Review of Gyeongseong Creature / 경성크리처 Season 2

If you’re new here and found this blog through the mysterious powers of the Internet, welcome! My name is Ashley, and I’m a dedicated reader and movie watcher who thought to turn this website into a little digital archive of sorts.

I was watching and reading so much that I wanted to keep track of it all, so I began blogging as a way to keep these books as memories somewhat forever.

That said, I recently fell into a period of unemployment, and this blog was a solace for me. Not only was it a way to make a little bit of money when there was nothing else coming my way really, but I found, after getting my finances in order, that I enjoyed sitting down to write blog posts when I had nothing else to do in my day.

If you like this review in the end, feel free to click around. This is my digital home, so I’m happy to have you here.

Lately, because I’ve been in this era I dubbed funemployment, I’ve been trying to catch up on all of the Korean dramas I’ve been meaning to watch. I watched season one of Gyeongseong Creature a bit ago, and was waiting for season two to come out since season one dropped.

I kind of liked season one, although in general I feel like I had mixed feelings about the show. It might’ve been better with a handful of more episodes, but not an entire full-fledged 16 episode season. I watched season two with an open mind, but man do I have some thoughts about how things went down.

Let’s get into the review, as we have a lot of ground to cover in a short blog post.

Several decades after the events of the first season, it looks like history is going to repeat itself.

We begin this season in the modern day. We do return to the postcolonial period of Korea, and Jang Tae-sang, for some context throughout this season, as well as some infuriating moments that would have you scratching your head at how they unfold. But for now, we’re in the present moment and Tae-sang is seemingly no more, having died of old age.

Instead we get Ho-jae, who happens to look exactly like Tae-sang. So when Yoon Chae-ok, seemingly immortal and wandering the streets of Seoul forever, runs across him, she thinks that she’s the old pawn shop owner. But as we said before, we have no idea what happened to him at first, so she learns quickly that this is a stranger.

Fate works in strange ways though, and mysterious things are happening in the streets of Seoul. We learn that the monster in the first season still exists in other ways, and that there’s an entire company looking to replicate the results from the first season.

So they get people to come in, telling them that they’ll give them a lot of money (it’s giving Squid Game in that plot line, but it also says a lot about the current situation in Korea if debt is becoming a reoccurring plot line) if they participate in a study. Turns out that’s injecting them with the monster, and only one candidate lives and becomes an actual monster.

Regardless, there’s a mysterious boy with powers after Chae-ok and Ho-jae on the streets, and he’s got a bit of a story on his own. No spoilers involving that, but it seems like old ghosts aren’t actually ghosts, no matter when you think they’re dead and gone for years now.

We also learn that Ho-jae doesn’t look like Tae-sang on accident, which is also another part of the journey of this show. I think most people could honestly guess this season and most of its plot, which is why I’m more settled into the camp of disliking the season overall.

Another thing is that we learn what happened with our beloved crew from the first season. If you were particularly attached to everyone who worked with Tae-sang and the pawn shop, I recommend you have some tissues ready. This isn’t going to be a particularly happy story, and I could see fans being divided on that aspect of the story.

Overall Thoughts

My instinct is that this show could’ve had something really good going for it, but it began losing steam towards the second half of the first season. Season two just felt like something that was forced to be a sequel, which if done right could have been great. But it didn’t come across that way to me.

Something that got on my nerves in season one was the fact there was this forced relationship, and we see that coming back into this season through different ways. I don’t mind a bit of romance in my shows, but I feel like if we’re getting it crammed in the second half, then it’s not worth it.

All in all, this wasn’t my cup of tea. The new characters felt half baked, and the story forced. If someone else likes this though, good for them. Neither of are wrong; taste is so subjective at the end of the day.

Go watch it if you’re interested and haven’t already. You might find it more worth it than me!

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