Dear X Review: A Psychological Tragedy About Survival, Control, and Obsession

A deep dive into Dear X, where loyalty, usefulness, and ambition collide in a story that feels less like a twist and more like a tragic inevitability.

Korean Drama Name: 친애하는 X (Dear X)

Where To Watch: Viki, Disney+ ← *Click for direct link*

Average Rating: 8.1/10 (Mydramalist)

My Rating:7.5/10

One Sentence Description: Dear X tells a haunting story of people who learned how to survive, but were never taught how to live, and paid the price for it.

Trailer:

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Disclaimer: This review is 100% my opinion — I’m not here to hate, just to share my thoughts! Also, SPOILERS AHEAD, so proceed with caution if you haven’t watched yet. Watch it, come back and let’s see if you agree. Let’s keep the discussion respectful and fun! 💕

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CONTENT WARNING:I hope you’ve already seen this show and know what the deal is. But in case you don’t, I felt like I should add in a little warning. This show is Violent and has heavy mentions of Domestic Abuse (Including toward a Child), Trauma, and Suicide. This is a psychological breakdown so there will also be a lot of psychological talk! And since this is a review, I do also talk about this (in relation to the show only). Please be aware of that before you continue and be mindful of it. Stay safe ❤️

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Simple Description

Dear X is about a girl with antisocial personality disorder who’s willing to do just about anything to reach the top; even if it means a body or two gets left behind along the way.

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⚠️Length Note: This post includes a detailed (and long) story breakdown. Want to skip straight to the review? Jump to the Review

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The Review

The Good

Acting That Said “Don’t Blink”

I think we can all agree the acting in this drama was top-tier. Kim You Jung completely disappeared into her role and delivered one of her strongest performances yet. She sold every moment, and honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if she walked away with an award for it. Kim Young Dae also impressed me; he really embodied his character, and I’m glad we got to see him shine here. Same goes for Kim Do Hoon. Everyone pulled their weight, and it just proves my point: acting can make or break a show way more than people realise.

Somehow, This All Still Made Sense

This drama felt like it was split into three clear parts: Ah Jin, Jung Ho, and the father; Ah Jin in her actor era; and finally Ah Jin with her extremely unsettling husband. Despite how dramatic those shifts are on paper, the story mostly flowed from one phase to the next.

The final part does feel a little random, but not in a way that comes completely out of nowhere. A lot of that comes down to how the show planted small seeds before each major shift. The CEO trying to scout Ah Jin throughout high school and beyond, or her husband stepping in to get her out of trouble, were things that quietly set the stage. By the time the plot fully pivots, it feels earned. Pulling that off is harder than people think, so I appreciated how well it came together.

Okay Fine, The Writers Knew What They Were Doing

When I first finished this drama, I thought the writers were just being cruel for the sake of it. Every character felt deeply messed up, and not always in a way that was immediately satisfying. It wasn’t until I went down a full research rabbit hole that I realised just how intentional everything actually was.

Once you start breaking down the characters psychologically, it all clicks into place. I get into that more below, but fair warning: once you see it, you can’t unsee it. I originally rated this drama a 4.5/10, but that was before I fully understood how layered and deliberate the writing really was.

Beneath the Surface Pt.1: The Psychology That Shaped Them

When I first watched this drama, I thought Baek Ah Jin was selfish and cruel, and that Jun Seo and Jae Oh were confusing, obsessive, and impossible to root for. But after spending time researching trauma and mental disorders, my perspective has shifted completely. For anyone who might have had the same first impression as I did, I’ve broken down their inner worlds as simply as possible, so we can see not just what they did, but why their minds led them there. I broke this up into two groups: this one is mindset focused and the other one (in The Bad section) is action focused. Let’s begin:

**Quick heads-up: I want to make it clear that I’m not a psychologist and I’m not trying to force a diagnosis onto these characters. Everything I’ve written comes from my own interpretation, and I could very well be wrong. My goal isn’t to excuse their actions, but to explore the psychological roots behind them in a way that makes their stories easier to understand.**

Baek Ah Jin: Why “Selfishness” Was Survival 

Baek Ah Jin is one of those characters who looks cruel on the surface but starts to make sense once you look at the world she grew up in. From the start, her life taught her that love was dangerous and trust was a trap. An alcoholic mother who beat her, a father who killed that mother in front of her eyes, and a stepmother who plotted to exploit her—none of the adults in her life ever offered safety. When you grow up in a house where affection is always conditional and betrayal is inevitable, you don’t learn how to be vulnerable. You learn how to survive.

When she later manipulated Jun Seo as a child, it wasn’t because she enjoyed hurting him. It was because she understood that being needed, believed, and protected was the only way she wouldn’t be discarded. After his mother’s attempt to drown her, that belief hardened into something permanent. From that point on, Ah Jin didn’t see manipulation as immoral. She saw it as necessary.

What made Ah Jin unsettling was that she carried this survival logic into every stage of her life, even when it no longer protected her. She grew up viewing people less as emotional connections and more as variables: who is safe, who is useful, who is a threat. She avoided attachment not because she felt nothing, but because feeling something always ended badly. Ah Jin wasn’t driven by ambition or malice as much as she was by a deep belief that closeness led to harm and that the only way to stay standing was to stay ahead. 

Yun Jun Seo: Devotion Without a Self

Jun Seo’s devotion felt extreme until you realise his entire sense of self was built around guilt and moral splitting. From childhood, he learned that love meant responsibility and that protection meant sacrifice. His home wasn’t safe, but it was rigidly structured around power, silence, and image. When Ah Jin entered his life, she didn’t just need help, she gave him clarity. By framing herself as the only one who cared and his mother as the threat, she offered a simple moral map to a child who desperately needed one. Watching his mother try to drown her didn’t just traumatise him, it locked that map in place. 

That’s why her manipulation worked so well: his childhood had already primed him to believe that his mother was “bad” and Ah Jin was “good,” and once that split took hold, it never left. Protecting Ah Jin became synonymous with being a good person and from that moment on, loyalty wasn’t a choice. It was a duty, and abandoning her would have meant becoming like the adult he had already decided was unforgivable.

What complicated Jun Seo was that even as he grew older and became aware of Ah Jin’s manipulation, that moral framework never fully dissolved. He could recognise her actions as wrong without being able to reclassify her as bad; because doing so would collapse the meaning of his entire childhood. So he separated the two: Ah Jin does terrible things, but Ah Jin herself is still good and needs protection. That was why her manipulation continued to work into adulthood. It didn’t rely on deception anymore, it relied on identity. 

Jun Seo fused himself to Ah Jin so completely that without her, he had no sense of self. That’s why he carried guilt for not protecting her, why he wrote a book about her life, and why he kept orbiting her, even when she didn’t need him anymore. His obsession wasn’t something he wanted or enjoyed, it was something he felt trapped inside. Walking away wouldn’t just mean leaving her, it would mean admitting that years of loyalty, sacrifice, and suffering were built on a false premise. Murder remained the one line he wouldn’t cross because killing would destroy the last illusion that his devotion was moral rather than compulsive. 

By the time Jun Seo reached adulthood, his life was no longer about wanting Ah Jin in a romantic sense, but about not knowing who he was without her. Loyalty had stopped being about her happiness and started being about preserving his own coherence. That’s why leaving was never an option, and why exposing her became the final, desperate attempt to resolve an impossible conflict. If he couldn’t save her and he couldn’t detach from her, then ending everything became the only way to remain consistent with the person he believed himself to be. 

Jun Seo wasn’t tragic because he loved too much. He was tragic because he was taught too young that loyalty was the only way to survive.

Kim Jae Oh: A Life Defined by Usefulness

Kim Jae Oh’s loyalty may look noble but it’s really the product of emptiness. Growing up under an abusive father who seemed lost in delusion, he never learned to see himself as valuable. He wasn’t protected, praised, or guided, only tolerated. In that kind of environment, you don’t grow up wondering who you are, you grow up wondering what use you serve. 

So when Ah Jin told him he had “use,” he mistook that for validation. It didn’t matter that she meant it in the coldest, most transactional way, he heard it as proof that he mattered. He wasn’t looking for love or belonging, he was looking for permission to exist. For the first time, someone wasn’t asking him to disappear or endure, but to do. That single moment rewired his sense of identity, and from then on, his life revolved around being useful to her.

What made Jae Oh different from Jun Seo was that his loyalty didn’t come from guilt or moral duty, but from validation. He never needed Ah Jin to be good. He only needed her to need him. That’s why her manipulation worked so easily and why it never truly stopped. He didn’t need promises or affection, he needed to believe he had a role. Even after prison, even after years apart, he carried her with him not as a person, but as a purpose. Drawing her, remembering her, waiting for her call weren’t signs of romantic obsession so much as they were proof that his life still had direction. His usefulness became his identity, and without it, he had nothing. Where Jun Seo struggled with moral conflict, Jae Oh felt none. His self-worth was entirely external, and Ah Jin was the source.

When Ah Jin begged for help, sacrificing himself felt like the ultimate fulfillment of his identity. Dying for her wasn’t tragic in his mind, it was the perfect ending. It was proof that his existence had meaning. His loyalty wasn’t driven by cruelty or romance, but by a lifetime of emptiness that convinced him that being used was the closest thing to being loved. 

So even when Jun Seo warned him not to end up empty like him, Jae Oh couldn’t understand the fear. Emptiness was all he’d ever known. Purpose, even if it costed him everything, felt like more than he was ever promised. Jae Oh wasn’t tragic because he gave his life away. He was tragic because no one ever taught him that his life was his to keep.

The Triangle of Survival

What binds Ah Jin, Jun Seo, and Jae Oh together is not circumstance, but compatibility at the level of survival psychology. Each of them learned how to exist in a hostile world in a different way. Ah Jin survived by using people, Jun Seo survived by enduring people, and Jae Oh survived by erasing himself for people. Each of them were shaped by trauma, but the way they carried it forward was different, and that difference was what locked them together. 

For Ah Jin, the world was cruel, weakness was unforgivable, and survival meant control. She didn’t experience events as choices she made, but as inevitabilities forced on her. Jun Seo, bonded to her through shared terror and loyalty. His identity fused around staying, protecting, and remaining faithful, because loyalty felt like morality to him. If he stayed, he was good. Jae Oh, bonded through usefulness, erases himself in service. He believed, “If I’m useful, I deserve to exist,” and feared irrelevance more than pain or death. Both looked to Ah Jin not for love, but for meaning — Jun Seo needed her to mean something, and Jae Oh needed her to assign meaning.

Together, they formed a triangle of toxic devotion. Ah Jin manipulated because she felt she must, Jun Seo clang because he couldn’t let go, and Jae Oh sacrificed because he had nothing else to give. At that level of mindset alone, they formed a closed psychological system where each person’s way of surviving quietly reinforced the others.

Ah Jin’s detachment, Jun Seo’s obsession, and Jae Oh’s self-erasure weren’t random dramatics; they’re the inevitable outcomes of lives built on abuse, abandonment, and the desperate need to matter.

The Paths That Were Already Set

It’s important to say outright: none of this is Ah Jin’s fault. Jun Seo and Jae Oh didn’t become who they were simply because she entered their lives. Their survival scripts were already written long before they met her. She was the catalyst, not the cause. If Ah Jin had never entered their lives, the outcomes might have looked different on the surface, but the damage underneath would still have been there. The triangle doesn’t exist because she is evil or because they are weak, but because each of them carried wounds that demanded an outlet. Jun Seo didn’t spiral because of love alone, he spiraled because attachment was the only place he ever felt real. If it hadn’t been Ah Jin, it would have been someone else, something else, some other person who gave his pain a shape. Jae Oh didn’t die because he chose Ah Jin, he died because he had already learned that his life only mattered when it was spent for someone else.

Meeting Ah Jin gave those wounds a stage, but the play would have been performed regardless. Even without her, he would have kept giving pieces of himself away until there was nothing left. 

Ah Jin’s story is the clearest example of how different paths don’t always mean different endings. If she had been sent to an orphanage instead of staying with her stepmother, she might have escaped direct abuse, but not abandonment. She would have learned early that love is temporary, conditional, and easily taken away. That kind of lesson still hardens you. It still teaches you to control before you’re controlled, to leave before you’re left. And even if she had been adopted into a genuinely loving family, that wouldn’t have erased her past overnight. She might have grown softer, yes. She might have learned trust. But trauma doesn’t disappear just because kindness arrives late. It lingers. It whispers. It resurfaces in moments of fear. A different environment could have changed her tools but not necessarily her instincts.

That’s the tragedy of all of them. Their lives weren’t destroyed by one person entering them, they were shaped by wounds that were already looking for somewhere to land. Ah Jin didn’t create Jun Seo’s obsession or Jae Oh’s sacrifice; just as they didn’t create her cruelty. Their triangle is tragic not because it was unavoidable, but because in another world—with different families, different environments, different chances—they might have been something else entirely.

The Bad

Beneath the Surface Pt.2: The Paths They Couldn’t Escape 

You understand their mindsets (hopefully) and the cause for who they’ve become, but now I’d like to explain to you how it affected their actions and how it led to Jun Seo and Jae Oh’s eventual death. All the pieces are there, they just need to be connected. So allow me the honour:

**Quick heads-up: I want to make it clear that I’m not a psychologist and I’m not trying to force a diagnosis onto these characters. Everything I’ve written comes from my own interpretation, and I could very well be wrong. My goal isn’t to excuse their actions, but to explore the psychological roots behind them in a way that makes their stories easier to understand.**

Baek Ah Jin: A Life That Only Moves Forward

Baek Ah Jin’s actions often read as selfish because she treated people as tools, but the way she did it followed a consistent internal logic. She never trusted Jung Ho, only used him. His kindness was something she couldn’t afford to believe in, so she turned it into utility—faking injuries, playing the victim, and ultimately manipulating him into killing her father. He rushed to her side without hesitation, even abandoning an important meeting to protect her, and ultimately destroyed his own life believing he was saving her. That was exactly why Ah Jin never let herself care about him. People like Jung Ho act independently, interfere without permission, and most importantly, take control out of her hands; that makes them emotionally unsafe. Using him wasn’t about malice, it was about keeping control over a situation where trusting his goodness could’ve cost her everything.

The grandmother was different because she offered warmth without authority or obligation. The grandmother didn’t rescue Ah Jin or control her, she simply saw her and cared. That kind of love disarmed Ah Jin in a way Jung Ho never could; which was why the grandmother’s death hit her so deeply. Losing her confirmed Ah Jin’s belief that attachment only creates weakness. That belief directly led to her cruel breakup with In Gang. In Gang was emotionally fragile and deeply dependent, and after watching someone she genuinely cared about die, Ah Jin couldn’t tolerate that kind of need clinging to her. Ending the relationship coldly was a defensive act — cruelty as a clean severance. 

When she later hallucinated In Gang in the bathtub and called him weak, it wasn’t hatred or denial, it was how she survived the guilt. In Ah Jin’s world, weakness was not a tragedy, it was a liability that gets people killed.

With Jun Seo, she leaned on his loyalty but resented his emotional demands, often insulting him for not killing on her behalf. Jae Oh, by contrast, asked for nothing except to be useful. She didn’t need to manage his emotions or promise him a future. Each of those choices flowed from the same logic: people weren’t safe to trust, but they could be managed, exploited, or discarded. 

Ah Jin’s cruelty wasn’t random, it was the survival strategy of someone who believed the world would always betray her unless she stayed one step ahead. 

*If you’re interested in a deeper breakdown of Baek Ah Jin, click here! We break down everything*

(Jun Seo And Jae Oh’s Ending’s Explained)

Yun Jun Seo: A Death Written in Devotion 

Jun Seo didn’t rush toward death. He drifted toward it. Long before the crash, he began dismantling himself in small, deliberate ways. 

Moving back in with his mother wasn’t forgiveness or reconciliation, it was resignation. His childhood had taught him that she was toxic, yet stepping back into that space symbolised surrender, the collapse of the identity he had built around Ah Jin. He was also choosing to give his mother something gentle so that she didn’t unravel after he was gone; even though he himself had already detached from her emotionally. That’s very Jun Seo. He had always managed pain by absorbing it quietly and redirecting it away from others. By this point, Jun Seo wasn’t living toward anything, he was just closing loops. 

By living with her again, it striped him of the last illusion he was protecting himself with: that enduring pain had a purpose. When that belief collapsed, what was left wasn’t rage, but hollowness. He wasn’t angry anymore. He was tired. And the photos? That’s even colder, and very intentional. For his mother’s sake, getting rid of them wasn’t about anger. It was about refusing her narrative. Photos are proof of connection, of shared history. By destroying them, he was saying: You don’t get to keep a version of me you never truly knew. Even in death, he denied her access. He left her with memories he chose, not ones she could reinterpret. 

For his sake, this wasn’t impulsive or symbolic in a dramatic sense, it was closure. Those photos represented the version of himself who once believed loyalty could save him, that choosing Ah Jin over his mother made him good. By getting rid of them, Jun Seo wasn’t rejecting his past, he was letting go of the story that justified it. Writing the book and agreeing to expose Ah Jin worked in the same way. They weren’t acts of revenge, control, or cruelty. They were attempts to finalise things and to tell the truth once, in a way that didn’t require him to live afterward.

Jae Oh’s death was what finally broke him. Jae Oh died willingly for Ah Jin. Not out of loyalty, but out of erasure and that act forced Jun Seo to confront something unbearable: that his lifelong sacrifice had changed nothing. Ah Jin didn’t stop. The cycle didn’t end. His loyalty was suffocating, but it was also the only thing keeping him alive. Betraying Ah Jin was the last thing he ever allowed himself to do, and only because he didn’t plan to survive it. Loyalty had always defined him, so breaking that was not liberation, it was permission to die. 

His decision to take Ah Jin with him wasn’t driven by hatred or possessiveness, but by exhaustion. In his final moments, Jun Seo was acting on a belief that had governed his entire life: separation was worse than death. Letting Ah Jin leave the car would’ve meant: She survived, he died alone, and their bond would finally break. And that was the one outcome his psyche couldn’t tolerate. To him, her trying to escape isn’t survival, it’s abandonment. Not in a manipulative sense, but in a deeply disordered attachment sense. His last act isn’t about trapping her. It’s about preserving meaning at the only scale he understands: together or nothing.

He doesn’t stop her because he wants her to suffer. He stops her because if she leaves, his life ends having meant nothing to the one person it revolved around. That’s why the scene is so painful. Not because it’s dramatic but because it’s honest to who he’s always been. It wasn’t necessarily because he wanted to die, but because he no longer knew how to live without disappearing.

*If you’re interested in a deeper breakdown of Yun Jun Seo, click here! We break down everything*

Kim Jae Oh: When Being Useful Is Enough

Jae Oh’s death wasn’t just a plot twist, it was the culmination of his entire existence. 

Throughout his life, he existed on the margins. Not because he was passive, but because he never believed he was meant to take up space. When Ah Jin asked for help at the end, he didn’t weigh alternatives or imagine a future beyond that moment. He chose sacrifice immediately because, to him, that wasn’t loss. In a world that had convinced him he was worthless, dying for Ah Jin was the only way he believed he deserved to exist. For him, usefulness was the only measure of worth, and sacrificing himself for Ah Jin was the ultimate proof that he had value. 

His final vision of her wasn’t romantic, it was stabilising. Seeing her one last time confirmed that his existence mattered in at least one concrete way. When he said that all he wanted was to be used by her, he wasn’t declaring love. He was stating a conclusion: that his life, which never felt owned by him, finally served its purpose. 

Dying for her meant he had finally achieved the role he’d been chasing since childhood: indispensable, irreplaceable, needed. 

Unlike Jun Seo, who collapsed under the weight of obsession, Jae Oh’s ending was almost serene. Jae Oh died because he wanted to. Jun Seo died because he could no longer endure living. Jae Oh erased himself completely, leaving nothing behind but the certainty that he had been useful.

What makes this all the more painful, was that Jae Oh’s sacrifice didn’t stop Ah Jin or redeem her — and he never expected it to. That was the tragedy. His action was internally coherent but externally meaningless. He left the world unchanged, except for the damage his absence caused. In the end, Jae Oh didn’t die to save anyone. Not entirely. He died because it was the only moment in his life where he felt undeniably real. (And when you watch his final scene, you can see it in his eyes.)

*If you’re interested in a deeper breakdown of Kim Jae Oh, click here! We break down everything*

“If You’re Always Looking for More, You’ll Miss the Good You Have”

Baek Ah Jin was always looking for more, and I think that’s where her downfall truly began. I understand that her childhood taught her that slowing down wasn’t safe and that survival meant constant movement. But even knowing that, I couldn’t help asking: what would’ve ever been enough for her?

I understand why the In Gang situation pushed her over the edge, but it always felt like she was chasing something she wasn’t even sure existed. My mom used to tell me, “If you’re not happy internally, no matter where you go, you’ll never be truly happy.” I used to brush that off, but I’ve found it to be painfully true. Ah Jin kept chasing “more” without ever addressing the fact that she was deeply miserable inside.

That’s why I still wonder why she climbed out of that car and fought to survive when everything she thought would bring her happiness had already crumbled. In the end, nothing she gained ever filled the emptiness she was running from.

An Antisocial Personality Disorder Disservice

I always feel uncomfortable when deeply traumatised characters are slapped with a “bad” disorder to justify their actions. It reminded me a lot of It’s Okay to Not Be Okay (check out that review here!), where a mental disorder was consistently hinted at as a way to explain away cruelty.

ASPD already carries heavy stigma, and portrayals like this don’t help. It’s completely fine to write a character who is cold, manipulative, and willing to kill to get what they want. But it becomes a problem when a real mental disorder is used as shorthand for “evil.” Many people with ASPD are not emotionless, not constantly cruel, and not destined to become violent. People with ASPD can form attachments (often unstable or conditional), experience anger, boredom, jealousy, fear, shame, and sometimes even remorse — though they may rationalise harm instead of emotionally processing it.

The show didn’t need a diagnosis to explain Ah Jin. Her trauma already did that work. Next time, they should’ve done what I did: let her past explain her actions instead of reinforcing stereotypes about a disorder that people already misunderstand.

Timeline Trouble

This one might just be me, but I did get confused by the timeline at times. In episodes three or four, Sung Hee’s voiceover describes Ah Jin as a devil while she’s in a mental asylum, but that reveal doesn’t actually happen until much later, after Jun Seo’s documentary.

It’s not a huge issue, but it did blur the line between present, future, and retrospective narration. At times, I found myself wondering if the entire drama was meant to be framed as a documentary about Ah Jin and honestly, that would’ve been brilliant.

Ah Jin May Have Triggered In Gang — But It Wasn’t All on Her

I still haven’t recovered from In Gang, but I felt like I needed to add this; especially because I hated Ah Jin for this too. And before anything else, I want to be clear: I am not excusing her actions. He was going through one of the lowest points of his life and she absolutely threw gasoline on the fire. You could argue that her cruelty was a defense mechanism after the grandmother’s death, but I’m not using that to let her off the hook.

That said, I do think it’s important to acknowledge that In Gang killing himself wasn’t caused by her words alone. They may have been the trigger, but she can’t shoulder the full blame. He had been struggling with guilt and depression for years, and if you know anything about depression, you know it comes in waves. Just because his time with Ah Jin lined up with a period where things felt lighter doesn’t mean staying with her would’ve prevented another crash. That’s just not how it works.

We also don’t know what was going on in his mind in the days leading up to his death. As much as I wanted to pin it all on her, the truth is more uncomfortable than that. She fueled the flames, yes, but she didn’t start the fire.

The Open Ending Nobody Asked For

The open ending felt completely unnecessary. She should’ve either died or disappeared. Watching Ah Jin claw her way to the top, lose everything, and then still fight to survive didn’t feel consistent with her character. This is the same woman who was willing to stay married to a man she knew was dangerous just to avoid losing her status. So what was her plan after this?

She had always equated success with happiness, but how was that supposed to work when all of Korea was actively looking for her? There was nowhere left to run, no system left to manipulate, and no version of control that still made sense.

On top of that, two of the three most compelling characters were dead. Why keep the story going when Jun Seo and Jae Oh are gone? It felt less like a meaningful ending and more like a weak attempt to leave room for a second season (one I don’t think anyone actually wants). If the best characters are gone, what’s the point?

Why Was Sung Hee Even Still Here?

Can someone explain why Sung Hee was allowed to live with Ah Jin, eat her food, and steal her clothes? She didn’t seem to have any leverage over Ah Jin, so keeping her around felt completely random.

Then she just disappears once Ah Jin moves in with Do Hyuk, only to suddenly reappear and try to kill her. And I’m sorry, but how? Do Hyuk had cameras everywhere, power over practically everyone, and a surveillance setup that bordered on absurd. How was Sung Hee able to sneak into his house in the first place? It didn’t add tension, it added confusion. Sung Hee’s presence stopped feeling purposeful and started feeling like the writers didn’t know what to do with her but weren’t ready to let her go.

Moon Do Hyuk Was Introduced Way Too Late

I don’t understand why they introduced such a complex character this late in the story. Do Hyuk clearly had possession issues and an unsettling amount of power, and yet he shows up at the very last minute. What exactly was he doing to Ah Jin? Drugging her food? Manipulating her mentally? And when he said he wanted her to completely depend on him, what did that even mean? He already controlled her career, her public image, and basically her entire life. She was already in the palm of his hand. So what more was he trying to achieve?

Then there’s the brief mention that his wife was sent to a psychiatric hospital that he owns and it’s never brought up again. Why introduce the idea that Do Hyuk might be holding his ex-wife hostage in his own facility if you’re not going to do anything with it? Add to that Sung Hee, who somehow completely unravels after encountering him. What was that supposed to tell us?

His entire arc felt rushed and hollow, like they needed a reason to stretch the season to twelve episodes. Do Hyuk was simply too layered, too disturbing, and too important to be handled this lazily.

How Did Ah Jin Snap Out of His Control?

This might be a smaller issue, but how exactly did Ah Jin break free from whatever Do Hyuk was doing to her? The ending was rushed overall, so I understand why we didn’t get full explanations, but it genuinely felt like we were waiting for a flashback that never came. There was no clear turning point, no moment of realisation, just an abrupt shift. It came across like the writers were done and ready to wrap things up, regardless of the loose ends they left behind. And honestly? Fine. When you’re tired, you’re tired.

No Happy Ending for Anyone — Sigh

I know the endings were technically fitting, but I still wish Jun Seo and Jae Oh had gotten something better. I wanted Jun Seo to genuinely move on, and I wanted Jae Oh to eventually find some peace too. Given how complex they were, I know I shouldn’t be mad. But I am.

I liked them. A lot. Part of me was rooting for Ah Jin to stay trapped in her mansion prison while Jun Seo and Jae Oh became unlikely best friends who hung out on weekends. I was also low-key rooting for Jun Seo and Le Na. Did anyone else hope he’d just leave the country and be with her?

Maybe that ending was too kind for this show. But after everything, I still wanted it.

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What I Would’ve Done

I already know that the endings we got were technically fitting but this is just my version if the characters didn’t all have such deeply complex mindsets working against them.

Give Jun Seo and Jae Oh the Happy Ending They Deserved

I still wish Jun Seo and Jae Oh had gotten a happy ending. It genuinely breaks my heart that Jae Oh died never realising his life had value simply because it was his life, not because he was useful to someone else. And it’s just as painful that Jun Seo never figured out who he was outside of Ah Jin. His entire existence revolved around her.  Psychologically, it makes sense. Emotionally? It still hurts.

So in my version, they wouldn’t have had such self-destructive mindsets. They’d cut Ah Jin off and learn how to exist outside of her orbit. I was honestly rooting for Jun Seo and Le Na because it felt like she could’ve shown him what a healthy relationship actually looked like. In this version, after Jun Seo exposes Ah Jin, he goes after Le Na, leaves the country, and chooses something for himself for once. He’d still stay close with Jae Oh, but this time, that closeness wouldn’t be rooted in guilt or obligation.

Jae Oh would’ve started a business doing undercover background checks, something he was already basically doing for years. He’d still see Ah Jin on TV occasionally, but he’d finally be able to move on with his life. He wouldn’t feel the need to prove his usefulness anymore. Slowly, he’d learn that the most valuable thing about him is the fact that he’s alive. He’d travel, visit Jun Seo, and actually enjoy his life instead of just surviving it.

Ah Jin Loses Everything (As She Should)

I fully stand by Jun Seo being the one to ruin Ah Jin’s career. She doesn’t get to quietly walk away and start fresh. After the documentary, she’s questioned by the police and completely shunned by the acting industry. No more praise, no more power, no more admiration. And since she cut ties with Do Hyuk, he lets her rot. Divorce papers show up in the mail and that’s it.

If we wanted to go darker, maybe she fakes her death and disappears. Knowing she can never reach the top again as Baek Ah Jin, she rebrands herself entirely or moves to another country. That’s as close to a “happy” ending as I’m willing to give her.

Do Hyuk: Pick a Lane or Get Out

Do Hyuk’s storyline was far too complex to be shoved in at the very last second. So I’d either introduce him much earlier or remove him entirely. As it stands, his arc didn’t add much and honestly felt like it belonged to a completely different show.

If he stayed, I’d have Jae Oh dig into his past, especially the wife. Sung Hee would finally explain what Do Hyuk actually did to her, and we’d get real answers about who he was and how he operated. And if Ah Jin were the one to take him down, it wouldn’t be through a video and a few audio recordings. He was far too powerful for that to realistically work. Instead, she’d pretend to break down. Pretend to become the wife he wanted. While he thinks he’s won, she’d slowly gather information and dismantle him from the inside.

Maybe she manipulates him into falling in love with her, only to destroy him the way he tried to destroy her. She was calculating and intelligent at the beginning of the show, so it’s disappointing that she never got the chance to truly use that against him. Yes, he was likely drugging and controlling her — but still.

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Final Thoughts

I think I can safely say that this drama went right over my head. I had no idea each character was so complex and no idea how deep it all was. I mean, what makes these characters linger isn’t shock value or moral ambiguity, but how closely their endings align with who they’ve been forced to become. 

Understanding them doesn’t mean defending their choices. It means recognising that their actions didn’t appear out of nowhere. Ah Jin survived by continuing — by adapting, compartmentalising, and moving forward no matter the damage left behind. Stopping, reflecting, or softening would require a safety she had never known. Jae Oh survived by choosing usefulness until the only choice left was death, and he embraced that end because it finally gave his life definition. Jun Seo survived by enduring, until endurance turned into emptiness and there was nothing left to protect. Each of them reached an ending that felt less like a twist and more like the natural conclusion of a path laid down long before they ever met. They weren’t monsters, they were survivors whose survival strategies eventually destroyed them.

What’s important to know is that understanding the roots of their behaviour doesn’t make that behaviour harmless. People were hurt. Lines were crossed. Lives were destroyed. But reducing these characters to “evil,” “pathetic,” or “toxic” misses the point of what the story was actually doing. These weren’t characters acting out of malice or obsession alone, they were acting out of learned survival strategies that once kept them alive and later became the very things that consumed them. Trauma doesn’t justify harm, but it does explain why certain choices feel inevitable to the people making them.

In the end, this drama doesn’t ask us to excuse them, but to understand them. None of them were rewarded for their pain, and none were punished in neat, moral ways. Their triangle doesn’t exist because Ah Jin is evil or because Jun Seo and Jae Oh are weak, but because each of them learned a different answer to the same question: how do you survive a world that never taught you how to be safe?

Outside of the characters themselves, this drama wasn’t bad. I actually think that if I rewatched it knowing everything I know now, I’d probably rate it much higher — but I don’t feel like rewatching it. I still don’t know whether the show needed to be longer to properly flesh out Do Hyuk and his mess, or shorter and more focused instead of introducing such a complex character so late.

Either way, this was a tragic story for everyone involved, and it’s definitely going to stick with me for a while. Not because I enjoyed it or want to revisit it, but because it reminded me that sometimes the most tragic stories are also the most honest ones. With Ah Jin, Jun Seo, Jae Oh, In Gang, In Gang’s grandmother, Jung Ho, and everyone else, no one got a happy ending. But we also can’t say their endings weren’t the result of a world that was simply too cruel to people who didn’t just want to survive; they wanted to live.

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And we’re done! What did you guys think of this? I realised this was more of a psychological break-down on the characters rather than a full review on the whole show and I hope that’s okay!

Did you realise how complex they were or were you just as shocked as I was? I just want to clarify that I’m NOT a psychologist at all. I just am very interested in psychology and WHY people do the things they do and not just point fingers.

If you decide to rewatch it or simply think back, do you see how the characters motives and actions are actually very fitting to who they became sure to childhood? Honestly I feel like I could write a whole book on them and break down each of their characters because it’s so much deeper than I wrote. Every scene matched who they were and if we weren’t already at the 20 page mark, I would’ve went into even further detail.

*If you’re as interested in their psychology as me, I’ve created a detailed review on each character! If you’re interested, check here for Baek Ah Jin’s review, here for Yun Jun Seo’s review, and here for Kim Jae Oh!! It’s very broken down so hopefully you understand them deeper after!*

Anyways, That’s it for me this week! I’m not too sure what I’ll review next week but I promise it won’t be this long (loll).

See you next week!💕

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