Summary
An old face returns to complicate matters, while Jiwoo finds herself caught between warring factions.
This recap of My Name season 1, episode 3 contains spoilers.
My Name doesn’t do cliff-hangers so much as take a break of a few seconds right in the middle of a scene. I mentioned this in the spoiler-free season review, but it’s an unusual effect and helps to create the idea of a single continuous story that is almost being inconvenienced by opening and closing credits. After the hallway fight, Jiwoo and Pil-Do are questioning Mango. The former finds his drug stash hidden nearby, having proved a point not only about her martial prowess but also her usefulness in general. These two would make quite a team if Jiwoo wasn’t already playing multiple sides.
My Name season 1, episode 3 recap
That idea really starts to come to the fore in My Name episode 3, with her loyalty to Mujin, to her late father, and now to this particular case all competing. Mujin’s operation is suddenly under threat from a new dealer, who turns out to be Gangjae, who was expelled from The Organization and clearly hasn’t handled the rejection well, but also from the cops, putting Jiwoo in an awkward position if she wants to both repay the kindness and loyalty Mujin has shown her while also maintaining her cover within the police. And that last bit is important since she still strongly suspects the police in her father’s murder.
To make all these points clear, the third episode lingers on a tense raid during which the Narcotics department tries to take down Mujin’s operation aboard a ship. It’s a fairly lengthy sequence played for maximum tension, but there’s more to it than simple, facile thrills. Jiwoo is torn. But she’s also playing a long game to try and suss out Captain Cha, so her catch-all solution is to use the police revolver her father was murdered with to cause a distraction, allowing both Mujin to escape and Cha to find the weapon, peering at its scratched-off serial number. Does he recognize it?
Since Jiwoo fired the shot that derailed the sting, she has put herself in harm’s way. She’s able to divert suspicion since her service weapon has a full complement of ammunition, but she’s guaranteed to have to put herself on the line even more thanks to the police force’s determined effort to shut down Mujin’s entire operation. (Seeing her father’s face on the wall of the police’s operations room must be a stark reminder that Jiwoo is forced to play down.) Jiwoo feeds as much information as she can back to Mujin, but with Gangjae’s return, not to mention the police breathing down his neck, it might not be enough.
Speaking of Gangjae, his return facilitates the big action sequence of the episode, and it’s the bloodiest yet. He and his goons take over the gym on the docks where Jiwoo trained, dispatching Mujin’s henchman and seriously injuring Taeju with swords and bats and knives. It’s a brutal affair, and by the time Jiwoo is summoned there by Pil-Do, the damage has already done. Gangjae’s ominous parting message, an insistence that he’s back, threatens to throw an already increasingly complex story for something of a loop.
You can stream My Name season 1, episode 3 exclusively on Netflix.
