Summary
Sweet Home gives some more explanation for its mysterious monster plague, while Hyun-su’s fate is decided in a vote and various character subplots continue to develop.
This recap of Sweet Home season 1, episode 4 contains spoilers. You can check out our thoughts on the previous episode by clicking these words.
After the death of Ms. Cha’s daughter and Su-ung thanks the tongue of the slack-jawed monster still hovering outside, most of the Green Home residents are making their way to the first floor in Sweet Home episode 4, including an older man and his nurse, Yu-ri, both characters I don’t believe we’ve seen before.
A character we have seen before is Yi-kyung, who makes her daring, athletic escape from the literal web of the spider monster through the vents; she gets hung up as she tries to exit, but is able to cut herself free.
A big turning point of this episode is a news broadcast that reveals that martial law has been declared and gives some more explanation about the virus, which is apparently neither respiratory nor blood-borne but related in some way to human desire. The monsters are only vulnerable during a period called the Golden Hour before they turn. Those with symptoms should continue to be quarantined and any captured creatures should be incinerated, which is the only way of dealing with them. In the meantime the military will, the broadcast insists, resolve the situation.
Obviously, this causes more arguments than ever.
While Hyun-su, Ji-su, and Jae-heon are making their way down to the first floor, Hyun-su topples over the railing and falls several stories to the floor. After experiencing a number of visions he wakes up with Eun-yu and Eun-heok, who lets him know that his rather impossible survival has clued everyone into the fact that he’s infected. Eun-heok proposes a vote, which Seok-hyun is fuming about, believing he should just be cast out immediately.
Seok-hyun is even more annoyed when the vote is split down the middle, but ironically as he starts to complain more furiously, his own nose starts bleeding, and he and Hyun-su are forced to quarantine together while everyone else continues to deliberate.
Sweet Home episode 4 provides some more downtime here and just lets various characters interact; in particular, Yi-kyung talks with Seok-hyun’s abused wife, and Ji-su consoles Ms. Cha. Teeing up one of the next episode’s major plot threads, Duct-Tape Man Hwang Seung-jae runs into Sang-wook, and ends up quarantining with Hyun-su and Seok-hyun just to escape him after a beatdown. He clearly finds the idea of physical invulnerability to be alluring. As we see shortly after, Sang-wook stole his keys during their scuffle.
We end on a cliffhanger, as upstairs, the kids inform Han Du-sik that Ms. Im has been in the bathroom for an hour. When Du-sik opens the door, he finds a giant blob pulsating inside, looking very much like an amniotic sac.
