2023 Kdrama Revenant Episode 2 Recap & 4 highlights, Review:The meaning of red hair accessory?

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Summary of Episode 2 of the Korean drama “Revenant”: San-Yeong sees a ghost for the first time through a mirror. A phone call from a deceased child reveals the truth about the crying girl on the other end of the line. Even after that case is closed, San-Yeong still feels confused and scared by strange experiences one after another. Eventually, she comes face to face with the demon possessing her, leaving her shocked. 

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Kdrama Revenant Episode 2 Recap

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🎀 Continuing from Korean drama Revenant episode 1, Yeom Hae-Sang found out that 4237 represents the door lock code of Jung Hyun-woo’s house. Upon opening it, she heard a little girl crying (the same voice Kim Jin-wook heard on the phone). Yeom Hae-Sang then noticed parents appearing behind her.

The father not only held a shovel but also had invisible scars on his face as if he was being watched by ghosts. On the other hand, Gu San-Yeong saw Jung Hyun-woo’s ghost covered in blood through a mirror and suddenly remembered what Yeom Hae-Sang said about understanding the name of ghosts and why they were there.

According to Gil Sung-Hyun, Jung Hyun-woo committed suicide without anyone bullying him or forcing him to do so. Before committing suicide, he asked them to go to his house and see what happened there. In fact, Jung Hyun-woo had a very pitiful sister who was hidden by their parents from everyone else. When Yeom Hae-Sang learned about this from Gu San-Yeong and wanted to rescue the trapped little girl, she ended up being attacked and kidnapped by Jung Hyun-woo’s parents.

Gu San-Yeong kept seeing Jung Hyun-woo’s ghost guiding her towards something important. She reported it to the police before going to his house where she met Yeom Hae-Sang trying hard to help the little girl escape. It seemed like after fulfilling his wish, Jung Hyun-Woo disappeared without any trace left behind on Gyeo Wool’s face either.

Through this case, Gu San-Yeong realized that humans are scarier than ghosts because these murders were caused by people rather than spirits haunting them. She went for counseling at a mental health clinic where she learned that her mother suffered from anxiety a long time ago. However, the doctor did not think that there was any direct genetic possibility and also did not believe in ghosts as Gu San-Yeong claimed.

Baek Se-Mi invited Gu San-Yeong to attend their classmate’s wedding where she found out that Baek Se-Mi had a crush on Lee Hong-Sae. But it turned out that Lee Hong-Sae noticed Gu San-Yeong who he had been paying attention to for quite some time now due to her family background.

The next day, while working at a moving company, Gu San-Yeong was attacked by a crying child who wanted to find a “Salzburg” doll. On the other hand, Yeom Hae-Sang went directly to Gu San-Yeong’s house and learned that she had touched the red hair accessory before.

Upon hearing this, Yeom Hae-Sang knew something was wrong. Suddenly, without realizing it herself, demon possessed Gu San-yeong’s body and cut open the Salzburg doll with resentment towards the spoiled and impolite child of today.

Suddenly awakened by herself again, she saw her disheveled demon shadow in the mirror along with her terrifying self-image while recalling memories of her grandmother’s house.

Yeom Hae-Sang arrived at his grandmother’s house earlier than Gu San-Yeong. He was excited to finally find the red hair accessory and wanted to know more about the notebook. At that moment, the doorbell rang and his grandmother saw Gu San-Yeong in front of her as a disheveled demon.

Yeom Hae-Sang realized something was wrong, while Gu San-Yeong also saw in his mind the image of his grandmother leading the disheveled demon into their home. Eventually, they found out that their grandmother had committed suicide by self-immolation and that there was a fire burning the “red hair accessory” notebook in her room.

Although Gu San-Yeong tried hard to retrieve it, most of it had already been destroyed.Yeom Hae-Sang asked Seo Moon-Choon for help in restoring its contents but he suspected that Gu San-Yeong did all this just to inherit their property.

Gu San-Yeong was too sad and lost on her way back home when she felt overwhelmed with despair and thought about dying just to feel how much she really wanted to live. After seeing Gu San-Yeong’s grandmother’s suicide case, Seo Moon-Choon encouraged Lee Hong-Sae to investigate similar unsolved cases since 1995 including Yeom Hae-Sang’s mother’s suicide case but they couldn’t find any clues or leads until then.

Yeom Hae-Sang told Gu San-Yeong that the shadow of Disheveled Demon is getting bigger every day and warned him not touch the red hair accessory because it could possess him too. However, both were puzzled why Ku Kang-Mo gave this cursed object to them especially after asking Yeom Hae-sung for help.

Yeom Hae-sung said that when his mother died she held onto this red hair accessory; after father’s death in 1995, his mother took Yeom Hae-Sang to a place where they dug up a broken piece of porcelain and other collected items. However, after Yeom Hae-Sang recovered from his illness at the inn, he heard his mother’s voice and opened the door only to see Disheveled Demon’s shadow.

His mother was attacked by the demon for trying to stop him and eventually died in a fire. Gu San-Yeong drew a map based on her grandmother’s perspective that she saw in her mind. Both of them hoped to find Jangjin-Ri which couldn’t be found on the map.

Kdrama Revenant Episode 2 review and 4 highlights

“Humans are scarier than ghosts.”

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It turns out that Jung Hyun-woo was seeking help to save his poor sister. The director really made the ghost’s plea very frightening, which should scare anyone and make them too scared to help the ghost 😂

In Revenant Episode 2, the director really played with the element of “mirrors” thoroughly (the scene where Gu San-Yeong and Gil Sung-Hyun suddenly see Jung Hyun-woo in the reflection of a mirror is really well done).

This episode has more “Jump Scares,” but the ones created by the director are sophisticated and won’t make viewers feel annoyed. Instead, they have a strong after-effect of shock because after watching Revenant Episode 2, viewers should be used to knowing that whenever there is something “reflective,” ghosts will appear (especially when Gu San-Yeong sees his demon self in a large mirror on a plaza; this scene is also great).

I really like how Revenant Episode 2 had Jin Byung-gu do different twists on Jung Hyun-woo’s case from Episode 1. In Episode 1, we would mistakenly think that those three middle school students were bad kids who bullied Jung Hyun-woo. But the writer truly adheres to the theory of “you must listen to what ghosts say – their names and reasons for staying here.”

This lets us know about importance of “listening” or else it could lead to more misunderstandings and missing out on more truths~ If it weren’t for Gu San-Yeong being willing to put aside his prejudice against Gil Sung-Hyun and listen to him tell him about what happened, Yeom Hae-Sang wouldn’t have known about key truth (that Jung Hyun-woo himself had another sister hidden away by their parents).

The writer truly did an excellent job exploring human nature in-depth. In Revenant Episode 2, through Jung Hyun-woo’s case, we really feel that compared to demons, human darkness and evil are scarier.

It’s like how I found Jung Hyun-woo’s appearance scary but the real behavior of his mother depicted by Jin Byung-gu is even more unforgivably evil and ugly. The writer did a powerful flip and subversion of my established impression and expectations regarding the contrast between human nature and demons.

It’s like how I thought Jung Hyun-woo was the one who killed Kim Jin-wook, but in reality, the true culprit is Jung Hyun-woo’s father. It’s just like what Gu San-Yeong said, “Ghosts don’t exist. People are scarier than ghosts.

Those demon-like people killed Hyun-woo and also killed Kim Jin-wook. It wasn’t the work of ghosts.” Baek Se-Mi also said, “That place is even scarier than a haunted house,” because ghosts only seek revenge on those who have wronged them, but people can harm others without any reason or motive! The existence of “people” is actually a source of greater unease for us.

Gu San-Yeong’s mother’s anxiety disorder is caused by experiencing demons?

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In this episode of Revenant, there is a scene where Gu San-Yeong seeks counseling at a psychiatric clinic and asks, “My mother has had anxiety for a long time. Will it affect me?” Although no conclusion is reached in this scene, the writer implies that Gu San-Yeong’s mental state deteriorates after experiencing the demon incident, causing him to have hallucinations and sleep problems.

If both Gu San-Yeong and his mother share this commonality, it can be reasonably inferred that his mother’s anxiety may also be related to the demon incident. We currently do not know when or how Gu San-Yeong’s mother developed anxiety, but this could be foreshadowing and may correspond with the period of their divorce (the timeline events below are subject to change based on the plot of this episode).

• 🎀1958 Jangjin-Ri: All the little girls in the village were gathered under a tree where a shaman performed rituals. Choi Man-Wol was holding a red hair accessory and seemed to be looking for the next girl as a sacrifice. In the end, she killed one of them (although this girl didn’t seem too young and might have been picked from the village when she was younger and raised before being sacrificed? Because her hand that was exposed didn’t look small, it seems like she had suffered abuse in this wealthy person’s house and wasn’t even given proper meals).

• 🎀 In 1995, Seo Moon-Choon’s first case was actually the case of Yeom Hae-Sang’s mother. Yeom Hae-Sang’s mother was also a victim of the demon who caused hair loss. In 1995, there was a fire in a homestay and the owner reported it to the police. The police found a dead body hanging from a beam with red bruises on both wrists inside the burnt building.
  
  As for his young son, he was found on a nearby mountain and he said that there were other people at the scene besides them and that the deceased did not commit suicide. This little boy is Yeom Hae-Sang.

  When Yeom Hae-Sang found the red hair accessory, he was actually happy because it was something his mother had when she passed away. He felt that this red hair accessory might be the key to solving everything.

  It seems like Yeom Hae-Sang got sick when he was young but we don’t know if it’s because of the demon who causes hair loss or not. Through some scenes, it feels like Yeom Hae-Sang’s mother found those things to help her child recover because Yeom Hae-Sang did get better afterwards.
  
  However, before this happened, when someone knocked on their door and went outside to check who it is – we saw that shadow belonged to “the demon who causes hair loss” which means his mom probably died trying to protect him from being attacked by this demon.

  Therefore, it can be inferred that those things collected by his mother should be able to break free from “the demon who causes hair loss”.

• 🎀 February 1997: In his paper “Korean Shamanistic Beliefs,” Ku Kang-Mo first mentioned the Disheveled Hair Demon (which means he had been researching and studying it before this, possibly due to investigating Yeom Hae-Sang’s mother’s suicide case), but his theories and ideas were ignored by the academic community, leading to him being ostracized.
  
  This also means that Ku Kang-Mo had already been researching the Disheveled Hair Demon before 1997, and he has been studying changes in child grave culture. Based on what Gu San-Yeong saw, we know that the Disheveled Hair Demon is a child. However, where Ku Kang-Mo obtained the “red hair accessory” remains a mystery.
• When Gu San-Yeong was five years old, his mother lied to him that Ku Kang-Mo had died. This should have happened around 1997. Gu San-Yeong’s mother knew about this and must have had a reason for doing so at the time. She became angry when she saw Gu San-Yeong taking Ku Kang-Mo’s things, which also suggests that she had gone through a terrifying experience.

Did Ku Kang-Mo really plan to give his red hair accessory to Gu San-Yeong a long time ago?

The plot twist style of Golden Cross is still thoroughly executed. In the script for the second episode of Revenant, an important line was mentioned: “He also knew that his daughter was possessed by a demon.

How did he find out?” This slightly corrected my reasoning from the first episode of Revenant. However, since there is little information available now, it is not yet a completely confirmed deduction. If you have your own deductions, please follow them accordingly.

• Based on my own speculation, it should have been in 1997 when Gu San-Yeong was five years old. However, her mother requested a divorce from Ku Kang-Mo and prevented Gu San-Yeong from having contact with him. According to the letter that Ku Kang-Mo left for Yeom Hae-Sang, stating that he would take care of Gu San-Yeong, it means that Ku Kang-Mo already knew that the hair loss demon would target Gu San-Yeong.
  
  Therefore, in 1997, Gu San-Yeong must have had some contact with the demon but managed to escape its grasp. This scared her mother into taking her away quickly. Especially since Gu San-Yeong seemed to have a connection with the demon at Han River Bridge; she did not seem like she wanted to commit suicide because of her expression and gaze showed signs of being dazed, fearful and absent-minded. Hence it is highly likely that she has an inherent constitution which allows her to connect with demons.

  If we follow what was mentioned in Revenant episode where Ku Kang-Mo already knew his daughter was possessed by a demon; this means that Ju-san-Kang Mo probably recently found out about how hair loss demon caused suicides over these past few decades.
  
  What happened before Ku Kang-Mo got into the taxi? It feels like he finally discovered the existence of Hair Loss Demon especially since he has been investigating Yeom Hae-Sang’s mother’s case all along so jumping into a taxi back home can be explained as him finding answers and wanting confirmation at home before taking out his “red hairband” which he hasn’t worn for a long time.

  But why did Ku Kang-Mo know that Gu San-Yeong was in danger? This part may be related to an incident involving his wife who asked for separation after giving birth in 1995; therefore, Ku Kang-Mo believed that Gu San-Yeong would not be able to escape and wrote a letter to Yeom Hae-Sang first.

  Ku Kang-Mo sought help from Yeom Hae-Sang probably because he knew that she was very persistent in investigating her mother’s death and knew that it was not just a simple suicide. Therefore, he believed that only Yeom Hae-Sang could save Gu San-Yeong.

• Grandma who designed the red hair accessory passed it on to Gu San-Yeong through Evil Spirit. I’m not sure if this is a manipulation by Demon with Disheveled Hair to make Ku Kang-Mo write a letter asking Grandma to pass the red hair accessory to Gu San-Yeong, or if Grandma was possessed or transformed into the appearance of Evil Spirit and gave the red hair accessory to Gu San-Yeong. The scene where they handed over the heirloom felt strange and didn’t seem accidental. Especially when Kim Seok-Ran gave something to Gu San-Yeong and deliberately covered her face afterwards, it felt very suspicious. Moreover, when Gu San-Yeong touched the heirloom, she heard “she accepted it.”

  On the other hand, it can also be interpreted as “it takes two hands to clap.” If Gu San-Yeong had possession of the red hair accessory, even though she was possessed by demon, at least she wouldn’t be killed. Perhaps Ku Kang-Mo already knew that Gu San-Yeong could become a vessel for demon so that Yeom Hae-Sang could keep Evil Spirit  from running away again. He also believed that only Yeom Hae-Sang could become someone who solves problems, so he wanted Yeom Hae-Sang to protect Gu San-Yeong.

What is the significance of a red hair accessory?

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I think the reason for discussing the red red hair accessory should be related to the case of Ku Kang-Mo’s death and his grandmother being attacked. Let’s first talk about the motive of the Evil Spirit:

A: Regarding why Ku Kang-Mo’s grandmother was attacked by the Evil Spirit : According to some connections in the scene, we can see that in episode 2 of Revenant, Ku Kang-Mo’s grandmother discovered the content of that “hair accessory” book, and Yeom Hae-Sang happened to have obtained it and wanted to take that book.

At Ku Kang-Mo’s home, we can see that this “hairband” book was burned down, which means that Hair Demon’s motive was to burn this book. This detail needs to be linked back to how Ku Kang-Mo died in episode 1.

B: As for why Ku Kang-Mo would be killed by Evil Spirit , besides him being Gu San-Yeong’s father, I couldn’t figure out why he would also become a target for Hair Demon. I think it is because evil spirit wants to prevent Ku Kang-Mo from knowing its secret identity as well as stopping him from eliminating it.

When Ku Kang-Mo returned home, he immediately looked through that ” hair accessory” book and took out a red hair accessory he had hidden away for a long time. Therefore, Evil spirit’s purpose may be similar to its motive for wanting to get rid of his grandmother – both are trying not let others discover its existence or eliminate it.

As for the significance of the red hair accessory, according to the book “hair accessory” we can speculate that the red hair accessory is one of the things used in performing witchcraft (and these things may become a way to get rid of and break witchcraft).

In the Revenant episode ending, Choi Man-Wol from 1958 was shown selecting a little girl from a village. It is unclear whether this was a sacrifice or not because Ku Kang-Mo’s paper is about “Korean Folk Beliefs.”

Therefore, it seems that Choi Man-Wol found a little girl to perform witchcraft and kill her in order to achieve some kind of sacrifice and fulfill her desires. This behavior seems like an exchange with demons, which thrive on satisfying people’s desires.

Therefore, in 1958 witchcraft, those things related to the red hair accessory seem like they are summoning Prince Ghosts – different from Evil Spirit – which caused injustice behind them. They are bigger demons (probably Prince Ghosts).

This echoes Gu San-Yeong holding Salzburg dolls while complaining insidiously: “Since you were lucky enough to be born into a wealthy family, don’t make trouble there. They always indulge her and buy whatever she wants. No wonder that stinky brat has no manners.” Currently I do not know if this is resentment expressed by evil spirit occupying Gu San-Yeong’s consciousness or not. If so, then this scene could resonate with Evil Spirit Evil Spirit’s story of resentment in his heart; perhaps he hates this little girl for not cherishing what she has now.

Currently my own speculation is that Evil Spirit was probably one of the innocent girls sacrificed by witches who were caught among them; these children were all poor girls but also deceived into being sacrificed due to their poverty~ According to Gu San-Yeong’s demon, she feels angry about the behavior of wealthy girls. This represents her belief that poverty is the main cause of her current injustice.

Revenant Episode 2 Review(Short Summary)

The visual effects in Korean drama Revenant ep2 are really impressive! The pacing is even tighter than in the first episode, especially during two scenes where Yeom Hae-Sang and Gu San-Yeong work together.

The music adds to the tension and keeps viewers on edge. I have to praise the screenwriter for their skillful use of plot twists that are evenly distributed throughout the episode, keeping viewers engaged and surprised.

I love how solidly constructed each scene is in Revenant, with every moment providing clues for viewers to piece together. The amount of information presented in this episode should satisfy any viewer’s curiosity.

Additionally, I appreciate how director portrays Gu San-Yeong’s struggle between her demon possession and reality – such as when she suddenly becomes left-handed – creating a sense of unease that perfectly conveys her internal conflict.

Finally, Yeom Hae-Sang’s heroic rescue of a little girl was so cool! Overall, Revenant Episode 2 was truly satisfying!