writer starts to think "this seems ridiculous, let me try to explain it so this or that plot hole doesn't happen" but then that leads to more plot holes or confusion.

Like I can understand they chose to focus more on the "heavenly" over the "idol" but I thought it would at least be a combination of the two like in the beginning. I could even get behind the evil one & his candy scheme to make Rembrary hated (I actually thought that was a good plan) but all the other parts of the story could've been better served in other ways such as showing the members practicing or hanging out with & without Rembrary to at least showed they were bonded in their hardship which would've the award and their future success feel more earned. Instead was telling us they were doing things and the early days of someone who was doing live streams or something.

I get that Dal needed to see Rembrary in action to believe he really a guy from another world with divine powers but the "rival" idol is yet another thing that could've possibly played differently.

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I am glad I dropped it midway.I feel for you @unit. After the mess that was Joseon Psychiatrist 2, you got to recap something even messier. I hope you get the healing drama that will make up for all of that. Thanks a lot for your hard and amazing work. I am sure the weecpas are far more entertaining

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The same person had to review JP2 !? Daebak that’s really bad luck with choosing 😂😱

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It can happen to any of us… we see the trailers and posters and jump in enthusiastically. Then we discover the promos were for the drama that was pitched not the one that came out of the rewrites months later. The actual drama is exposed gradually from episode 3 onwards and by the time we realise it’s not a blip this is the actual drama it’s episode 10 and too late😬

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🫶

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If Heavenly Idol was a camper van, Ep 1 would be me starting a road trip all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed in the seemingly roadworthy camper van, and Ep 12 would be me crossing the finish line/arriving in a symphony of clanks and clonks at the destination with said camper van barely held together with duct tape.

Having said that, I enjoyed the ride, even with the plot being barely held together with the loosest of in-world logic by the last episode. Like @unit, I really like Go Bo-kyul as the FL and I enjoyed her pairing with Kim Min-kyu. Overall, I like the campiness and zaniness of the drama and yes, even the evil characters. I might be in the minority wishing that this was the full 16 episodes instead of 12, because then the ending wouldn't have felt so cramped and rushed. But within the limitations of a 12-episode run, I think it did pretty well. It balanced humour and heart, and didn't let the evil side of things weigh down the plot. And whenever things got too heavy with the weight of choices and life circumstances, the script and actors were able to inject just the right amount of insight, heart and wit to propel the show forward again and not get mired in the plot.

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The mix of different kind of religions in different univers didn't really work. It was confusing and the fact the plot happened pretty much in the last episode didn't help.

The best parts were the ML had to acclimate to his new idol life.

I think KMK was good at the beginning but I think he should have changed his way to speak at the end. It souded like a flat electrogram. I didn't mind the words but it was lacking intonations overall in the serious scenes.

It's over and I have a bean!

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Oh Wow.
Was there a change in scriptwriters halfway through this show? There has to be some explanation why the show started out so well and then totally changed direction introducing multiple evil characters moving the focus away from what was best about the show, KMK being a fish out of water. There were just too many evil villians in this show that took away screen time to develope the Wild Animal members stories and Reaper who were all under utilised. In keeping with the idol theme why didnt they use Sasaeng fans -the dark and threatening side of Kpop idols instead of the whole seaweed/villian thing because seriously.... seaweed. The two leads were great but I think more time was needed to flesh out the two dimensional romance or it didnt need to go there as there was very little pay off for the romance at the end. As a show about idols why didnt we at least get one song/dance routine from Wild Animals? How cool would it have been to see them doing something, even if they literally did a parody when the closing credits were rolling, just something as we know KMK can sing.
Big sigh, for what might have been.

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Why would they have sasangs when they were fail idols with little to no attention?

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I am glad I dropped this one. My head would have exploded before the end.

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Thank you for recapping this mess! It was really hard to keep up with the multiple antagonists and their goals!

I really enjoyed it in the beginning and it was my must-watch-immediately for a couple of weeks until the story started bursting at the seams with all these sudden elements. I was still hopeful that we would get a good ending on the romance front but the messy amnesia followed by the memories quickly returning via a series of flashbacks, then ending on our OTP smiling at each other. But those smiles were acted/filmed in such a way, they looked really forced and cheesy. Like the two were smiling through the pain of being in this drama.

As much as I like Park Sang Nam and the reaper's interactions with Rembrary, he just felt extraneous. The writing for him really felt like someone was throwing things against the wall and to fill in screentime and cause unnecessary angst.

The Devil- for all his screentime- was just some useless loverboy.

I didn't mind that Redrin was a seaweed spirit (I'm used to C-drama xianxias and their flower spirits), but then that sort of threw another dimension to the world into our faces at the last minute. We started with the heavenly realm and the devil. Then we had the reaper/afterlife realm. Then there are the ogres and now spirits. Seems like every sort of supernatural thing is suddenly fair game. So do vampires, gumihos, and werewolves also exist? Let's throw in all the characters from Hwayugi too. Maybe they also exist here too.

Despite the messed up story, I hope everyone came out with good memories filming it and good paychecks.

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"????????????????????????????????" - my thoughts for this entire show

a huge thanks to @unit for being a legend and getting through...whatever this was. Im so glad past me made the decision to drop this back then as it definitely did not go how I expected it to be. Despite Dal being a great FL, that still wasnt enough to get me to stick around.

Quite disappointed with this March's kdramas, I've dropped almost all ongoing dramas as they just couldn't hook me :/

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Thanks for the recaps, @unit! You’re truly our strongest soldier. I too wanted so much better from this drama and got burned from every end. Ugh, I can’t believe this was Kim Min-kyu’s last pre-enlistment project, what a waste. Although I do have to agree with your assessment of Dal’s character, she was the one shining bright spot out of a sea of mediocrity. Props to Go Bo-kyul for giving me someone to root for because I certainly didn’t care about anybody else by the end.

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I wish the show had stuck to the fish-out of water concept and idol life and not complicated the deity storyline. The show should have focused more on Wild Animal as a team. There was a big potential for bromance!

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Exactly! That scene where the 4 members of Wild Animal finally find Cha Hae Gyeol, and all 5 of them get emotional was ‘bromedy’ gold. 🥰

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